I’m probably in a pretty good place to give some chat on Push (1 + 2), Maschine (Mk1, Jam, Kontrol s49mk2) and MPC Live. Own/owned them all!
My current go to is Maschine. The Kontrol keyboard has been a revelation - if NI ever o a version with pads built in then I’d sell my Maschine in a flash. I like the environment for what it offers me at the moment - immediacy + stability + integration to KU11.
I don’t even have Live installed at the moment - but I will be doing a fresh install once 10 lands. Hopefully NI get a template out for Kontrol + Live 10 pronto as I think that could be the key for me finally accepting a MAschine + Live hybrid set up.
Anyway, the MPC Live was far from shoddily built when I owned it. Actually quite impressed with the build to be honest. Yes it is a little limited but it is a lot of fun. I think in the months/years to come, there will be some outrageous performances/skills shown on this box.
No experience with the Toriaz. For me, with the sort of music I do, it wasn’t even a contender - it’s just too limited in its scope for me.
Anyway, if any questions, let me know and I’ll chime in with some thoughts/chat.
I found that Maschine is better than Push for sequencing MIDI gear and working with modulations in a similar fashion to Elektron’s parameter locks. You can customize the knobs to control MIDI or VST plugins a lot better than Push. The pads are better too.
Thank you for your reply, this does help me a lot. Toriaz was always a no go for me. Pioneer is overpriced for what functionality it offers. It looks like its geared more toward dj’s who want to have something added to their performances.
MPC are the great grandfathers of finger drumming, their products suffered after the buyout but it seems like have been hit or miss since so I’ve kind of steered away from akai.
the Push 2 and new ableton live 10 looks so inviting and user friendly. I really love how easy it looks to get things going.
But Machine looks like a solid setup. So I’m down to Native Instruments and Ableton.
do you like using Machine hardware with Live over Push 2 because you’re more familiar with the Machine or because it gives you more control within Live?
I’ve watched a gazillion youtube videos about these things and in the Push videos they go into great detail about the sampling and sample editing capabilities. I haven’t really seen much on the NI side of these videos regarding sampling and sample editing. I know it can do it but is it as straight forward as it is within Push?
Thank you for that! I was going to ask about that too. Sequencing with the pads seems like a limited view of whats going on, I’m guessing this is where adding the Jam with it could come in handy if you can map it to sequence midi gear. I like that it records modulations, are you saying it’ll record modulation over midi for external gear as well as sequence external gear at the same time? If so, this is great! Oh, tell me i’m correct here, like most other devices, if I wanted to use more than one external midi device to be controlled by machine all I’d need to do connect a midi thru hub and each their own channel and assign them within the software settings and i’m set? Can you do midi learn like you can with Octatrack? I apologize for all of the questions but I’ve only worked with hardware. The only software controller stuff I’ve ever used was traktor with an S4 a long time ago.
Amen! I don’t know what it is about 8 of things- but i need more knobs!!!
I suppose this could intertwine with the screen with a foreground/background mode where the current row only shows on the display while the background parameter names show only and appear on the screen while the second row values get altered
ITB Music making is great, but I still haven’t gotten to the point where click and drag sound design feels natural
Maschine has no plugin delay compensation which is rediculous these days.
Stack a few plugins around the place and things get out of sync pretty quick.
Rendered Maschine pretty useless for me in the end.
No such issues with Ableton / Push 2
This is 100 percent how I got out of the loop rut. Even just recording basic arrangements will get you going with a finished arrangement.
Lives arrangement view certainly has its limitations, but when you get used to it it’s really fast. Looking forward to 10 as a lot of the improvements are workflow based stuff I’ve been wanting.
Yes this
I switched from Cubase to Live a few years back and have only ever used the arrangement view due to my brain being programmed in this method through years with Cubase. Have never even used the session view.
So fast, so good. Live is so much faster than any daw I have used.
Incredible design imo
Amen to that, so much faster playing the arrangement in and it’s a lot more fun then copy pasting blocks around like some other programs have been stuck with forever.
Live 10 beta is now open for everyone, I really like it a lot and find it hard to go back to 9.
You do know this isn’t helping me right? ive never entered the daw world so I’m a little hesitant to pick one over the other. I’ve watched a lot of videos, read some literature and looked at the pros vs cons. They’re so much alike it’s insane to just blindly pick one over the other. While what you stated is an extremely sad case for the software design on machine, I love the ability to control external gear via midi but that’s not important too me.
I can only guess it’s a decision like what all of us here have in common. At one point in time we all chose the Elekton way.
Our forum is great bc of all of the views and ideas we all share on our great obsession.
Not sure what you mean by this
Ableton controls external gear via midi as good if not better than any other daw I have used.
Create a new track, insert Abletons external instrument plugin, assign midi channel and the audio input in the plugin. Done.
Works perfectly
Yes I use Push 2
I have said all along, as much as I love Push it is way too big.
I am sure they could shrink it by 30% and still retain functionality.
I think Push 3 will be MPE enabled, and think they will do away with the pads and offer a Linnstrument pressure type grid interface for ultimate expression.
I still have Maschine 2, it’s in a closet somewhere as I haven’t touched it since I bought Push 2.
You honestly can’t compare the 2 imo.
Maschine is basically a powerful groove box, Ableton is the most powerful but incredibly intuitive DAW you can buy.
Buy live suite with included max4live and it’s on another level again
To date, I don’t like using Maschine hardware with Live. A few get on with it really well but I’m one of those guys who gets fed up with tinkering to make things work - I want as close to plug and play as you can get. But, the Kontrol s49 Mk2 has been a dream since I got it and looking at what it can do to control Live is making me think again. However, no Live 10 template yet and no news of how long it will take.
In terms of control, Push 2 gives you more hands on than Maschine in Live would. Live 10 “pushes” things a lot closer to the Maschine approach. The displays are being better utilised than before which is a positive. I would still say Maschine is the tightest hybrid integration going though and NKS just opens things up nicely.
It’s worth mentioning Audiomodder too - that allowed Push to access all the KU11 library within Live. That changes things up too but I’ve not heard of a Live 10 update yet - Live 10 is still in beta mind you!
I don’t do a lot of sampling to be honest but thinking about it, sampling within Maschine would be easier. It can all be done from the hardware (in terms of setting up and editing and the likes). That may be possible on Push, Im not sure, but Maschine would likely be closer to the sort of MPC sampling approach. With a Mk3 and it’s built in interface it would likely feel more like an MPC too (if that’s your thing).
Basically, in terms of hardware, Push vs Maschine is really a case of horses for courses. I’d focus on whether the software side is going to do the trick. For me, Maschine is just about the best environment for me getting ideas down and shaping songs quickly. But, and it’s a big but, it’s kind of a pain in the arse tweaking song structures. This is more due to how I build songs - say 8 tracks, 5 patterns moulded into intro, chorus, bridge, verse, outro. I like to lay the basic structure out then tweak patterns at various points for variation - Maschine forces you to create new patterns which I find a bit annoying though I understand why it’s designed this way (well, I think I do!). In Live, I could structure the song then on the timeline view do whatever I wanted easy peasy.
If you want to automate MIDI CCs with Push, it’s rather shitty compared to Maschine. You have to resort to M4L devices as the built-in way (mapping CCs to macros ) is badly implemented : There is no way to manually edit the mappings, you HAVE to use the MIDI learn function, which sets the macros to transmit to MIDI channel 1 and there seems no way to change that.
On top of that, MIDI CC sweeps are sent out with a large delay and do not produce smooth changes as you turn the knobs on Push… Only the M4L midi knobs work smoothly. You then have to manually edit the M4L devices in Max so that the knob names show up correctly on Push, and then figure out if it’s possible to hide the device controls that you don’t want showing up on Push. Which means negotiating with Max which is way too complicated. I don’t want to learn a fucking scripting environment just to create some virtual knobs! It’s a real PITA compared to how easy it is to do this in Maschine - and M4L devices are known to introduce instability.
Then you have the issue of Live’s MIDI clock jitter though I haven’t yet compared this to Maschine. When I sync my Analog Rytm to Live and check the tempo on the AR, it has a regular fluctuation of +_0.1 BPM every second or so. (Rytm is plugged in to the Mac’s USB port, no Overbridge).
Then you have the step sequencer in Push which again IMO is not as handy as the Maschine’s implementation.
If their clock is stabile, yes. DAWs in general have trouble with midi clock and jitter. There are hardware solutions, but they give your wallet a bit of a kick. But I think ± 0.1 is just par for the course, it evens out. But don’t quote me
ive never entered the daw world so I’m a little hesitant to pick one over the other. I’ve watched a lot of videos, read some literature and looked at the pros vs cons. They’re so much alike it’s insane to just blindly pick one over the other. While what you stated is an extremely sad case for the software design on machine, I love the ability to control external gear via midi but that’s not important too me.
