Expansion Body Mechanik missing Group Macros

ozon
ozon Member Posts: 1,301 Expert

All Projects from the Expansion Body Mechanik are missing their Group MACRO settings. There are headings (such as Delay ,Filter, FM, Ice, Lo Fi, Phaser) but not controls are available.

Same on Maschine+ and Maschine 2.14 application.

Comments

  • Peter Harris
    Peter Harris Member Posts: 470 Pro
    edited April 2022

    Can confirm. Good catch!!!

    Just out of curiosity, I thought I'd see what happened if I tried to manually put on those effects and I don't think they even exist on M/M+. On Body Fatale for example: C1 - Shifter? Grain? Reflex?

  • Peter Harris
    Peter Harris Member Posts: 470 Pro

    After investigating a little further, I think maybe they were created with an MK3 which according to an older PDF manual had a reverb named Reflex. And I bet that Shifter reference is because that FX used to be called a Shifter (now Frequency shifter), while Grain is now called Grain delay.

    So my working hypothesis is that since it's a fairly recent expansion, maybe the creator was using an MK3 that wasn't completely caught up with the most current updates?

    Gosh this is kind of fun, it's like a forensic autopsy for gear!

  • Matt_NI
    Matt_NI Administrator Posts: 1,106 admin

    @Jeremy_NI some detective work ready for you here 😉

  • Jeremy_NI
    Jeremy_NI Customer Care Posts: 9,319 mod

    @Matt_NI I'm on it!


  • Jeremy_NI
    Jeremy_NI Customer Care Posts: 9,319 mod

    Hey there, I got some feedback on this issue.

    To streamline the expansions, and to be more Maschine Plus friendly, only Macros on Kit and Sound levels are supported. For Group macros, some creators set them up, but they are not done by default. The headings are still there because the project was based on a Kit which had macros. Unfortunately, it wasn't cleaned up totally.

  • Peter Harris
    Peter Harris Member Posts: 470 Pro

    Interesting!

    But I have to admit I'm a little disappointed my forensic analysis didn't hold up. 😭

  • ozon
    ozon Member Posts: 1,301 Expert

    Hi Jeremy

    I read your answer three times, but it didn’t make sense to me.

    • The problem is not related to M+, Macros are missing in the Maschine Software as well
    • Group Macros work fine on Maschine+, actually lots of fun to use
    • Macros on Kit level are Group Macros
    • Many other Expansions offer Kits with Group Macros

    Maybe have another discussion with Mr. Bunny Holmes.

  • Jeremy_NI
    Jeremy_NI Customer Care Posts: 9,319 mod
    edited April 2022

    Hey @ozon I reached out to the people who are in charge of the expansions, I tried to keep it short and concise, so here are a few clarifications.

    I didn't say that it was strictly related to Maschine Plus. By Maschine friendly, I mean that the Expansions team had to remove some macros to stream line performance on these projects for Maschine Plus, they had to remove them for all formats, Maschine and Maschine Plus.

    I never said that Macros don't work on M+.

    By Kit macros, I meant the kits you can load, independently from the projetcs, less prone to cause performance issues, so Macros there are on the group level.

    "Many other Expansions offer Kits with Group Macros", I'll just repeat, for Group macros (in projects, since that was the initial issue you reported here), some creators set them up, but they are not done by default. Does that make more sense now or should I call the Maschine Police ?

  • Peter Harris
    Peter Harris Member Posts: 470 Pro

    I admit I was initially very skeptical with this answer too. But when I sat down with my M+ this morning, started from an empty project and started adding kits (though not too many because this is clearly where the danger lies), I see that the group macros work quite well, even in Body Mechanik. (I am pretty new to playing with group macros because I didn't really understand them before. I thought they were macros across a whole project but now that I understand you have to be on the group level and then press macro I'm discovering how many kits in the expansions have this feature and how much fun they are to play with as you pointed out.)

    And now I think I appreciate what Jeremy discovered which is that since group macros are often using effects applied at the sound level, when you start using multiple groups with multiple macros assigned at the sound level, as with other expansions when I think about it it can very quickly choke the processor on M+. I am also gaining an appreciation for the very substantial challenge of building expansions that work well with both M and M+.

    So in the end @Jeremy_NI, I withdraw my skepticism and thank you for tracking that down. 🙂 And I'm sure that we will see a 1.x update to that expansion eventually, and we can all say we helped make it happen. 😉

  • ozon
    ozon Member Posts: 1,301 Expert
    edited April 2022

    @Jeremy_NI thank you very much for the detailed explanation.

    I wasn’t aware that the Projects were not using the Kit Group macros but had their own definitions!

    Since the Macro headers are still there it looked to me as if something was broken and the macros weren’t loaded properly.

  • Peter Harris
    Peter Harris Member Posts: 470 Pro

    By the way @ozon, I'm so glad you started this thread. I hadn't really paid much attention to this expansion before and it's absolutely fantastic! I was an old Front 242 and Skinny Puppy fan back in the day and it really takes me back! (I even did a little video for Consolidated back then.)

    My neighbors may not love my new expansion obsession but as soon as they leave for work I'm cranking it!!!

  • Nico_NI
    Nico_NI Administrator Posts: 1,124 admin
    edited April 2022

    Thinking about Nitzer Ebb as well 😎 Pure EBM legends.

  • Jeremy_NI
    Jeremy_NI Customer Care Posts: 9,319 mod

    Cool ! I really liked this Consolidated song (and album):

    Is your video for them available on the internet ?

  • Peter Harris
    Peter Harris Member Posts: 470 Pro

    Oh yeah! I forgot about them. I can see the black and red cover on the my cassette in my head. 😉

    And Ministry (my fav). And Revolting ******. And oh yeah, Laibach!! Ah, those were the (angry) days...

  • Peter Harris
    Peter Harris Member Posts: 470 Pro

    That's cool you remember them! 😁 It was for the song Typical Male on the album Friendly Fascism. The video was actually played in the background on stage at live shows.

    (Believe it or not it was actually my thesis project for the Women's Studies Department at my university.)

    Thanks for asking though. 😊Unfortunately it was long before YouTube but maybe I'll dig it out of my storage unit one day and digitize it.

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