Maschine on Apple M1 is losing it, and NI is slowly losing me with it.

Wilmar Boer · 2022-11-01T22:00:16+00:00

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Really! M1 computers are out since 2020!!!!!! Every DAW is M1 Native for quite some time now. Finally almost 3 years later Maschine is M1 Native. Quickly I installed the update, only to find out many of my sounds don't work and I have to run Maschine in Rosetta mode because many NI plugins like Massive-X, FM8, Reaktor 6, Super 8, and others are not ready yet. Are you really serious! I'm sorry for this grumpy post, but I'm a bit disappointed right now. I spend quite an amount of money on a Maschine MK3, Komplete Kontrol s49, Komplete 13, NOW subscription. Only to find out NI seems not to take software development serious. Or actually don't seem to take loyal customers serious. It seems like releasing more plugin's, expansion packs and stuff like the Play Series is more important than actually bring what you have up-to-date. Quantity over quality. Come on NI, you have such great products with good hardware and software integration, don't let it slip!

I hope a really working native M1 compatible Maschine environment with all instruments will arrive soon.

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Reaktor 6

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Comments

Kymeia

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/7418/maschine-on-apple-m1-is-losing-it-and-ni-is-slowly-losing-me-with-it

Announced November 2020 to be precise

https://www.apple.com/uk/newsroom/2020/11/apple-unleashes-m1/

and not actually released onto the market until early 2021

https://www.trustedreviews.com/explainer/what-is-apple-m1-chip-4108091

Kubrak

Either way, it is not 3 years, but only two....

Also, one might appreciate that transition to M1 is for free and not payed upgrade....

Yes, few plugins still are not native AS... Reaktor, or Massive X are not so easy to port to M1, so it takes time...

Wilmar Boer

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/38001#Comment_38001

You are right about the timespan. But every DAW was Apple silicon native within almost a year, Bitwig beïng about the latest with the M1 update in June this year and they have a very small software team. Almost every other kind of software (image editing, word processing) is native too by months now. Not online Microsoft and Adobe with huge dev-teams. But also the ones from smaller companies like Capture ONE, Affinity Photo, etc.. So they could do it! It's a bit frustrating that you see a lot of new software products from NI released while current titles don't seem to develop. It's an odd choice in my view. Running a silicon native Maschine within Rosetta, thus eliminating the performance enhancements, to get your NI instruments running because there not ported yet is a bit of a bummer especially after 2 years and many other releases in that timespan. Especially now that I see how smooth Maschine is running natively. Snappy and fast. Great work NI! But please, push the pedal to the max to fix the rest.

Kubrak

NI is in porting its 'DAW' few months behind others. So, not a great deal....

And concerning plugins. Most of them is AS. Yes, again, it has taken longer than it have taken the others...

And there is few plugins that are not AS yet. Reakror is hard nut, not comparable to any other plugin or even most of other SW. I doubted NI would port it at all. So, it is great news it will be ported in 1Q23. I do not know, what makes difficulties in porting Battery, but it will come about the same time as Reaktor. And Massive X is also difficult to port, it was difficult to make it run under Rosetta.... It uses AVX instructions and AS does not have comparable thing, so porting means rewritting important parts of code. And lots of testing. And maybe it still does not run satisfactory on AS.... There may be many pecularities to solve. Massive X is CPU intensive...

I believe, it may be frustrating that transition takes time, but one cannot do miracles. Migrating to AS may be simple task in some cases and it may be very hard in others....

And concerning NI bringing new products.... Expansions are made by absolutely different teams than porting SW to AS. The same with Kontakt Libraries. I may be wrong, but I think that NI has not released any new plugin that would be developed by computer programmers. All programmers have been allocated to AS transition, new MacOS versions, and few also on fixing something for Win11.

I am on Win, and I am pretty fed up, that most programmers' resources in past two years went only to AS transition and almost none to Win, SW improvement and development of new plugins...

D-One

I hope a really working native M1 compatible Maschine environment with all instruments will arrive soon.

I understand your pain but this is not a Maschine problem... It's a "Massive-X, FM8, Reaktor 6, Super 8" problem, as they will also not work in any other DAW that is native if those plugs aren't native.

I would agree it's quite odd to release MAS with native apple silicon support when half the instruments don't work yet, the other way around would make more sense to me but hey... It's confusing for users but it's sort of an interim half-solution... 🤷‍♂️

Kymeia

Most DAW developers don't also make plugins, and in particular plugins that are so heavily wedded to VST2 as the NKS supporting NI plugins are (unlike Steinberg for instance who are VST3 centric). This whole process has been about carefully untangling all of that and rebuilding an entire ecosystem, not just one DAW. And as you point out some are still to be converted but the essentials are in place now - that's why to me it does make sense MAS/KK came sort of 2/3 of the way along, then the hardest (Reaktor and MPX) last.

Wilmar Boer

That all makes sense. Sorry about beïng grumpy. I think it was the initial dissapointment and that I really like Maschines workflow and use Massive X and Super 8 a lot and only fire up my DAW (Presonus Studio One) as I have to work on audio tracks that stretch the entire song (guitars, vocals). But of course in Rosetta mode everything works as it was so the mayor performance improvement will have to wait a bit.

Kubrak

There is also one aspect concerning what should be ported first. One needs native DAW to test if native plugin works well.... And plugin may work well in one DAW and not so well in another... Mainly if those are fresh ports... And Maschine is the both, plugin and "DAW".

It is sound to port Maschine ('DAW') before hard to port plugins like Reaktor, MX and maybe Super 8.

Maciej Repetowski

I’m not using Maschine as a host anymore, just as a plug-in in Logic for drums, so I’m very happy that it was made M1 compatible.

Plugin compatibility will follow, I’m sure of that.

trusampler

Apple has this issue every few years. It's a shame for developers to have to try and keep up with Apple, as they literally kill the actual development that could be made to bringing new features, to just get their stuff to work with newer macs.

Kymeia

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/38219#Comment_38219

No problem it's understandable. I'm not saying NI have done everything right - in particular they have dropped the ball imho in relation to not coordinating these changes, or even communicating them in some cases it seems, with their 'NKS partners' so some plugins do migrate but most do not including notably those from Arturia and u-he who through no fault of their own are now left in a very difficult situation. However in terms of their own development process I can see the logic in their approach, even though it took time it was methodical and has worked out better in some ways than I expected (I did not tbh expect any third party plugins to be able to 'migrate' but it does work with quite a few, although not the majority)

ipso facto

I'm interested in knowing what the mood is with regard to NI requiring Full Disk Access to run every freaking thing?! Isn't the Location side of the Library sufficient enough to direct traffic? Nothing, and I mean nothing outside of the Admin and Security Protocols should have that reach... Is it me?

Kubrak

I am not on Mac and do not know it. But I would guess that full access is needed because of NI plugin authorisation system. I may be wrong....

@Maciej Repetowski

If one uses Maschine as plugin, he uses it the both, as plugin and as a "DAW" within a DAW. As I would not call Maschine DAW. ;-)

Maciej Repetowski

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/38452#Comment_38452

I’m not using the patterns in Maschine, I program my drums in Logic, Maschine is just the sound source for drum kits. I would prefer to use Battery 4 instead (as it doesn’t have sequencer or plug-in hosting, which I don’t need anymore), but Battery doesn’t have kit previews.

Kymeia

Full access is recommended but I don't think it's mandatory - if people want to answer a list of questions 'do you want to grant access to this and that?' then all power to them - full disk access just saves the hassle

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