I am a new MK3 owner, had my unit less than 3 weeks. The honeymoon is over.
I am aware of the general problems with realtime audio performance but this is a very specific issue that looks like latency or thermal throttling but IS NOT.
I have FIVE PCs/Laptops, two are macs, three are windows machines. ALL FIVE of them run every other DAW I own without pops clicks and stutters. I run Bitwig, Cubase, Garage Band, Studio One, Ableton Live, Traktion, and many others on here without a problem.
And MASCHINE works fine as a VST on all my machines.
But put MASCHINE standalone app on any of them and after setting up the audio driver settings (there are more configurable settings on Windows than on mac, and it takes some time to figure out what the worst case DPC latencies on Windows are) it seems to work for a while, and then for no reason just stops working. The tiny little CPU meter on the top bar of MASCHINE indicates things have become stalled or overloaded, and everything stutters, until I restart maschine then the issue is gone. It is not a matter of too many devices or tracks. Even some very basic demo projects that are included in some of the maschine expansions that have NO external plugins at all, and are only using three or four groups full of samplers are affected.
I have done all the dances we do, with Latency Mon on windows, and Throttle Stop. It's not a CPU power state or CPU thermal throttling issue. It's not a DPC latency issue. DPC latency isn't even a possible issue on Macs and yet it happens on both platforms.
These issues DO NOT OCCUR when it runs inside as a plugin. I am down to two explanations.
- There is a general problem with MASCHINE standalone app.
- There is a general problem with the MASCHINE MK3 audio interface or its drivers. (Operating system level problem).
But I am still mystified, because if it was a bug in the asio driver on windows or the mac audio drivers on mac, it should be a bug when using other DAWs with the MK3 audio interface, but it seems the unique combination of MASCHINE software as the audio HOST application and the MK3 as the audio interface is causing me problems on ALL my computers.
So far the computers that ALL have this problem:
- Dell Xeon Workstation class PC, running windows 10, with 256 gb RAM and 2013 era quad core XEON Cpus.
- Dell XPS 9570 Mobile Core i7 cpu laptop from circa 2018. 32 gb ram.
- MacBook Pro (2011) Intel CPU 16 gb RAM
- Mac Studio (2022) with Apple M1 Ultra CPU and 16 gb ram.
- Lenovo Thinkpad Core i7 from 2017 16 gb ram.
I admit I am frustrated at running five different PCs with Maschine and seeing that it's the hardest "DAW" like application to get running and working that I have ever experienced.
Again all these machines have this problem ONLY WITH MASCHINE, not with Cubase or Bitwig or anything else. If it was an installation issue surely Native Access would install things properly once out of four machines? If it was a bug in MASCHINE which affects ALL audio drivers, surely it would reproduce for me when I stop using the MK3 as the audio interface.
It's frustrating to me that the one thing I want most (use standalone app, use the mk3 as the controller, use the mk3 as the audio interface) and that it seems DESIGNED for is the one thing that, thanks to the third law of thermodynamics, is out of reach.
I would like to be able to go back to some earlier maschine versions (2.14, 2.15) and try those to see if there's been a regression in maschine, causing this issue.
The MK3 is running the latest 1.4.5 firmware, so firmware update is not gonna be the solution. If a firmware DOWNGRADE is possible and that solved it I would love to be able to try older firmwares and see if it gets more solid as an audio interface.
When I use a different audio interface and only use the maschine mk3 as a midi controller for the maschine software, it does not audio stutter, but instead loses connectivity to the maschine app at times and basically requires an unplug and replug in of the controller for maschine to start talking to it again. I am also wondering if it's possible I have a bad unit?
Should I return it? RMA with NI?