Maschine 3 Users Reviews

VisionarySoundSystem

It has been nearly a month now since the release of Maschine 3. I would be very interested to see reviews from community members who have purchased and are using the software. The various media reviews I have read have been lukewarm, mostly. How do users feel about it? Has it helped and/or improved your workflow and the way you use the software? Is it an improvement on 2? Or is it just a very slight tweak? How are users finding it when working with hardware & other software and DAWs? Are there bugs or fixes that require attention? Are there obvious changes/improvements (that could be easily implemented) that you feel should be made? I have said elsewhere in the community that I feel the pricing point is very fair. I have not purchased myself as yet.

D-One

How do users feel about it? Has it helped and/or improved your workflow and the way you use the software? Is it an improvement on 2? Or is it just a very slight tweak?

"lukewarm" would describe how I fell about it, not super happy but not mad neither, price is very fair. It does help my workflow a bit, it's def an improvement overall but some things also got marginally worse like GUI contrast and area separation, number of visible presets, etc…

The biggest disappointment IMO is an atitude of "we know better than the users and we implement things how we want" It might not be the intention but it's how it comes across to me, either that or some kind of rush to put out features and get them scratched off a list without a lot of care with implementation and user feedback.

I absolutely hate how Stem separation was implemented, it offers almost zero advantages over using external tools, NI being late to the party had a chance to make it great, a-lá Serato Sample allowing us to turn on/off each Stem if thats what we need directly in the Sampler… instead I am forced to always have 4 stems even when I just need to turn off the Drums for example… Big facepalm imo.

The new mouse features are so broken that even the youtubers that mind you… get coaching directly from a NI rep via video calls struggled hard with it on their videos, pointing a mouse to something and clicking it should not be hard, facepalm again.

How are users finding it when working with hardware & other software and DAWs?

Are there bugs or fixes that require attention?

The same as Maschine 2, except maybe the ability to have 32 mono outs instead of just 16 Stereo?

Yes, theres tons of bugs and issues, as ussual we need a hotfix update.

Are there obvious changes/improvements (that could be easily implemented) that you feel should be made?

Sure, but those will be different for each user, very subjective, this sort of question just leads people to copy-paste their wish lists and makes for a very boring long thread.

Blotj

I like a lot of the improvements, and am hopeful for more, as well as some tweaks. Custom color schemes would make sense, and a true full screen, as Win 11 seems incapable of getting rid of the white window border.

One wonders why the ui changed as much as it did, and the optimist in me hopes they are laying the ground for the ui to support automation curves, et al. Sometimes software just needs a real reshuffle to make that stuff easier to do. So let's hope.

So the midi split and join features are good additions, and definitely help with working with clips as you can carve up a gated audio track and replay it much sooner/ easier when editing in a loop selection. I'm defo waiting on the automation stuff but feel like they're missing a trick with lock states, which I find hard to work with/organise. I'd love to have better management there and be able to bookend a clip with lock states in the arranger view. That would be really fun. Would be good if clips shared the join split capacity.

On the midi stuff generally, it's navigation improvements that need love. The number of times I've selected a range of notes and then clicked to shift them up an octave only for them to disappear... a lot. So continuing there with some basic keyboard shortcuts to nudge timings and shift octaves would be a good next step. The preview options are cool though.

Stem separation experience is mixed, depending on the source. It's easy though so worth a shot. But often I get what I need, if not I'll go noodle in Rip X Daw. Feels more of a fun feature, probably more suited to lofi and so on where you can disguise the odd artefact. And lacking a way to vertically scale the track in pattern view is noticeably absent. As is being able to scale the track list where names are invariably truncated.

Mp3 import is a good thing and a welcome reduction of friction.

Maschine Central is good quality stuff, but if you're a Komplete CE owner, you begin to wonder why you can't filter the packs themselves by genre in expansion view, (Afaik). After a while everything becomes an Obscure Cluster -- which could easily be another tech house expansion. But despite this, it remains one of the most responsive ways to search vast libraries, and the quality is fantastic. It also helps pad out my cloud in XO which is a great relationship as kits tend to be pitched and nicely balanced.

Stability wise it varies a lot. Plugins seem to cause problems. I gave up today on a project that had Lunacy Beam and Cube in it. Perhaps it was graphics related, (just moved to an ultra wide monitor) but something didn't jive there. Sometimes Beam opened blank. Other projects have been fine. So it seems to be certain 3rd party plugins that struggle ocassionally. I expect stability to improve over time.

Bounce is great, especially on long patterns -- no more finger cramp. But it's also not perfect yet. For example, I had a Kontakt 8 instrument set up with Conflux and a Phrases tool on it and it only bounced the first note into a long stem that was otherwise silent. This was a surprise given it was an NI tool and tge bug maybe with K8 as otherwise it's been flawless.

Overall, I still find Maschine to be a tonne of fun. The upgrade was so cheap as barely to be worth discussing from that perspective. My only hope is that these investments will continue to support further improvements, which I'd be less confident of in a free update. Since there seems to be traction now, I'd pull the trigger, but for a time you may feel inclined to work in M2 for arrangements and more labour intensive tasks since they can always move up. But if you hit a brick wall as I did today, you can't easily go the other direction.