Information about Komplete Audio connected to Maschine Plus

Space Cat 303

Hi there

I have a question about USB audio interfaces, such as Komplete Audio, or Minifuse.

Does it bring an additional quality to digitize your final project by connecting the M+ in audio to a Komplete Audio, or the quality will be identical to what you get by exporting the project directly into M+.

So what is the main advantage of this kind of audio interface? To connect analog instruments?

Nico_NI

Maschine+ audio interface is 44.1 kHz / 24-bit in standalone and 96 kHz / 24-bit in controller mode, whereas the Komplete Audio MK2 series is up to 192 kHz / 24-bit.

There's a little section on using an audio interface with M+ in our blog article:

https://blog.native-instruments.com/accessorize-the-power-users-guide-to-a-portable-maschine-rig/

tribepop

I’ve wondered about this too. I assumed that the plus is using the same internal hardware that the Komplete Audio interface uses. It sounds like the only difference is the sample rate when in standalone mode. Is the gain on the input and output better on the Komplete Audio?

Flexi

No, it wont add any extra quality to export, that is done internally and does not pass through the interface, but you do have to watch your gain structure in Maschine, I have tested a lot with a lot of heavy bass music through to Metal and Ambient, when rendering you really HAVE to leave plenty of headroom on the master (Which does go against everything we know about digital)

Sadly the bussing is very very basic in Maschine too, which is a shame because it would lend itself perfectly to topdown mixing, which also uses way less resources.

There is very little in the way of quality mastering effects on the M+ or native to Maschine in general, so just leave a ton of headroom, and master on the computer.

(We really do need at least an analyser on the M+, a slightly better EQ and compressor wouldn't go amiss too)

D-One

Everything will still be 44.1 kHz / 24-bit even if you use another interface to export at a higher quality, imagine loading a 720p video and exporting it in 4k, it wont magically have a better quality. It's all digital so gains for exporting at higher values are very negligible for most use cases.

Technically if you use a lot of synths and FX perhaps you can have the advantage of avoiding cramping and such since i doubt anything in Maschine+ has oversampling due to the latency it induces... 99.9% of people wont tell any difference anyway.

I would only advise following such a rabbit hole if you record real instruments or analog synths, have an acoustically treated room, high end speakers etc... otherwise it shouldn't be a priority IMO. These are pro audio engineers concerns, cramping, converters, high sample rates, etc... To simply understand what is myth or marketing from what makes real world differences is a study of it's own.

@Space Cat 303 asked:

So what is the main advantage of this kind of audio interface? To connect analog instruments?

If you mean the 2 channel ones then not much, 48V for condenser mics, Hi-Z for recording high impedance instruments like guitars, more gain for sampling/recording, more practical access to all the physical controls (buttons and knobs), more durable XLR connectors (negligible for home use) and not much else at the top of my head.

Flexi

720p vs 4k is not strictly true, in recents times, resizing technology has become completely insane, and in a lot of cases can rebuild lost definition, its crazy stuff.

D-One

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/36037#Comment_36037

Yes but that doesn't happen by simply exporting at a higher res then what the original is, you have to use some fancy upscalling tech, stuff like NVIDIA's DLSS. I guess modern TV's have been getting better upscaling tech built-in over the years too.

In video/games due to file-size for streaming or HW resources spent for high FPS it makes sense to pursue this sort of tech but audio doesn't suffer as much from both issues... Izotope RX has some tech that tries to add frequencies that low end vocal recording are missing for example, thats cool but I doubt there will ever be something that tries to upscale audio into 192 kHz / 24-bit simply because theres no reason for it for consumers or even pros... maybe for old audio restoration it could make sense.

Flexi

No the thrust in audio quality is decompressing compressed audio formats, that has a lot of developer interest right now.

I was just pointing out that comparisons to video are not really relevant nowadays, the two industries have vastly different developer investment budgets.

But a lot of editors/compositors come with that fancy upscaling built right in on export, so again, bad comparison really.