Just picked up Maschine

[ben mills]

for $350.

[mostapha]

#winning

[Celestial]

post a picture :)

[punky]

NIIIICE! Enjoy that thing man. It's a BEAST!

[g-sep]

Congrats!!! I've had my mikro since December, hell of a piece of hardware/software.

Sent from my PG86100 using Tapatalk 2

[Atomisk]

I got mine last month for 350 too! I love it so far. Both in the studio and while DJing.

[g-sep]

Atom what you using for a mapping with Traktor? Been trying to get some ideas.

Sent from my PG86100 using Tapatalk 2

[Synergy]

i got mine a while ago, haven't had a chance to actually get into it and learn it. coming up on 17 days of block leave june 9th, planning on learning, learning, learning. just hope my head doesnt explode. it seems the synths are limited if you don't get the full upgrade. kind of sucks. if anyone has any tips or anything, please post it up! id love to read some tips.


its pretty intuitive for making quick beats but I'm more interested in going in-depth and making a full length track with it.

i have also used it for djing with traktor by using dj endo's template for TSP. it is pretty neat but i mainly use it for effects.

[Atomisk]

Atom what you using for a mapping with Traktor? Been trying to get some ideas.

Sent from my PG86100 using Tapatalk 2

Right now it's really just mapped to everything that my Kontrol x1s can't do. It has a bunch of browser controls, key adjusting stuff, 1 page per deck for setting grids/hotcues, and Pitch knobs (finally!), etc. Sooner or later I'm gonna make a new page that can control a remix deck, although I've never really used the sample that much. I might also figure out a way to run Maschine in VST mode alongside traktor.

[Celestial]

Right now it's really just mapped to everything that my Kontrol x1s can't do. It has a bunch of browser controls, key adjusting stuff, 1 page per deck for setting grids/hotcues, and Pitch knobs (finally!), etc. Sooner or later I'm gonna make a new page that can control a remix deck, although I've never really used the sample that much. I might also figure out a way to run Maschine in VST mode alongside traktor.

you on FW today dude?

[mr.smashy]

Fridays have a pretty tight schedule.

[techs1200]

Maschine is the best tool for beats/drums I have ever used. Highly recommended!

[ben mills]

So, this is my first foray into beats, drums, any kind of production whatsoever. I figured Maschine would be a nice all-in-one DAW to get my feet wet.

It just got here today - and after spending a few hours downloading updates and getting it all sorted out I have seem to have it up and running.

However I have absolutely no clue at all...NONE whatsoever. I will figure it out though. There don't seem to be a lot of useful tutorials.

[mostapha]

Read the manual. And play with it.

And good luck with tutorials. Most of what I know about it, I had to figure out on my own. It seems like >90% of Maschine owners bought it to be a glorified trigger finger.

Some of the NI "feature" videos for 1.6 and 1.7 actually help a decent bit.

[ben mills]

Yeah, I've been reading the manual. It actually helped to download the pdf, print it out and put it into a 3-ring binder. That way I can have it spread out and on larger pages. Printed in color too.

I already have a Kontrol X1 - so I don't intend to use this for spinning records really, it would just clutter up an already huge set up (1200 and DJM 600).

I figure it's all about just playing around with it. Yesterday was tough because there were some technical glitches to get fixed (LCD screen was blue and unreadable due to out of date driver or something), downloading the latest 1.7.2, waiting for the serial number (seller forgot to include it), connecting my Axiom 25, just a bunch of little things that took a long time so I wasn't able to really play with it too much. By the time I had gotten all that stuff done, I had been messing about with it a few hours and kind of burned out. Hope to have a good session tonight.

Most of the tutorials I've seen are more along the lines of "This is how you make a beat"...and they just say what they are doing, and do it really quickly without much of an explanation.

[Synergy]

there is also a song mode vs clip mode. took me a while to figure that out.

[mostapha]

Lol.

Yeah…it's a very different way of working compared to a linear DAW. In some ways it's more ableton-esque. In other ways it's very different.

There's a lot you can do with routing (to layer synth sounds and process them together…to coax chords out of mono soft synths, for example) but it's still quite limited.

At this point, I'm using it primarily as a drum machine and MIDI sequencer. There are things I really like about working in it, mostly related to how building up grooves is different from building up songs. It's amazingly fast to go from an idea/feeling to a loop once you get the hang of it. It's quicker than a lot of things to go from loops to a song. And the samples that came with it and with some of the expansions are awesome for drums and glitchy/FX sounds. And I like the way it's semi-automatic mapping works for most plugins.

My qualms with it at this point are fairly minor. I don't like that it's step sequencer is a bit too grid/MPC based and not enough of a step sequencer. The selection/editing is limited, and you can't do things like alter note lengths without touching the mouse. There's not a great way to quickly change step-sequenced melody lines (with regard to note and note length) without relying on the mouse or it's awkward selection. And it's MIDI output device is a bit limited…you can make pads output specific notes but not chords, which could be better. I also don't like the fact that you can't rename parameters. The synths I like the most at this point (Dune and Discovery Pro) have really strangely named parameters and are a bit more complicated than the simple 8 knobs and short names can really deal with. That's not a big deal if you're willing to use a mouse…and you have to if you're not using hardware synths. But, it's annoying that there seems to be no way to re-name parameters or macros.

The only big issues I have with it is that it doesn't have any useful level meters at all and it seems to "normalize" sounds to random volume levels. I like having level meters, and Maschine only has a master output meter with no scale on it at all. It's basically useless. I have plugins that either are or have meters, so that helps. But it's still awkward, if only because they take up an effect slot and open in a separate window. In addition to that, I do my mixing in Pro Tools, and getting Audio into PT is weird. You can record it, which is easiest if you're only using 16 audio channels. But it's a bit of a resource hog when you're hosting plugins in Maschine, which is in-turn hosted in a DAW. Bouncing stems and MIDI (which Maschine can do) seems to work better a lot of the time. But, when you set it to normalize the bounced audio files, the levels it comes up with seem kinda random. Considering that nothing NI makes has any useful level meters at all and that every single one of their demos is clipped…that's not all that surprising. I also wish it's automation was a bit different and let you choose whether to change values instantly when it got a new one or smoothly switch between them…for example, if you change synth parameters with its step sequencer.

The issues are surmountable, but something to be aware of.

If NI or, well, anyone made something more like the Sequentix Cirklon with the same software+controller architecture as Maschine that also did its sampling & drum machine stuff, I'd seriously consider switching.

Still…it's a really fun and quick way to work once you wrap your head around it. And I very much like it.

[ben mills]

Reading what you posted I really only understood parts of it. While familiar with some of the terminology, some parts really went quite over my head.

12 years DJing, 3 hours with Maschine. I also have an Axiom 25, which I've had laying around for 3 years but never did anything with...I connected it and it makes noises...so that's good.

Qestion: is there a way to preview a sound using only the hardware without having to load it into a sound slot? It's not a total pain in the butt...but would much prefer a way to preview like there is in the software.

[techs1200]

Watch the youtube videos NI released on the maschine.

They made like a 20 video tutorial on youtube...

[ben mills]

Yeah, they made "tutorials" showing how to do stuff - but they don't really explain. They are two minute videos that are really lacking in substance and are more promotional vids about the features more than tutorials.

[mostapha]

Qestion: is there a way to preview a sound using only the hardware without having to load it into a sound slot? It's not a total pain in the butt...but would much prefer a way to preview like there is in the software.Nope. It's rumored to be coming in 1.8.

It's one of the really annoying things that I forgot about. If you leave it in browse mode after you loaded a sample, you can play it straight away. But if you do, it resets all your filters. So you have to constantly toggle in and out of browse mode to audition–say–all the kicks or something.

It's frustrating. But still pretty good. Kinda like everything NI makes.

BTW, I'm really starting to hate NI. They make it so easy to love their products……when you're not using them. Maschine is the last bastion of them being even halfway acceptable to me, and if I had the money I'd consider picking up an MPC Renaissance just to see which flaws it has and which set of flaws I can deal with better.

For $350, though, it's a no-brainer. And again, I do like it……I just hate how much more I like NI's promo videos than their products.


Yeah, they made "tutorials" showing how to do stuff - but they don't really explain. They are two minute videos that are really lacking in substance and are more promotional vids about the features more than tutorials.

The thing about marketing is that if it's all branding and emotion, people develop strong attachments to a company. And in the (very common) case that there actually is one product better than another, they'll eventually buy all of them to figure it out.

If you give people facts and real information, the best product wins. If you lie constantly and spend more time on your logo than your content, everyone wins…except the consumers.