NI and Maschine WTF are they up to now ?

[AcrossTheSky]

my komplete control m32 coming tomo,
and I'm looking forward to use the mashine soft with all thesounds from mars.
hope it'll be a smooth ride?
any tips when adding folders with samples inside the browser in the mashine?
asking as I read here...some issues ppl have..cheers.

[EnGee]

my komplete control m32 coming tomo,
and I'm looking forward to use the mashine soft with all thesounds from mars.
hope it'll be a smooth ride?
any tips when adding folders with samples inside the browser in the mashine?
asking as I read here...some issues ppl have..cheers.

I love the experience with the M32 keyboard and Mikro 3 inside Machine 2.91 (R4) (the latest update). I use mostly synths and for drums the provided kits.

Maschine is very fast starting on my PC and very responsive. The CPU usage is great and I'm trying to make it my main DAW (but sometimes I use Bitwig Studio 3 and sometimes Cubase 10.5 Elements). It has a nice workflow once you get used to the pattern based workflow.

I have upgraded Maschine from essential to the full version. I also purchased some expansions and I have Komplete 12. So, there are thousands of sounds and samples! I love especially the drums/beats of Maschine. When I compared it to Ableton Live kits, sure I liked Maschine ones more. I think they are the best out there (feels like Battery 4 but enhanced!).

[foosnark]

the usual NI paid fanboys

[EnGee]

I must admit though that I'm paid fanboy by NI. Not only! But I'm getting paid by u-he, Synapse Audio, Korg, Bitwig, Sugar Bytes and Tone2.
I'm not so lucky though as those who live in Berlin! They said that they throw money through the windows to their fans!
Oh well, I can't complain! There is so much I'm getting already

[Echoes in the Attic]

As for Maschine development, yeah NI make me pretty nervous with weird little things that change, often for the worse. I remember a few years ago, Maschine and KK were working fine with touch screens and then an update broke it for quite a long time, then magically they started working great again with touch screens. No mention in any change logs that I could see. Recently, at Maschine 2.8.5, Maschine could no longer see my automap plugins, and it would scan everything every startup. So I reverted to 2.8.4. Then at 2.9.1 it was fixed and the scan only scanned new plugins and all automap plugins were seen again. KK is still messed up with automap plugins though. It sees them on alternate scan. One time sees only the normal ones, then it sees only the automap ones. Then when you compare how other companies, even big ones like Arturia, have handled the maintenance of their older plugins - new multi-touch capable GUIS for example among other development - NI's abandoning of older plugins really shows that they've gone totally to the quick bucks. So yeah my faith in NI is not super high right now and I don't think the future is going to be super bright for them. And I say that as someone who owns a KK88S and Maschine mk3 and Komplete Ultimate 11, and I think Maschine is the best groovebox ever made in software and the best Hardware/software integration there has ever been. Between the years of Kore and Maschine NI were doing great. But yeah I think that big investment they got is where things took a turn for the worse.

NI had the issues you mention before the investment. Not saying I think "streamlining" their company or the big investment are de facto good signs, just that only time will tell if they are.
For instance I've had issues with Maschine through various updates and it as a plug in in a DAW. Various versions have hosed Machines tenuous ability to work on the fly with MIDI Scene Change in a DAW. One update that lasted for about two years it seemed like made Maschine glitch heavily every time a meter change happened turn the downbeat into the upbeat etc. etc. just a mess. By the time I bought an MPC Live and started using it where I would Maschine they fixed it. I'm gun shy though, I'm one of those people that liked using Maschine like a hardware drum machine in my DAW, and that's not an area that NI have a good track record of keeping running correctly. Plus the dammed thing can't even change meters in stand alone, you're forced to math out the measures which isn't worth the hassle when any drum VSTi besides Maschine can do this.

I've been with them since near the beginning, Absynth 1.5 and then Komplete 2. They do some amazing stuff and I truly believe if they were to work on the basics (stability, updates) they would continue to dominate. But glitchy updates, no VST3, resizable GUI's, no updates for Absynth, FM8 and Guitar Rig for years and years... which of course makes me and others who owned Pro 53, Rig Kontrol, Kore, Spectral Delay, Kompact, Intakt, B4 etc. etc. who have seen them change their format three times, well, it makes me a bit nervous to even use Absynth in a song.

Like I said though, if they upgrade Absynth to 6 I will take that as a sign they've changed their ways and gladly through cash at them. So far Kontakt 5 still works with my sample libraries and the rest of Konplete Ultimate 10 is fine.

Yeah I guess they have always introduced bugs in new versions, sometimes which stick around for way too long. Currently for example, the parameters of plugins loaded in Maschine, when set to automatable, show up in hosts as numbers! The names are gone. What the hell.