Feature Request: Enable Autosave When Maschine is Used as a Plugin in DAWs

mason drielling · 2025-07-17T22:58:20+00:00

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Hi Native Instruments team,

I’d like to request an improvement to the current autosave functionality in Maschine:

Please enable autosave when Maschine is running as a plugin (VST/AU) inside other DAWs like Ableton Live, Logic Pro, etc.

Right now, if the DAW crashes, the DAW project may recover successfully — but the Maschine plugin will often reopen completely blank, losing any unsaved progress within the Maschine project. This is especially frustrating during creative sessions when ideas are being built quickly inside the plugin.

Maschine’s standalone autosave is a huge step forward, but having that same protection inside a plugin context would prevent painful data loss and bring much-needed reliability for those of us using Maschine inside larger DAW workflows.

Thanks for your time and continued updates.

Best,

Mason

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Comments

AdelV

As far as I know, the plugin version of Maschine is really stripped down compared to the standalone version. It would be extremely hard — or even impossible — for the developers to implement such a heavy chunk of code into a VST plugin. Remember, plugin versions of some software instruments and samplers are often much lighter.

The only workaround that comes to mind is to bounce the sounds to audio or MIDI as soon as possible and then save everything as a regular DAW project.

ozon

@AdelV wrote:

As far as I know, the plugin version of Maschine is really stripped down compared to the standalone version.

What makes think so? I‘m not aware of a single feature which is not available in the Maschine plugin.

ozon

@mason drielling the Maschine Project is constantly auto saved as part of the plugin state, at least with VSTs in Cubase. If the DAW crashes and loses the plugin state, then there’s not much Maschine — or any plugin — can do about that.

If Maschine plugin would load an auto saved project in case it existed, it would potentially overwrite a perfectly fine plugin state from the DAW project.

If a DAW crashes often, I would first try to fix that.

D-One

Why would a timer tied to a save function be a "heavy chunk of code" ? I also dont see how it's such a "stripped down" version.

Cubase seems to recover the Maschine Plugin state just fine if I force quit it (same as a crash), Ableton however does not recover anything — So I guess it depends on your DAW.

I wouldn't mind auto-save with the plugin if possible.

@ozon said:
If Maschine plugin would load an auto saved project in case it existed, it would potentially overwrite a perfectly fine plugin state from the DAW project.

Couldn't this mitigated by simply asking the user if he wishes to recover/load the auto-saved project?

AdelV

I'm just assuming that the VST version differs from the standalone desktop version. If Cubase can recover a lost project within the Maschine VST, that's great. As you mentioned, Ableton doesn't handle that.

ozon

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/234818#Comment_234818

Sure, there could be a dialogue popping up, like there is on the M+ when an auto saved Project is found after start up.

However, it’s highly unnatural in the context of VSTs in a DAW. Imagine every plugin of your 100 track orchestral mixdown with channel strip emulations would behave like that…

ozon

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/234879#Comment_234879

Maybe Ableton Live can be configured to do auto saves/backups?

Oh, what type of plugin are you using (AU or VST3)?

D-One

Oh, wait…. nevermind, I think this is actually a bug with Ableton.

I tried again and Ableton actually does recover everything including plugin states from backup and/or autosave but it requires manually saving the AL project at least once.

If I never save it still offers to recover the project but ALL plugin states are lost for me, not just Maschine.

Also, Ableton stores a backup project each time you save in a sub-folder in the location where you saved, so you have double protection — Backups and an Auto-save to a temp location similar to how Maschine does it but both options require saving at least once. 🤷

D-One

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/234961#Comment_234961

Not just the M+ but also standalone Maschine app, that was OP's point of comparison.

IDK if this is comparable because regular Plugins aren't ussually a full production suite that has samples, loops, sequencing, arranging, MIDI, other plugins, etc… Maschine can basically have a full song inside it, it's not a simple instrument. An autosave could be usefull in Maschine but that doesn't mean it should be added to every plugin out there, features should be added for when it makes sense.

If you lose the plugin state of say a violin you will still have the notes, automation, articulation switches, etc all in the DAW, it's easyer to manually re-create it, while losing a Maschine Plugin state can be disastrous…

Of course if one cares about that theres always the options of constantly saving.

AdelV

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/234962#Comment_234962

I have both macOS and Windows computers, so I always use VST3. But I guess the issue might be with my machine. I haven’t looked into it further yet. I use NOTE and MOVE more than Live itself.

mason drielling

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/234962#Comment_234962

I am using VST3 and I have ableton configured to do auto saves/backups.

Martin_NI

Hey all,

Martin here from the development team. We don't autosave in a DAW, as the DAW should be doing this and taking regular snapshots of the plugin state so they can be recalled if a crash occurs. If this is not happening as expected, please report the issue to your DAW manufacturer. Us running as a plugin inside a DAW and getting autosaved looks no different than your DAW saving a project on "save as" or "save", so if Maschine is recalled correctly in your DAW saved projects, there is no reason your DAW could not recall a snapshot of the Maschine plugin after a crash.

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