KVR Audio

Ah_Dziz · Post by **Ah_Dziz** » Sun May 19, 2019 12:31 am

So,
Got some shows coming up very soon. I’m already a big user of NI software, so I figured maschine would be a good way to go for the drum/ sample triggering stuff I need to do. My plan is to load up a master cubase session and then jump between instances of Maschine for different tracks. I have keys covered, and I know that the maschine software can do what I need, but I still need to decide which maschine to buy.

I would go for the mk3 in a heartbeat if I knew anything about how well the audio interface on it works. I haven’t heard much either way, but I’m really not trying to have a crash mid set(I do have a pile of gadgets that would allow me to keep going if things went down and not just leave dead air). Aside from keeping me from having to use Asio4all or drag an interface out with me I don’t really see much (that I need) on the mk3 over the jam or mikro.

So A: Is the full factory library useful to a non beginner with komplete and many terabyte of sample libraries already?
B: is the built in interface stable enough to use at relatively low latencies without issues on Windows 7?
C: is there anything else I’m missing that would make the MK3 better? The screens are fancy and all, but aside from the “maschine library” is there anything else I would be missing out on by going with mikro. Do all the maschines have the same built in plugins and such?

I’ll be trying to jam as much stuff into maschine as possible and then adding leads with the seaboard anda few other thingies. Anyway, I’ve gotta make my mind up this weekend so I can learn my way around the software in time.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
JJ

Wholiveira · Post by **Wholiveira** » Sun May 19, 2019 12:58 am

Delete

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Sun May 19, 2019 1:44 am

If you are going to load up Cubase anyway, why not just use it for everything?

Ah_Dziz · Post by **Ah_Dziz** » Sun May 19, 2019 4:30 am

BONES wrote: ↑Sun May 19, 2019 1:44 am If you are going to load up Cubase anyway, why not just use it for everything?

Quicker / non existent load times between songs. Switching between instances of machine and loading a new cubase project are quite different beasts ( I can run a 30GB composing template on my laptop so I don’t think that running six or seven instances of what is basically a mish mash of Kontakt and Battery in there would be much of a problem). Pulling off the stuf I want to do with cubase, while only relying on rock solid plugins would be extra tricky I think, unless I just made a backing track and pressed “play”. On top of that I can mix and match between multiple maschine instances in real time hopefully. It also will lock me into a much smaller set of plugins (planning on prepping what I need and using pretty much just the built in maschine stuff (inside maschine of course), a couple Kontakt, FM8, omnisphere, and diva patches and then some mxxx effect patches I made for specific things). From what I’ve read, lots of issues come in when 3rd party vsts are loaded into maschine so I’ll be avoiding that.

I got a friend to loan me his mk2 maschine, so I can make sure it’s stable enough on my laptop. If it is crashy, then I’m pretty much screwed (I can use it standalone as well if I really need to but it is not my first choice)
.
I would use Bitwig, since I own it and it’s kind of designed for this sort of thing, but it’s the least stable daw I’ve ever used and I don’t trust it enough to take it out live.

After all my looking around, I think I’ll go with the jam (finger drumming is not really my thing so the smaller non velocity sensitive pads won’t be an issue), the seaboard, the baby akai, a couple loopers and my little homemade modular noisebox. I really just wanna have enough flexibility to fill a 1-2 hour set with a combo of already written material and improvisation while not having to drag a million things to the shows like the olden days.

This would have been the perfect excuse to grab an op1 but they have gone up quite a bit since they got discontinued and the opz is just not versatile enough as a machine or a controller for me. Well not straightforward enough even with the app.

Oh I also have 4 pocket operators, and a couple iPad things that I can mix in. I really just need a main brain for all this junk. Ideally one that would act as a main soundcard out also, but Audio I/o is not something people are really slapping into everything like they used to. Thus, I’m really tempted to get the Maschine 3, but for less than half the price I can get the jam and have way more buttons / faders /strips for fiddling with the sounds, and all I loose is functionality that I don’t really need, and an audio interface that I can find barely any info about. If it turns out that Maschine doesn’t agree with my system, then I’ll really be screwed.

We shall see.

JJ

zerocrossing · Post by **zerocrossing** » Sun May 19, 2019 5:17 am

I’m in Bitwig, and I’ve never had Maschine crash on me, or crash Bitwig. I think the included library is pretty good, but I augment it with a few expansions and sometimes run other drum synths inside it.

The one thing I’m not really sure about is the running of multiple instances of it. That may be trouble. Instead, use the different parts (a, b, c, etc.).

Depending on what you’re doing, maybe skip Cubase although. Maschine hosts plugins, though I’ve never used it to host Equator.

If you’re looking to build up beats on the fly and jam along with them, Maschine is a great tool. That’s exactly what I use it for. That, and to sometimes host effect software to give it knobs that I can tweak.

MuzikFreq · Post by **MuzikFreq** » Sun May 19, 2019 5:40 am

Lately I been having maschine glitch out for a second in standalone. I also find the mixer in maschine a bit odd in how it handles levels before clipping, using it in a DAW and routing the channels in maschine into your DAW to be recommended.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Mon May 20, 2019 12:45 am

Ah_Dziz wrote: ↑Sun May 19, 2019 4:30 amQuicker / non existent load times between songs. Switching between instances of machine and loading a new cubase project are quite different beasts ( I can run a 30GB composing template on my laptop so I don’t think that running six or seven instances of what is basically a mish mash of Kontakt and Battery in there would be much of a problem). Pulling off the stuf I want to do with cubase, while only relying on rock solid plugins would be extra tricky I think, unless I just made a backing track and pressed “play”. On top of that I can mix and match between multiple maschine instances in real time hopefully.

OK, in that case, why bother with Cubase at all? If all you need is a VST container for multiple instances of Maschine, why not use something much simpler?

It also will lock me into a much smaller set of plugins (planning on prepping what I need and using pretty much just the built in maschine stuff (inside maschine of course), a couple Kontakt, FM8, omnisphere, and diva patches and then some mxxx effect patches I made for specific things).

Why can't you lock yourself into a smaller set of plugins if that's what you want?

Ah_Dziz · Post by **Ah_Dziz** » Mon May 20, 2019 9:21 pm

BONES wrote: ↑Mon May 20, 2019 12:45 am
Ah_Dziz wrote: ↑Sun May 19, 2019 4:30 amQuicker / non existent load times between songs. Switching between instances of machine and loading a new cubase project are quite different beasts ( I can run a 30GB composing template on my laptop so I don’t think that running six or seven instances of what is basically a mish mash of Kontakt and Battery in there would be much of a problem). Pulling off the stuf I want to do with cubase, while only relying on rock solid plugins would be extra tricky I think, unless I just made a backing track and pressed “play”. On top of that I can mix and match between multiple maschine instances in real time hopefully.
OK, in that case, why bother with Cubase at all? If all you need is a VST container for multiple instances of Maschine, why not use something much simpler?
It also will lock me into a much smaller set of plugins (planning on prepping what I need and using pretty much just the built in maschine stuff (inside maschine of course), a couple Kontakt, FM8, omnisphere, and diva patches and then some mxxx effect patches I made for specific things).
Why can't you lock yourself into a smaller set of plugins if that's what you want?

I use cubase all the time so It will be a pretty simple setup process, knowing all the ins and outs of it already. I’m on a pretty tight timeline so I don’t have time for trying out all the different configurations that I could.

As far as the plugins go, I’ll be using only the stuff that comes with maschine, uTonic, komplete, the stuff that comes with cubase and the Melda stuff. The built in maschine stuff should be solid inside maschine and I don’t have issues with the other stuff I mentioned. I’m sure I could whip up something cool in plogue or Reaper and get the job done, but I went ahead and got the Jam and I’m planning on running it in multiple instances in cubase. I didn’t have any trouble with the maschine software on my system with my buddy’s mk2. I’ll also have my other gadgets in case of a crash or anything. Going to grab a small mixer today. Mostly I just put this off to the last minute, being busy with more serious work. It should be fun anyhow. I’ll have a dj rig there too so I can do some live sampling and stuff.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Tue May 21, 2019 12:06 am

I don't mind Maschine, I had considered using it for everything but Cubase is better for some of the collaboration work we do and it's audio tools will mean less/no reliance on Audition. I've never pushed Maschine too hard but it's always been very stable. My only complaint with it is that it is, like all NI stuff, very finicky about where stuff is. My data drive reassigned itself from D: to E: (turned out to be a fault with Windows Insider preview installers) and I decided it made more sense to keep it as E: but none of my NI stuff works properly since the move, even things I set up from the get-go to work in E:. e.g. When I go to load TRK-01 Bass into Reaktor, it says it's not in the path "E:\NI_MEDIA|TRK-01 Bass" but that is exactly where it is. I can deal with it in Orion but Maschine makes it more of a chore. Otherwise, though, it's pretty good.

Ah_Dziz · Post by **Ah_Dziz** » Tue May 21, 2019 2:50 am

I’m goint to be mostly just triggering samples in the maschine instances and using some of the (oddly only available in maschine effects) that come with it. The other plugins will be live in cubase outside of maschine so I can jam on top of the maschine projects. It seems pretty doable. With the amount of material I have flushed out and then a couple things from scratch, I should be able to fill a full set no problem.

As an alternate question, I’ve been looking at some of the small mixers with onboard usb interfaces. Does anybody know if they are stable at all? My laptop is pretty damn solid with asio4all, but even the 5 channel behringer mixer would give me more flexibility.

Ah_Dziz · Post by **Ah_Dziz** » Tue May 21, 2019 2:52 am

MuzikFreq wrote: ↑Sun May 19, 2019 5:40 am Lately I been having maschine glitch out for a second in standalone. I also find the mixer in maschine a bit odd in how it handles levels before clipping, using it in a DAW and routing the channels in maschine into your DAW to be recommended.

This is the plan. I’d like to run as few “non maschine” plugins inside maschine as possible.

Ah_Dziz · Post by **Ah_Dziz** » Tue May 21, 2019 2:56 am

zerocrossing wrote: ↑Sun May 19, 2019 5:17 am I’m in Bitwig, and I’ve never had Maschine crash on me, or crash Bitwig. I think the included library is pretty good, but I augment it with a few expansions and sometimes run other drum synths inside it.

The one thing I’m not really sure about is the running of multiple instances of it. That may be trouble. Instead, use the different parts (a, b, c, etc.).

Depending on what you’re doing, maybe skip Cubase although. Maschine hosts plugins, though I’ve never used it to host Equator.

If you’re looking to build up beats on the fly and jam along with them, Maschine is a great tool. That’s exactly what I use it for. That, and to sometimes host effect software to give it knobs that I can tweak.

I’m definitely going to run the MPE synths outside of maschine. When my jam comes tomorrow I’m going to do a test run in Bitwig to see if it can handle what I need. Bitwig just gets buggy for me at about a quarter of the amount of plugins I can run in cubase, so I just use it to play around and make little loops and such.

BONES · Post by **BONES** » Tue May 21, 2019 4:11 am

Ah_Dziz wrote: ↑Tue May 21, 2019 2:50 amAs an alternate question, I’ve been looking at some of the small mixers with onboard usb interfaces. Does anybody know if they are stable at all? My laptop is pretty damn solid with asio4all, but even the 5 channel behringer mixer would give me more flexibility.

Yamaha AG06 is brilliant! We've been using them for a few years now and never had a problem (my bandmate and I each have one). It has features you just don't get anywhere else, at any price, and recording with it is as easy as it gets.

Unfortunately I need more channels so I have just upgraded to an MG-10XU, only to discover that it uses 2 of the mixer channels for the USB, where the AG06 doesn't include the USB in it's channel count. That means I am one channel short of what I need, so I am going to take it back and grab a Soundcraft Notepad 12FX instead. But I have no intention of getting rid of the AG06, it's too good and will do things the Soundcraft doesn't - it has preset effects on Ch 1 and 2 that you can set up using a PC utility. They share EQ and reverb but one channel has it's own compressor and the other one has an amp sim. It's more flexible than just feeding the same effect to every channel.

Ah_Dziz · Post by **Ah_Dziz** » Wed May 22, 2019 1:57 pm

Thanks man. I’ll check out the Yamaha stuff.

drdriller · Post by **drdriller** » Wed May 22, 2019 2:59 pm

the Maschine librairie is the best part of the software.

Maschine is a good sketch pad, but not really good for live performance.

Your live setup looks too complicated, keep thing simple, use only one host.

Maschine questions for live use.