Is Maschine Plus a beta for an awesome next release?
Comments
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NI should consider moving from X86 to ARM architecture . NI softwares work well on apple silicon with Rosetta2 so there's no reason why NI cannot port their code to ARM. There's a whole bunch of ARM SoCs that perform way better than the poor ATOM.
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Akai MPC Touch --> MPC Live --> MPC Live MkII
NI Maschine+ --> Maschine Pro? --> Maschine Pro MKII?
There was a time where NI had it good, Traktor was king in DJ world and they had the Maschine which was out of this world. Then, something happened, they pushed for controllers without jog wheels, pushed the industry to accept Stems and pushed to sell expansion packs as a viable business model, etc. Were they successful - you can be the judge. The rest is history with the latest chapter of NI being acquired by Investment Firm Francisco Partners. I hope the new leadership at this company can steer it through and bring us the NI goodness once more.
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Korg Kronos is quite capable synth and its power is based solely on 2-core Intel Atom 1.66 Gz processor. M+ is twice as powerful in this regard. So M+ hardware is quite fine for its tasks, software is key element here. All bugs, missing features, audio glitches, high CPU utilisation - all this is software related IMHO. And what is future path of this software - nobody knows. All i've seen from NI in public space is only promises to soon publish news regarding updates, cool new features etc.
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For those of you who think the Maschine+ development team didn‘t evaluate the options:
Posted by @D-One on Ye Olde Forum in the thread For the curious folks.
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Maschine+ is not a $800-$900 price point device to begin with.
MK3 - processing power requirements below for reference.
- Windows: from 10 (64-bit)
- Mac OS (64 Bit): from 10.13
- CPU minimum: Intel Core i5
- RAM minimum: 4 GB
- Hard disk space minimum: 3 GB
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Mutis,
M1 might be better than Intel, but it is not better than AMD. OK, it is slightly better in power consumption, but it is due to the fact, it is produced on more advanced process. And more expensive....
Current AMD processors, released week, two ago, might be comparable to M1 even in consumption... And in less than a year, stronger, faster and less power hungry AMD Zen 4 generation comes....
I bet, Apple will loose the race in few years and sooner or later will be forced to launch Rosetta 3.
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This is what I was trying to say in this thread. A Roland Fantom has infinitely less power than a Maschine or MPC yet it can do 50x as much. What does that really tell you? The difference is all the OG's still work at Roland/Yamaha/Korg and understand low-level firmware. There's a lot of history there
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Arguing about the specs go nowhere because if the software is not optimize for it, the best CPU will not make a better device. And the missing piece is the answer to the question : why the ingenieer of NI made the choice they made?
As some of them mentioned, exist device that have less spec that are optimized. So it is not an impossible thing to optimize a software for a particular specs. It is the work of ingenieers to find the right balance. So the question is here imo if this balance was well done with Maschine+? And will they find the right balance if an MK2 will come?
But more important imo is that NI should communicate more about how they will overcome the "disaster" that result of the unbalanced choice they made. Technically and as customer care.
Just saying : "a new firmware will come with that and that" without schedule or stage, is imo not enough.
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Actually Fantom has significantly more computing power. General purpose computer module inside Fantom is only control hardware for specialised board which actually performs realtime audio processing. Its power is in 4 Roland BMC chips, each with its own RAM/FLASH, 4 GB of shared RAM, etc... These BMCs are powerful DSPs designed with specific aim - crunch numbers using Roland algorithms. So we can`t compare M+ based on GP processor with Fantom based on specialised hardware, they are in different leagues. But anyway M+ hardware is good enough for purpose its built for.
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That would be a logistics nightmare and impossible as far as just replacing the Ram/CPU since it's an SoC, that means it's a single unit and non-upgradable unless you replace the whole thing. But... It's tiny detachable so users could do it themselves easily afaik. Here's a pic that AlexBuga shared on the old forum:
The same company that makes those has some higher spec'd boards at similar TDP, it could be an interesting upgrade for more demanding users. Mouser sells them, I wonder if someone would just slap a new unit on the M+ if it would work easily... A brave soul out there needs to part ways with 300$ and try it out to ease my curiosity. 😂
Still wouldn't fix any software issues which seems to be what most users consider problematic.
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Good idea!!!
And those willing to have ARM instead of x86 inside M+ may go for it. (Porting SW from Apple Silicon, when it comes, might work. Or no.)
Qseven Computer-On-Modules - congatec
It is a pity they do not have AMD as option.... Maybe one day in future.
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Akira,
Maschine 2 has minimal spec i5, 4 GB RAM. M+ is way weaker. NI could optimize SW to certain extent, but it has limits.... NI did the best they could to fit in TDP, space and price limits...
And i5, 4GB is minimum requirement. I had problems even with older i7 running at 2.1 GHz and 16 GB RAM on many projects. So, I upgraded to 8C/16T running above 4 GHz and 64 GB memory. It will do for a year, two.
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It's as simple as "just use ARM like Apple".
The M1 is not an off-the-shelf chip, it's a custom design on a dedicated and optimized OS backed by literally the richest company in the world with heaps of experience using mobile chips. The Surface Pro X also has a custom ARM CPU and it's performance is trash compared to an M1, most likely because even Microsoft with all their billions has trouble (or real interest) making something as good as Rosetta-2. NI is peanuts compared to such huge companies.
In a thread like this not having enough CPU power to tun X instruments will always get mixed with stability issues and missing features, sort of unavoidable. Not sure if it's fair to compare a full-blown production software originally made for Win/Mac that was ported to Linux to a simple Synth.
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Kron
Its not so simple synth 😀 - its a workstation with a sequencer, multiple synth engines, FX chain, audio disk streaming etc. But my point is M+ hardware is fine and we do need to blame it. Software can and should be improved regarding bugs and missing features. But regarding performance - taking into consideration info from ADC-20 video i suppose its almost impossible without redoing everything from scratch. For my personal needs M+ performance is adequate, i just waiting in hope for bugs and workflow omissions to be fixed. With current state of software i cant use it, its just impossible. Sampler which cant browse sample library?! 🤣
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For sure, the software could be optimize to a certain point, but the manifest problem imo is that little features that don't need particular optimization are not present on Maschine+ :
- preset/sample tagging
- macro creation and midi learn on it
- automation edition (I mean edit that was recorded with macro or not)
- midi import and export
All of this is possible on computer, why they are not on Maschine+? Clearly it is not a question of better specs.
By thinking of it today, if we suppose that the target users of Maschine+ is for those who use Maschine and use only NI Vst, to allow them to follow / sketch projects outside the studio. If we suppose that, Maschine+ have all the functions for this use, but clearly it is not optimize to bear the audio part. Because we all know here, that a project with 2 or 3 instances of Massive / Reaktor will skyrocketing the CPU and glitched will be heard.
Ni say that they will improve the audio on the firmware 1.4 which could come in months. But simple things that already exist on Maschine 2 was not part of their communication. Imo it's a bad choice.
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