These have a great feel to them and are incredibly sensitive for dynamic control. The multi-coloured drum pads are the same as the Maschine Mk 2 features. We must also mention the bright white circle around the dial as it’s striking in both dark and light conditions, and can only be described as ‘Tron’ like. It is the only click based encoder on the unit, making it useful for any grid based movements as well as general finer adjustments where each click gives a sense of physical data feedback. This is surrounded by relevent function keys and is a control that oozes with the feeling of a classic sampler. When we first saw a pre-production unit a few months back, after being amazed by the screen displays, our next area of attraction was the jog dial. This is because Studio has most multi-function options covered elsewhere on a dedicated button rather than relying on giving the drum pads many other functions – another aspect that helps to improve your workflow. The 16 drum pads are the same as those on other Maschine MK2 models, but there’s a noticeable lack of writing in between them. We imagine that just sliding this unit into any old bag could potentially cause a lot of surface scratches, so we’d advise investing in a suitable padded bag, or case if you plan to travel with it.Ī level meter with dedicated buttons sits on the top right of the unit and the dedicated button aspect is something that sets Maschine Studio above other models. The two glorious TFT screens are a big change from the usual monochromatic screens of the other models, but with this feature comes the responsibility to take good care of them. Taking up the desk space of a more classic, fully hardware based groove production system, the unit definitely requires a bigger bag. From the moment you get Maschine Studio out of the box, you can certainly tell this is the big daddy of them all. Both have been quite easy to slip into a bag for portability. In the STUDIO Before Maschine Studio, you’ve had a choice of either the regular sized Maschine or the smaller Maschine Mikro. The lack of audio interface on a product at this cost will annoy some people, but it does at least offer much more MIDI connectivity than your current interface most likely will. Although we’ll discuss what’s new for all users of version 2.0, our main focus is on the latest Maschine Studio hardware and its potential to do away with your computer display altogether. We also imagine we’ll see the same free updates for 2.0 in the future as well. If you look at what other major music making software packages offer, it’s easy to see that NI possibly give the best user loyalty we’ve seen. As well as having various hardware options to choose from in the Maschine range, until the latest 2.0 software release that we’re looking at here, upgrades have always been free to users with hardware from any generation.Īlthough the recent upgrade does come at a cost, most of the 1.x updates have received significant changes with each new release. It’s also worth noting that the addition of iMaschine for iOS has been integrated into the Maschine family as well, meaning you can sketch out ideas on a handheld device, then import them into Maschine on your computer for further development. Overall, working with the M+ feels a lot like working with the Octatrack-it’s a powerful instrument that gives you a massive truckload of building blocks to develop your own unique workflow.Though the system is made with hardware in mind, you can use the Maschine software on its own without the controller, which is handy when travelling around with just a laptop. Of course, I can always duplicate the groups, but it’s nice to have everything visible in one bank. The catch is that I only have 15 pads per group for audio samples, which might become an issue on more complex songs. With this setup it’s totally seamless to switch between recording external instruments vs. I run it through a sound instead of monitoring in the sampler for two reasons: 1) so I can hear the wet signal with send effects, and 2) so that I can turn monitoring on or off by muting/umuting the pad. On the groups that take external input (vox, bass, guitar) I set up a sound on pad 16 that does nothing except for monitor incoming audio. For a minute I was worried about getting lost because I didn’t think you could rename groups on the hardware… but you can! Pro tip: if you’re looking for a miscellaneous setting and can’t find it anywhere, hit the “pad mode” button and it’s probably there I set up a template project with groups for synth drums, acoustic drums, pianos, FM, guitar, vocals, bass, and send FX (currently just reverb). Further adventures in using the M+ to record indie / bedroom pop:
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