Hi folks,

Simple question really. Looking for advice on which DAW has a good feature set that compliments that of Maschine. Preferably opinions from people who can advise reasonably without being fanboy-ish.

Essentially, can anyone give me some feature specific reasons to sell off some older gear and go for that particular program?

Many thanks
B

looks to me like any host that is VST capable will be just as good to operate in - all up to your personal preference.. i guess a lot of the tasks happen inside the Machine software..

I can tell you one that DOESN'T!

REAPER. I absolutely HATE using maschine with reaper........HATE as in spitting horrible mad ( I didn't care for it in sonar either.....haven't bothered trying it in studio one.....guess I should do that )

In the NI tuts, they used cubase. looks like that works fine to me

If you got Live Lite before when it was free, then that is a good option as you get the realtime timestretch (if needed).
EnergyXT is a cheap host with (the best?) modular experience. It complements Maschine's a little limited routing system (thinking of multiple outputs from plugins and sidechain)
With the 1.8 coming where you can use the transport of maschine in plugin-mode, i think i will run it in another sequencer again. I used to, but it made me get stuck in front of the computer and not the sofa .. Now i've got on with not using sidechain compression but i sure miss it!

Depending on how Maschien+Traktor integration goes, im really considering that option with the new X1. It seems pretty cool as a loop player and i think you can do cool realtime mixes/mixdowns of your tracks with it.

What is it that you feel you need an external sequencer for? Longer audiotracks? Or maybe a little more space for mixing?

I use maschine mostly in standalone mode and load Reaktor in it, VSTs, FX, samples, loops, it re-samples, bounces to other tracks, I really don't need any DAW software with it, but that's just me...
I have seen videos on U-tube, people, DJs doing whole show just with maschine

You should try without DAW and then see what you need. You can use other hardware with it too. It is a pretty sophisticated hardware/software, and to learn it is best to do it in standalone mode.

I have LIVE7-(Ableton and I hardly ever use it with maschine), but on NI maschine forum, most people use Live, Studio one, cubase...

my 2cents

The simple answer to this question is Ableton. The long answer is: don't buy Maschine. Here's why:

I have been using Ableton for about a year. It's definitely the best DAW I've come across for all the reasons that everyone else mentions. The integration with Maschine is about as good as it gets. Ableton supports any method you would wish to integrate with Maschine. I bought Maschine shortly after buying Ableton. Immediately, Maschine appealed to me and wrote quite a bit of stuff with it. The appeal quickly wore off when I realised how painful integration between Maschine and anything actually is. Bare in mind - I don't want to disparriage Maschine. It's great at what it does. It just doesn't really compliment other DAWs in the way that everyone says it does - it just makes things harder.

Think of Ableton as 90% of a DAW. It has most of the stuff you need/want in a DAW out of the box. Maschine is about 50-60% of a DAW. In some ways, I actually prefer Maschine to Ableton. The pattern/scene structure is great! Unfortunately, it doesn't have everything that a DAW needs. Most importantly it doesn't have a linear structure which is really how a song is structured. So, for most people, it's just not feasible to use Maschine as a standalone DAW. Of course, some people do - but if this is what you intended to do, then you wouldn't have written this thread.

I intend on making a tutorial video on some of the different ways you can integrate Ableton/Maschine so check the Ableton section of my website and when I get time, you'll see a video there on this.

There are roughly 3-4 basic ways you can integrate a DAW and Maschine.

1) Standalone (Exporting stems to DAW)

This is of course the most straight forward and self explanatory. The downside of course is having 2 different workflows (which is a major head @#$#), sends/receives are a problem because what you mix in Maschine will sound different in your DAW, 2 different projects (I often lose the connection between the two projects and have to hunt them down), and all the time wasted on naming files etc. and dragging them in to your DAW.

2) Automate Scenes From DAW

You can send midi messages from your DAW to Maschine to automate scene changes. Then, you can route the audio from various channels in Maschine to your DAW so you can mix in your DAW. This is what I have done for most of my songs. This is really shitty and is an endless source of mix problems etc. The first problem that comes up is syncing. I found that often, I would play a scene in Maschine and it would skip the first beat. You have to play around with settings to get it right, but the point is that it would be easy to miss the fact that you have done this. Mixing is a nightmare. Because you are taking Maschine input live, Ableton behaves a litte differently than normal. The volume meters don't show mixed signal level - it shows the input level from Maschine. This screwed me over any times. Also, just setting up all these channel routings from Maschine in to Ableton is painful. Just to do something like kick/snare/perc from Maschine requires at least 3 signal routings from Maschine in to Ableton. Yuck, painful.

3) Midi Automation

You can whip out your sketches inside Maschine and then drag the midi in to Ableton which in turn can feed the midi in to Maschine. Again, this has all the same kinds of problems as 2). The other downside is that if you want to automate a parameter inside Maschine, you have to assign a macro control inside Maschine, then you have to automate that Macro control from within Ableton. The parameter just shows up as Macro1 or whatever, so the next time you open the project, you will have surely forgotten what the hell it means.

4) Drag Audio Clips to DAW

I think if I ever start using Maschine again, I'll use this method. This is pretty simple. You just do your sketches in Maschine, and when you are happy with the results of your patterns, just drag the audio from Maschine in to Ableton (or whatever DAW supports this). Generally this is not too hard. But, there can be some confusion that ensues. Often, I will drag audio in Ableoton without realising that the audio is coming from two sources for example. You pretty much have to mute the Maschine channel to do this. Another downside of this is disk space. Ableton has to save all the audio clips that you drag in. Yet another problem is that in Ableton, the warping doesn't always work correctly. Sometimes, Ableton gets the BPM wrong. If you don't warp the clip, you can't apply groove to the clip which is another issue with all these things I have mentioned.

Conclusion

Don't buy Maschine and some other DAW. Buy a good DAW, or buy Maschine and use it standalone. Maschine by itself is pretty awesome and some people find the hands on workflow to be fantastic. Personally, I prefer mouse and keyboard but that's just me.