Maschine or Akai MPC

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by FSTZ

yeah.. this thread makes me want to go buy Maschine

I am a fan of the iPad app but I would love the hardware and the decksaver to boot.. I have them for most of my gear, except my TI polar

I will probably sound like a shill by saying this, but at the price point these go for, it's hard not to recommend them unconditionally. Honestly if the Virus TI2 and the more compact Snow were $600 and $350 like Maschine, I would own several of the things; the price point makes a world of difference. Not to imply the Maschine is ever going to replace anyone's Virus or other synths of course, but the price point of the Mikro isn't much more than a good VST.

I am mostly a software workflow guy, and although sampling, sample editing, slicing etc is plenty easy enough in software, there is something about doing it on Maschine that I prefer. Maybe it's because my intro to sampling was a Roland S10 back in the 80s, where everything was done on a relatively small LCD and the associated limits of that board? I still have only played with a small amount of what it has to offer. It is simple yet deep.

[Berni]

Goddam it! NI have just knocked $200 off the price of Maschine till the end of August! Bloody typical, I should have took my own advice & waited a bit longer. Oh well still looking forward to getting my hands on this.

[MBTC]

Look at ZZounds low price guarantee, if you find it cheaper within 30 days they refund the difference. Just ask them for your check for $200

And yes, getting this thing plus the decksaver for only $400 is an UNBELIEVABLE deal. Even better when it comes at you as an after the sale surprise.. lol

[Berni]

Yup they are gonna refund me the $200. A really good deal right now for anyone looking to get one of these...mine comes tomorrow

[Berni]

Omg!!!!!!!!!!!!

[MBTC]

Originally Posted by Berni

Omg!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mmm hmm. That.

[Berni]

OK I promise I will start my own thread on this (I feel I have hijacked this one enough) but I thought I would give a quick 'out of the box' review as some people on the forum seem interested.
For $400 US dollars I got the maschine which is made of the same type of plastic that my S4 traktor controller is. Hard, rugged, wont rust & LIGHT, something very important to people like me that hate lugging around bulky, heavy equipment. The pots are nice & the buttons & pads have that nice rubbery feel & light up when you press them...disco floor joy!
You also get a free deck saver perspex cover if you get it from Zzsounds which not only looks cool but is very useful. It also comes with the maschine software & samples DVD & komplete elements DVD all of which had the current versions of the software on them, no messing around on the net trying to find the 'current working version' on a web site. Between them there are 10+Gb of samples on them! Worth the asking price alone. There is also a printed set up guide & USB cable so no excuses that it's the usb cable that might be the problem with the software ; )
Obviously the installation took a while but I dont mind waiting around for new sounds & went without a hitch. Registered it with the service centre & I was up & running. The first time I ran the software it was smart enough to go through all the plug ins on my system & add them to its data base so this also took a while (got a LOT of plug ins) But when it was done I went right to the many preset tracks & had a good mess around...total joy! Everything just worked right out of the box. Didn't have to email tech support once, buy a USB card, hub or cable or configure my computer in any way...access could learn a LOT from there Berlin counterparts.
The weekends are always busy for me but I will post more on the integration side of things when I have some time next week....so far it is looking good & already I am loving this thing. It is soooooo much fun! Big thanks to MBTC for the heads up, got to be the best $400 I have ever spent...really good value for the $

[MBTC]

Glad to hear you're happy with the purchase (though I though you would be)

Also looking forward to hearing how you're using it. Me, I've been really busy with work the past few days so I keep trying to carve out a couple of hours of entertainment time to play around with it and learn some things. I learned the two or three things I wanted to know most with it in the first half hour or so, but I really want to watch some how-to vids and see what all can be done with it.

[MBTC]

Had some free time today to play around, and wanted to post a tip I will probably use a lot with this thing. Although it's not a technical revelation (will probably sound trivial), it can have a nice effect on the realism of percussive sounds. Sometimes in electronic music you don't really want realistic drums or expressiveness, repetitiveness is a good thing on the dance floor, but if you do like the occasional sound of actual drums this is a cool feature.

Once you've got the basics of recording/sequencing things the way you want it (to some that might be step sequencing, to some regular linear patterns), take some sound you like, maybe a tom drum or a snare depending on what you're doing with the beat, and go into pad mode (this is where one sample is mapped across all pads). Remember Maschine lets you do what you want to each sound to each pad in each group!

Now, add slight variations to pitch, decay, release etc across the different pads, but all using the same sound, but do it in some logical way. For example, top row left to right could be a slightly higher pitch than the vertical row beneath, where decay or release opens up slightly horizontally from left to right. It doesn't even have to be that organized, you can just go nuts and add random variations! But if you have specific "realism" goals or want to mimick how actual drums behave as you hit them more in the center versus the edge, you can do that too.

All of this could be done without Maschine, but would you? Part of it is the interaction with the controller itself and the way the software is laid out that is conducive to this. Any DAW would let you map sounds to different keys on a MIDI keyboard, but taking time to do so is a pain, remembering what is what is a pain, and the worst part is that playing them would not feel intuitive or musical like real drums. The usability of Maschine makes all this a two minute job, and the cumulative effect when you play with your fingers can easily be something that truly sounds like an acoustic drum set.

BTW, it's also perfect for doing Skrillex-sounding dubstep stuff if that's you're thing. That's not my musical goal but it's definately fun to do sometimes with this thing!

[FSTZ]

that's sick news!

I am so screwed for cash flow right now after my recent iPad purchase.

I'm afraid the missus wont let me purchase any hardware for a bit.