So, ive been contemplating purchasing Native Instruments Maschine, but im having a difficult time on deciding.

Does anyone here own Maschine? What are your thoughts since youve purchased it?

Ive heard some bad, "technical" things about it and Ableton Live, which is what i mainly use, sometimes ill bounce into Logic 8, but mostly hang out with Live. Weve become pretty good friends! hehe

Anyway, if anyone out there can steer me in the right direction of wether to purchase it or not, id greatly appreciate it!

I really need something to load in drum samples and bash away drum lines, cause programming drums is a pain for me. Its the last thing i look forward to doing when creating new songs. I dread doing drums...

I know theres always the option of getting an Akai MPC, and the new Renaissance that comes out in August really caught my eye at NAMM.

Id love to hear everyones $.02

-Sin

I own it and love it but I don't use Ableton Live so I can't comment or even know of the technical problems.

My Main daws are cubendo.. and why I love maschine is that it is super easy to use to make beat oriented music....it changed my workflow which is why I bought it, and allowed me to be more proficient and quicker in dance music including hip hop. dancehall etc......
if you are going to use it for acoustic realistic drumming however although it can be done, I don't think that is its strong point, but for groove oriented more electronic oriented genres it is great imho..


I like it cause it is
1) is super easy to use and the workflow is superb imho.
2) NI is dedicated in it and are constantly adding features


rsp

NI has had so much more years in software development than AKAI I would find it hard to imagine on the software side that Akai giving NI a run for their money in terms of usability and stability etc.....
rsp

well, as far as what style of music i make, i mainly make electronic music, mostly "industrial" type stuff...a little harder and edgier, if you will.

so it sounds as if i should make the purchase.

would love to hear from others though...

-Sin

I've had it for years. It's integral to my workflow, so, yeah I love it. I've only used it in Sonar, Pro Tools, Studio One, and standalone. BTW, do a search of this subforum and the Instruments subforum for "Maschine" and you will find a lot of opinions, good and bad.

Own it, love it.

My biggest complaint is that it's not real tight integration with reaper (or when I've used it in sonar) The problem is it's not as easy as hitting record on the host and "banging" away (except cubase which seems to be integrated better for some reason) The pads react very differently inside the host anyways. Odd, the keyboard works fine and you can of course work inside maschine and then either arrange the scenes that way or drag/drop the midi......and that works fine.

As standalone, the only downside is it's not multiprocessor. You'll be limited as to how many FX/vst's you can use vs a host.

Even with the things I listed, it's been really good. Kinda worried about NI though.......things have been way too quiet over there for a while now.

I can't comment on Live / host integration. Works fine for me in Logic with FXpansion Geist (which I prefer to the Maschine software).


Maschine will solve this problem for you and make programming drums fun. It really is that simple. Also works great for triggering synths with percussive sounds.

I would forget about the Akai unless you want to wait 6 months to find out if it's any good.

Peace,
Andy.

Own it, love it. My best hardware purchase so far, and Maschine gets used much more than any other gear I have.

Works well in my DAW, but I mostly prefer to run it standalone.

Also, the recent Komplete integration is just ... wow. So many possibilities.

just out of curiosity, which host are you using?

If you are in for working with your own samples and create instruments - Maschine is astonishingly primitive. During the last six months I've been working on a sample based library for Maschine and each and every time I go in and map samples - I always want to throw out the damn thing out the window

The effect section partly sucks. If you have a penchant for the artificial the reverbs are quite cool - but the filters are horribly meh. Personally I tend to prefer 2-poles but the 2-poles in Maschine is equally boring as the old Akai S1000 filters = almost useless.

If you don't plan to create your own sounds - this is naturally not a problem.

/C

an interesting perspective. It's true, I don't care for the built in fx. But I do like the sounds included.

Agreed - they are good.

ive been offered a $425 price tag from someone local for Maschine and Komplete 8.

Think i should jump on it?

-Sin

Hell yes.

I had one and sold it.

I used it in standalone mode, but found that the very pattern focused way of sequencing didn't suit me. Since you are Live user, that may not be so much of an issue for you.... But really, if you just want to use it to play drums have you considered buying a drum controller like the Korg padKontrol or an Akai MPD? It would at least be cheaper.