The future of Maschine

CakeAlexS · 2025-07-02T19:58:34+00:00

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Yeah there have been billion threads with this title I'm sure!

Thanks for letting me spam the forums over the last week or so (sorry for the amount of posts). Hopefully they will slow down now I've read the manual and scratched my head a few times. I appreciate the help.

I think I stopped using Maschine at 2.4.(maybe 2.2). I was pretty fed up with the workflow and just gave up on it.

Things are a lot different with 3.2 it appears, I find it 100% workable, pretty logical and consistent, and I just need to get used to it.

Really there isn't much more I need, there are only a few issues in workflow I'd like to see addressed.

1) I do understand it's an old product but it is still supported. Please please please for the love of gawd supply a Maschine Studio manual for 3.2..Thx!

2) Please provide a pitch preview option for the Maschine Controller (please don't just limit it to the MK3!). This might seem a trivial enhancement but it's pretty important at least for my workflow.

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/46143/maschine-pitch-preview

3) Anything to help integrate with DAWs better would be good. Yup we can drag/drop/record MIDI and audio. But I'd like to easily move the instrument/effects plugins over to a DAW (and that's a big ask, not sure how it would be done). Workflow is better in Maschine, CPU performance IMHO still isn't that great.

4) And anything to improve performance. Running as a plugin sadly is not optimal, and that's down to limitations of the DAW mostly, I'm not sure how Maschine plugin could be multi threaded or optimized at this point, hey it's a plugin that contains plugins!

5) Maybe add audio tracks but then I have my DAW.

6) The plugin window looks a bit hazy for me on a 4K screen, but maybe it's my DAW. Anything to improve the display would be good.

Anyway, good job NI! Workflow is finally pretty decent (not sure how long it took to get here). It's still pretty basic and maybe automation needs an overhaul on the GUI but hey I'm primary looking at a sequencer and sampler. Anybody else here care to contribute to this discussion and have opinions here?

Thx...

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CakeAlexS

Ah and just another think (says Columbo), why can't I change routing via a user template without erasing the existing sound? Needs to be a +Sounds button next to the +Routing +Patterns buttons.

CakeAlexS

———-→

Argh only stereo outputs not mono I just discovered (again), guess that's another enhancement request :( Guess there are workarounds…

Sorry this is rapidly turning into my own personal b*tching thread!

D-One

@CakeAlexS said:
Another thing, user templates and routing, often some settings are not saved. Surely it can't be that hard to fix?

Can't say I have ever experienced this, I have projects nearly 10 years old that still load fine with all routings in place. I also havent seen anyone report this, maybe you've stumbled upon a bug?

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/233415#Comment_233415

Indeed. I suggested this before, I dont think it will ever happen tho; people have such a hard time understanding routing that there's no backup from other users to specific practical suggestions like this one… People can just say "we want better integration".

A workaround is to

Save the Sound/Group (With whatever sounds or patterns you want to keep)
Load a preset with +Routing, (loads the routings and resets the sound)
Load the Sound/Group from step #1 with +Routings disabled.

Result: You changed the sound and kept the Routings. It works, but it's for sure convoluted.

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/233431#Comment_233431

It's fine… TBH I was surprised you seemed so happy about the state of things a few days ago and said to myself: "wait until he rediscovers all the issues" ahahaha

CakeAlexS

Yeah it's all went Pete Tong once I started sync'ing and routing with DAWs! I no doubt raised these issues years ago but I've forgotten.

Having said that I finally manageable workflow now with Studio One although stuff stated here on this thread is still a PITA and slows it all down.

Pretty much all of it is basic stuff that should have been sorted by now. Oh well!

D-One

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/233270#Comment_233270

I dont see why not, at least for the current gen controllers MK3 and M+, MIDI 2.0 is just software, not hardware, imagine having to buy a new computer to use MIDI 2.0…

Maschine uses proprietary communication that is translated to MIDI by it's drivers and background services anyway (a combination of OSC and some other stuff I think)… This is why MAS controllers are not MIDI class-compliant, which in this case can actually be an advantage.

Now the DIN Ports might be trickier and require firmware updates (?), assuming theres enought storage there for however big MIDI 2.0 ends up being, it should also be doable unless NI decides to use this as an excuse/advantage to sell new models.

CakeAlexS

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/233441#Comment_233441

"Can't say I have ever experienced this, I have projects nearly 10 years old that still load fine with all routings in place. I also havent seen anyone report this, maybe you've stumbled upon a bug?"

From 13:40. He's loaded up a template with routing, the only thing he should be changing is the MIDI channel but as you can see he's changing a lot more.

https://youtu.be/JXyPxR_11OE?si=cRr1cA4APzdZKSvz

D-One

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/233448#Comment_233448

Oh… My bad. I'm able to reproduce.

Loading a Group doesn't recall the Group's Channel or Start Note for some reason, everything else seems to work. I'll report this

CakeAlexS

Argh need a stop button with Standalone app.

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/13344/back-to-start-move-playhead

CakeAlexS

See image above, top is standalone, bottom is plugin.

So with the plugin I can drag and drop MIDI/audio files into my DAW, but I guess I can't do that with standalone right? (I can certainly drag and drop stuff from my Studio One to Maschine 3.2 standalone app).

AdelV

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/233500#Comment_233500

Your standalone is in Song mode and the plugin is in Ideas mode. Switch the standalone to Ideas mode too, and you’ll be able to drag and drop both MIDI and audio to other apps or the desktop.

Shortcuts:

Song Mode =cmd/ctrl + 2

Ideas Mode = cmd/ctrl +1

CakeAlexS

I thought I checked out this scenario, clearly I didn't - doh! You're absolutely right of course (it works).

I guess as an enhancement request I would like to do this in song mode too (via standalone and plugin).

D-One

That would export the whole song, at that point you might aswell use the export menu rather than stay holding the mouse drag-and-drop for 40 seconds (or however it might take), at least for audio.

For MIDI it would be nice to export a full arrangement too, one of those cool things we might never get.

CakeAlexS

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/233519#Comment_233519

Surely in song mode I could select single/multiple clips and patterns (or the whole lot) and just drag 'em into the DAW? Audio and well as MIDI.

D-One

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/233533#Comment_233533

Not even the DAW's I use do that for MIDI… Maybe S1 does, idk.

Your problem here is Clips, In your shoes, I would seriously re-consider if you really need the little advantages that Clips offer, which is…………. The ability to span across Sections + to be layered on top of Sections and… nothing else (?).

If it were just Section/Scene you could drag-and-drop from Song Mode; keep in mind Clips is one of those features that got released and people had a million suggestions for improvements that were ignored due to time constraints… and like most times, NI rushed it out and never revisisted it, it's not as well though out and polished as Sections/Scenes and Patterns are.

Anyway, if there's actually a Scene/Section/Pattern underneath your Clip than you use Audio drag-and-drop on it, it does export the Audio including the Clip (within the boundaries of the Section), but to see the drag-and-drop button you have to get out of Clips Mode. Confusing? Yes. Looks like so:

The export via Drag-AndDrop has the Scene/Section and the Clip's Audio:

But then to make things inconsistent, MIDI drag-and-drop exports only the Pattern… why you may ask? Because Maschine.

PS - I must say I am having fun answering actual functionality questions for a change, keep going! The forum been boring lately with only tech support related questions.

CakeAlexS

Thanks D1 I'll get my head around it over the weekend!

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