I've been gone for 4 years, came back to Maschine, everything is the same.

Zoni

This software has maybe the slowest update cycle that I have ever seen.

• Scrolling is still laggy when scrolling sideways through the song in an sampling edit mode
• UI is still pixelated on a 4k screen (unbelievable)
• You still cannot apply bank 2 or 3 of sample slices to another group. What is the point of having multiple banks of slices, if they cannot be applied to group pads?
• Time stretching is still extremely basic to the point that I have to personalize and prepare every sample in Kontakt for it to work correctly.

Seriously from people who are active here. Has there been any serious improvements in the last 5 years on the software side? This is depressing. I was thinking of upgrading from MK2 to MK3, which is a nicer controller, but on the software side, the screen I am looking at a lot – everything is the same.

Just looking at the amount of updates and features Steinberg is delivering every year for Cubase and comparing it to Maschine... do they only have like 2 devs working on this? Has everyone given up on serious updates?

Zoni

Discovered some of the answers to my questions on this thread, namely the dev situation.

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/3733/vst3-support-how-is-it-going/p1

ozon

Clips. We got Clips. And Maschine+. And Poly Synth. And Auto Sampler. And some other stuff.

Just a note: Cubase updates are not for free. It’s 99€ at least every other year. The last time a Maschine Update was charged for was from 1.8 to 2.0 about ten years ago.

Kubrak

Exactly, it is not fair to compare paid upgrades and upgrades for free. And omit all nonbasic improvements by saying there is nothing new.

On the other side, OP is right that some basic fixes/improvements are not addressed by NI very well....

Zoni

At this point I would gladly pay €50-100 upgrade just to see some radical improvement in software. Give me a Maschine 3.0, but let it be twice as good.

Clips is the last improvement that I find useful, and that is one thing introduced 2 years ago. Auto Sampler is cool, but I don't see myself using it as I don't have a Maschine+ and don't need to sample my synths to get them there. These are all flourishes they made to sell Maschine+.

If we are talking about real core experience improvements to all Maschine users, like VST3 support and other things I mentioned, they are neglected. I cannot believe that I came back to the software 5 years later, and UI is still pixelated. This was a complaint expressed 5 years ago and even a lot earlier.

But I'm happy to hear that someone thinks that things are progressing forward, no matter how slow.

Still, does it make sense to wait 10 years to get a warp capability that equals the Push 2, when you can instead just switch and carry on with making music. As is my doubt right now, should I invest into MK3, or just switch platforms.

Flexi

It is also not fair to compare a huge package like Cubase to Maschine in terms of free and paid updates, or shall we pull out the big guns and compare FLS or Reaper free updates to Maschine?

We can all mention a product to fit our particular narrative!

Mentioning the last paid update for Maschine to original users can also be a very sore point, I would avoid that too, because with the 1.8 to 2.0 changeover also came the lies/misdirection about having to completely redesign so that updates would be faster released and be much bigger.

Native Instruments is no longer Native Instruments, it is now Soundwide, so we can not judge them on previous performance by a completely different team that admitted not caring about Maschine updates.

Soundwide will decide what to start supporting and what they deem is important, the rest will go the way of the dodo, so the best you should hope for now is that Maschine is updated to work with newer OS, you bought it, and it does what it said it did when you bought it, because it will be very very easy for Soundwide to say "Not profitable, end support" they have zero loyalty to customers or brand, they are not the Native Instruments we paid a lot of money to over the years.

Izotope are known for paid yearly updates, and they are now in the driving seat, I suspect right now there is some questioning of "How do we charge yearly for Maschine software updates" and from the outside it would look like that would just end up being a pay to play browser add on (go see Soundwides/PAs new sampler) expansions make money, software updates do not.

Zoni

Yes this is an interesting topic that I didn't know about, because I was out of the loop.

Out of all the parts of company that is now Soundwide, NI was the only that made serious hardware products – and, with Maschine – something close to being a DAW. Others are plugin developers.

It's going to be interesting to see what priority does the whole Maschine&Kontakt ecosystem get in the new company. It should be the centerpiece of everything they do.

This does bring some optimism to the dire picture of what was Maschine software development for the last 5 years. Restructuring the company and internal divisions is a long and laborious process, so I don't know what to expect in terms of software updates by the end of this year. Hopefully things pick up in 2023.

Zoni

Looks like I'll be augmenting Maschine with Serato Sample. This seems to be a much cleaner pitch shifting workaround than chopping samples and importing each individually into Kontakt editor to make pitch shifting work correctly.