Kontrol S Mk3 Series with Maschine Built In

I don't see it happening either sadly. I have my own thoughts on why. Recent changes in both NI's product releases and company structuring has convinced me it's not a direction I'm willing to invest in any further.

I off loaded my Nektar T61 just recently which was a good keybed and had good integration with Reaper but lacking on plugin support with Nektarine software on Windows. This has had me looking up getting my M32 talking with Reaper and discovering very good Reaper community support in this area. ReaKontrol works really well and provides as much Reaper integration if not more than the Nektar T6.

I will be following up with looking at Maschine integration and trailing of Maschine VSTi within Reaper combining the workflows. I think Maschine for looping and sample fun and Reaper for audio recording / Arranging.

That being said - Komplete Kontrol as a plugin / sound manager is not without issues with NKS instruments crashing under Komplete Kontrol VSTi when scaling the UI in Reaper. I also find the Komplete Kontrol plugin browsing experience to be pretty tedious with the M32. Can't say how it is on the S model of controllers. Arturia seems to have a much nicer plugin UI interface for that but I haven't had hands on with their controllers to see how the experience is from their keyboards.

Also to investigate - running Maschine VSTi under Linux LOL.

It's actually little more than a preset playing keyboard and not a full synth. It offers a few preprogrammed macros to make minimal changes to the presets but that's about it. I would describe it as a keyboard with analog lab built in. It's target market is for live stage use rather than in a studio as far as I can see.

I have to say I've intermittently considered incorporating something like Machine into my workflow, but ultimately I think it's a very cool piece of equipment but I can't imagine how it would significantly add to my workflow in that my MK3 is used exclusively on projects that are song oriented with a planned structure from beginning to end that runs a specific length of time. In other words, traditional productions. And I think that's the target audience NI is considering as that's kind of their bread and butter with their keyboards.