Best Of

NI don’t understand what they had. M+ and it’s design and structure is nearly perfect. No need for a million buttons bcs of the smart layout of the pads n stuff. And the ease of creating music, it’s a real creative spark and an easy workflow.

Alottabody told me, “nothing is perfect.”
They were all Liars.
MPCe pads are flawless diamond,
the buttons are tight as pliers.

They packed a box full of great features.
Wons I like (?), prolly bout fih’ty
The mic is sounding pretty damn good.
Speaker got some big a** t*tties.lol

Rhymes and humor aside, Live III is an instant classic.
It’s better than anything else on the market that does anything similar by a very large margin. Insurmountable even but that’s old news. Akai has been competing with itself for some time now.

As a long time user of Maschine, one thing is immediately evident as soon as you pull Live 3 out of the box. The pads initially feel ALOT like Maschine’s—but exponentially more functional. They say 3D but if you’re a musician they’re more like 12D. So expressive even my Aerophone is in the corner looking nervous.

I have Maschine+, Live 2/3 and Push 3 and several Roland devices in my studio because I use whatever clients want to use. I’m no fanboy or even brand loyalist. I simply want the best tools and don't really care much who achieves it. I have personal preferences based on what inspires most and empowers me to be more productive for any given project or season. On that score, Akai is currently decimating the field.

L3 is what Push 3 SA promised to be at launch. It sputtered out the gate just like M+ did which is ironic because the first 2 Push versions (Made by Akai) flew off the shelves. Ableton discounts their new “flagship” even more than NI did. What’s that tell ya?

Maschine and associated HW are still good products. I haven’t been around the forum as much because I’m not the type of person that complains much or haunts threads if I don’t have anything positive to add. Fact is, there isn’t much to talk about Maschine-wise. I feel for all 2 or 3 of their dev team. Can’t imagine what morale is like if any of them were around from 09. Best case, they've got their heads down working on something completely new and innovative that isn't Maschine or MPC.

Years ago, NI expressed the desire to make Maschine more DAW like on this very forum. ‘Clips’ was the first update along that roadmap. That was meh and not many new features have made Maschine more DAW like since. Conversely, MPC 3.6 is a complete DAW full stop. You can complete full records including recording, editing and mixing vocals without ever touching a computer, external power or even headphones if you like. Just the box and your mind is the limit.

The chances NI releases something better than Live 3 is not impossible but a lot closer to zero. It’s closest H2H comp is MPC One+ and with Pro Pack it easily loses there too. Even if NI have been somehow hiding enough resources to release new HW, will they also release comp for One+3, Keys 3, SE X3? IMO, Roland would be the closest likely shop with the resources/expertise to answer that bell and they are going in a completely different direction (TR-1000).

Look, I’ll always love NI. They provided me with tools that helped me transform my business and subsequently my Life. I couldn’t have built the lifestyle I enjoy now and provide for my family without them. The ironic fact is, I love them even more now that I do not have any frustration or expectation attached to the brand. It doesn’t bother me at all when they miss projections or release anemic updates. I don’t care that new “flagship” KK aren’t fully compatible with Maschine—STILL. I don’t care if they are working on new HW or if they never release new HW. If they do great. I’ll check it out.

It feels great to only care if they keep making brilliant sounds which I remain confident they’ll do.

The 4 quadrants thing for different samples is not something I'd see myself using very often but MPE/XY as a general feature gives the ability for bends, vibrato or all sorts of modulations, that sounds really cool, it's sort of like the ones on the Push 3 but without the ability to slide between Pads? 4x4 Pads are around since the MPC60 from 1988, it's cool to finally see new stuff after almost 40 years.

I think it's cool they lost their fear of changing the workflow, again… sticking to 40 yr standards because people are afraid of change is bad moto IMO.

Feeling beaten over the head by a hardware release is very much about being online too much. I had no idea there was a new MPC and I'm a very active Maschine user, so it's clearly possible to get by without knowing.

Nobody is making you have Maschine User as an identity, either. You can just use other tools for other jobs. Max will let you route MIDI anywhere, including over networks, inter-app, and reconfigured and rerouted within the app itself. You could use it to build a completely bespoke MIDI router with MIDI controlled scenes and presets, routed in and out of any software, not limited to Maschine. You're not limited to Maschine as a tool.

As for being given a reason to stay, have you thought about Maschine just being a musical instrument as is, that you use creatively? It's not a feature set, or a release schedule. Keep using it because it's a fast, intuitive, expressive system.

Ive been on Machine since MK2, so its been 13 years now and honestly was never too bothered with missing features. I just found my own workarounds and got on with it. Learned to live with the bugs, but if there was a fix or an update I always considered it icing on the cake.

Maschine 2.0 was stable, at least for me, but when 3.0 came around I figured I'd update and that's where I probably should have stayed on 2.0. I cant even download the latest version of 3.0 on my Win10 system, I have to use my wife's Win11 laptop to download the latest version on Native Access. Some of the new features are nice, I do use bounce in place quite a bit, although not exactly essential since I could always resample before. I just wish they'd work on stability before adding more features. MIDI is buggy, cant have more than one midi out device checked without midi drops on external hardware, still no plugin delay compensation, random intermittent crashes for no apparent reason. It's a bummer.

I know Maschine is long in the tooth, but I still think the Maschine workflow is fantastic, at least for how I like to work. But watching that MPC Live video really breaks my heart because Maschine has so much potential. And if it got the kind of care and attention that it really deserves, it would still be a powerhouse and then some. Having a massive community of people who love this product but seeing it fade out this way is so disheartening.

That would be terrible, competition drives innovation, lowers prices, and is overall good for the consumer… If you know anything about tech just look what the Intel monopoly caused some years back, and now NVIDIA with a similar monopoly rules the world.

Today is Akai's time to shine, eventually NI releases something and roles reverse.

Having options is great, this new MPC is not better than an M+ in all areas just because it has higher specs and fancy pads.