What are the level stages in Maschine Plus?

S Righteous

I'm trying to figure out the best way to set up my kits and such, and can't find information in the manual as to what order all the elements are.

I assume the sample level can never go above zero.

I assume the mixer for sounds is after the effects added to the sound, but unrelated to any of those sounds sent to an Aux channel effect. So if you crank the volume on a sample, and reduce that volume in the sound-mixer then you may be overdriving any effects on that sound.

I assume the group mixer is after all the sounds/sound-mixer and group level effects. Similarly, if you crank the volume in the sound-mixer and reduce it in the group-mixer you may be overdriving any group effects.

Is this all correct?

Is this documented somewhere?

D-One

It's the same for all Maschine's. Yeah, it's as you expect, Sound> Group> Master. Groups sum the Sounds and Master sums the Groups.

Nothing should technically ever be above 0db but when there is a layer above you can also bring down the volume there; for example: if a Sound is above zero you can lower it's Group and it should get rid of the Clipping but this is generally bad practice.

Sends work the same as a normal Sound/Pad and Insert FX in any stage will affect the gain of whatever layer it is inserted on.

So if your Master is not above 0db you should be OK, if it is then the clipping will be hard-baked into the signal even if you use the physical volume knob in the back to bring it down... But again sending a super hot signal into an insert or send is not the best idea especially when there's no 32bit internal summing that I am aware of (??), I am not an expert tho... What I do know is it's especially a bad idea when using anything that emulates analog behavior since in that world gain often means a certain amount of warmth/saturation/etc based on how high the gain gets.

As far as metering goes what do you guys feel is missing in the context of this threads topic?

ozon

I assume the same chain.

It coukd be verified using a third party metering plugin in the Maschine 2 software.

IME it is even possible to overdrive the Group mixer by having too many Sounds with high level, such as a fat Kick and sub Bass Synth peaking at 0.

Detailed internal metering would be helpful.

D-One

It's the same for all Maschine's. Yeah, it's as you expect, Sound> Group> Master. Groups sum the Sounds and Master sums the Groups.

Nothing should technically ever be above 0db but when there is a layer above you can also bring down the volume there; for example: if a Sound is above zero you can lower it's Group and it should get rid of the Clipping but this is generally bad practice.

Sends work the same as a normal Sound/Pad and Insert FX in any stage will affect the gain of whatever layer it is inserted on.

So if your Master is not above 0db you should be OK, if it is then the clipping will be hard-baked into the signal even if you use the physical volume knob in the back to bring it down... But again sending a super hot signal into an insert or send is not the best idea especially when there's no 32bit internal summing that I am aware of (??), I am not an expert tho... What I do know is it's especially a bad idea when using anything that emulates analog behavior since in that world gain often means a certain amount of warmth/saturation/etc based on how high the gain gets.

As far as metering goes what do you guys feel is missing in the context of this threads topic?

ozon

@D-One asked

As far as metering goes what do you guys feel is missing in the context of this threads topic?

Input / Pre-Gain metering, which would allow to see the actual signal level at the input, especially on Group and Master.

Cubase offers this and I prefer to use it most of the time instead of output metering to check proper gain staging.

D-One

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/22634#Comment_22634

Ohh.... I see, that would be cool, with a toggle or even dual meters like a lot of plugins use:

S Righteous

I found this a bit confusing. But think I have a grip on it now. Thanks for all the input!

I now realize that I need to turn everything down, at the sample level in most cases. Factory samples are all normalized to zero, and then if that goes into an effect, blammo.

When I use Maschine Plus in controller mode, its two mixers do not open the mixer windows in the software, these are entirely different beasts. It took me a while to even find where I could turn down the level of a sample. The sample volume isn't in the sampler settings I guess because you can have multiple samples with various volumes, but a total volume setting should be the first thing in the sampler settings so you know what is hitting that next effect block. I have to jump around too much to get this stuff sorted. Each block in your sound should have an option to insert a meter.

S Righteous

On the topic of gain staging, one thing I find really frustrating, is that the mixer has a peak level indicator, but I see no way to reset this?

Sometimes I load a preset synth into a blank group, blank project - and out of the box, that synth is blowing +4 db at the sound level. So I reduce the volume at the sound level (no volume in most of the synth plug-in settings), but I can't reliably see where I'm at. that +4 stays in the mixer channel now forever - or until I blow a +5.

Is there a way to reset that peak indicator?

I'm talking about on the hardware for the M+

Flexi

Click the number, it will reset.

As for gain staging, the only really important points to take from this thread are by D-One above...

If you are not running analogue gain stage emulated plugins, then never worry at all about gain staging before the master channel, it is unimportant, just use your ears and don't clip the master (above 0db, but generally -3db for mastering so that you have a bit of room in to the mastering process, but is not that important either way, just a good habit)

However, if you are using analogue emulated gain staged plugins, then check out their individual manuals for what signal level they are expecting, what signal level they will take and cause saturation vs clip vs digital clip, because clipping is not always digital clipping etc etc etc.

D-One

@S Righteous asked:

Is there a way to reset that peak indicator?

I'm talking about on the hardware for the M+

Restarting playback resets the peak value.

S Righteous

D-One you are super helpful !

I sincerely appreciate that you are on this forum.

I hadn't even though of that. I tweak all my mixes while in play mode, in fact I usually do most of my editing while in play mode. I never thought to stop! This is one of the things I love about the M+, being able to do so much without stopping.

tribepop

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/26291#Comment_26291

Just bumping this topic since I had a related question. What is the actual metric that the peak value is displaying in the mixer? Is it Peak RMS, dbfs, etc.? I could have sworn I saw something about it in the docs but I can’t find it anymore in the hardware and software manuals.

D-One

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/82235#Comment_82235

I think it's just regular Peak level (dBFS?), I'm no expert but it's def not RMS.