Maschine goes 64-bit only

[foosnark]

MASCHINE Goes 64-Bit Only

Apparently "some users" of 32-bit Maschine 2.7.2 are having trouble (I'm not...) so rather than fixing it they're going to drop 32-bit in all future updates.

The writing's been on the wall for a while I suppose. But this means I finally have to find an alternative for ET-301, if I can't jBridge it -- and last time I tried jBridge it was a spectacular failure. I also have to make sure there's nothing else I care about that's 32-bit only, that I have 64-bit versions of all the good stuff installed, and track down installers, license keys etc. where necessary.

My typical projects don't even hit 1GB of RAM, nevermind 4GB, so there's no technical benefit for me here.

The alternative is switching DAWs -- a bigger hassle which will affect my workflow -- or staying with 2.7.2 forever which seems like a poor choice.

[sprnva]

I guess all NI stuff will go this way eventually. They did the same with Kontakt for Mac at 5.6. For those on a Mac there's 32 Lives which seems to be more seamless at bridging than jBridge, although much more expensive.

I thinned out almost all of my 32-bit plugins a while back and don't use any now.

[Muziksculp]

A Very Good move from NI

[TheKid]

About time to let those dinosaurs finally die.

[JonSolo]

Every company has to make decisions, and if they genuinely use this to offer more updates at a better rate and take the time to really develop the product, then they have my vote. I already use 64 bit for everything anyway.

[rod_zero]

32 bits have been supported far too long.

[foosnark]

I seriously doubt they spend several weeks in every release separately dealing with 32-bit issues. They're not going to update the software more regularly or quickly because of this. They're not going to add some new feature that 32-bit was preventing them from implementing.

They're just going to save some very minor expenses, and they get to dodge fixing this ONE bug.

32-bit support wasn't hurting any of you.

Excuse me for not celebrating. I have to waste my own time, and possibly money, because NI saved theirs.

[chk071]

Interesting "insights", from the outside. Let's face it, you have no idea, and only assume stuff.

And of course supporting 32-bit will mean more effort and spent money due to testing, and nailing out 32-bit specific issues.

[jacqueslacouth]

For those on a Mac there's 32 Lives which seems to be more seamless at bridging than jBridge, although much more expensive.

To this point I had actually forgot that I had 32 lives. Had to open it to see exactly which programs are still using it...there's really not many and certainly nothing critical.

[swatwork]

However, with the release of MASCHINE 2.7.2 in December, some users have reported problems running the 32-bit version of the software. This has basically forced us to make a decision on this topic now: Instead of investing time and effort into diagnosing, fixing, and distributing a fix for the 32-bit version of MASCHINE shortly before discontinuing it, we have decided to just discontinue 32-bit support immediately.

So that's a big 'f**k you' to those users then. Nice.

[mholloway]

I use outdated hardware and i'm shocked, shocked that a company would decide to no longer support it!!

[swatwork]

I don't think it's unreasonable for NI to go 64-bit-only but I think they should at least make sure their existing 32-bit customers are left with a workable version. Steinberg and Ableton managed to leave behind working 32-bit versions of Cubase and Live, is that so hard for NI to do?

[foosnark]

Interesting "insights", from the outside. Let's face it, you have no idea, and only assume stuff.

As does everyone on this forum.

I at least am a software developer who has worked specifically on a 64-bit port for a formerly 32-bit only product, and I can tell you, that port was no fun -- largely because it was also an update to a different Visual Studio version and required building some third-party libraries we'd previously modified and built only for 32 bits, switching to a different third-party installer package and other garbage I don't normally have to mess with.

But once it was done it's taken almost zero effort to maintain two versions. We don't write any lines of code any differently for the two versions. The weekly automated build-and-test scripts (not the rolling build or daily build) have to build the 32-bit version and run some regression tests on it. Once per release, QA has to run a few manual tests on the 32-bit version. (They haven't caught anything weird that is unique to the 32-bit version.) We're talking about almost two entire hours of a QA tester's effort added to every one of our six month releases.

I use outdated hardware and i'm shocked, shocked that a company would decide to no longer support it!!

I don't use outdated hardware. I can run 64-bit Maschine just fine on my computer. But, like many, I use 32-bit legacy plugins that were coded on an obsolete, unsupported platform and whose developers have moved on to other projects. Which are otherwise some damned good plugins, and that's why I still use them.

[ATS]

every time I dev does this there is a thread about it. I'm sure there will be more. It's just not feasible to keep supporting old tech, move on.

[e@rs]

Switched to 64-bit a few months ago. It was an relatively easy transition. Now I can't think of a reason to still be on 32-bit. So I encourage everybody to do it asap (if the hardware allows it, of course).