ran across this interesting article about N.I. officially stating a new “start to finish” product incoming soon.
thoughts on what it might be?
or worth checking out?
obvious guess; a stand alone unit but from pieces taken from the article they are also refining/giving their maschine software a make-over so idk, could just be maybe software oriented.
I’m always intrigued what N.I. has to offer but it would have to be something special to get me away from my Push/Ableton workflow.
could be something like UA’s Luna. I say that as, to me, “start to finish” implies there’s a mastering component. What else would “finish”?
Truth be told unless they’re getting into analog modeling with some kind of brand partnership or something like that, I’m not sure they’d get more than beginners/intermediates that upload Trap and EDM tracks to soundcloud using something like that. NI is many great things, but “appealing to audiophiles” ain’t really on that list.
NI is like New York or London of old. Huge promise, bright lights, glitzy and amazing at first. Then, as you get used to it and delve deeper you start to notice the unpleasant stuff and, if you’re really unlucky, you end up akin to being mugged (Kore…)!
They do some stuff really well, but lots of really odd and irksome things.
Having said that, I might be up for the ride. Got a maschine that hasn’t been touched in 2 years, Komplete and a Kk mk2 that I don’t touch much either. Not a huge amount of resale value so will be part of the ecosystem wherever they ultimately take it.
@G0n35y They have some amazing software plugins though and their hardware is well build and of high quality too!
Replika is simply one of the best Delay VST’s you can buy for the money. It’s even a favorite of the one and only JMJ. 
I am also hugely impressed with their new RAUM reverb plugin, which I got for free during the Christmas promotion. It’s really amazing.
For the rest of their stuff I don’t use NI much… Had Komplete 11, but sold it and now I only got Komplete 12 Select left. Replika I bought long ago standalone.
I am curious if they finally make the jump of truly StandAlone Maschine hardware, where you can load your NI Plugins into.
People have been begging Native Instruments for years for such a Maschine.
I mean after AKAI went that route with their recent MPC releases. It makes sense for NI to finally follow.
damm takes me back…I always wanted kore cuz of the orange-ish lights.
even tho it only had like, 4 parameters to tweak I think it looked cool aesthetically to me then.
I’m mainly intrigued cuz I use Kontakt instruments often but than again that could be used seamlessly with any daw that supports NKS so it’s whatever I suppose.
(Push gets the job done well for me with Kontakt instruments)
still their pads are relatively up to par so that has me also interested…kind of.
I don’t see any indication that it would be standalone.
I think they’ll expand/offer an alternative to the Maschine/Komplete Kontrol software to emulate a workstation in your computer.
It seems obvious to add little maschine pads to the KK hardware.
Not a big fan of the Maschine software as of right now, but I’ll keep an eye out for whatever they’re up to
I’ve been noticing YT is really saturated with Maschine and those genres mentioned too.
does seems really beginner friendly and affordable too.
forgot about that, akai has been doing that for the longest minus the daw integration, sort of.
but akai’s does have those “advanced/vip” keyboards. doesn’t seem to be on the same level as Komplete Kontrol Mk2 but then again that would create a hybrid device/splitting, (if they did incorporate pads) which would take away sales from Maschine drum controller so it doesn’t seem like too much of a given considering that.
I’ll admit, I’m curious. I literally sold all my Machine gear and software back to GC (Machine MK3, Komplete 11, Komplete A25). I definitely miss the pads and keys (the gear was built well and solid), some of the extensions (which were amazing, but no longer available after I already bought them and lost when I sold) and actually liked creating patterns/editing on the grid with the machine software. The automation was cool when it worked and the overall sound profile was wicked. Where it fell short for me was when I wanted to go deeper with the UI and functionality. Just.couldn’t.create.a.song with the dam software. I could groove all day, but then the pony wanted to go home. Additional annoyances of plug-in bloat, useless Sounds.com integration (I’d rather port my own sounds in), general UI kluginess and dumbfuckery, crap integration with multiple DAWs (especially Ableton), shit arranger, Midi mapping never really worked, Transport only mapping for Ableton vs. auto map/good templates for Drum Rack/routing, etc.
The stand-alone concept has been buzzed around for many years, so I’ll believe it when I see it. But if it does make an appearance and at the gear is solid with plenty of ports in the back (including USB ports), AND if they truly created a reasonable arranger/DAW, I can see myself tapping in. …as long as the dam thing integrates and exports to Ableton or Logic.
Yep got hooked into maschine mk3 when it was new, was my first big musical purchase and ironically it pushed me back into ableton as it just felt easier to use in the long run. I too found it really clunky to export stuff out of it or use the audio outs , probably could have figured it out but just could do it quicker in abelton.
Interested to see this but there’s a lot of other options and is it really to much trouble to plug one cable into a laptop? Lol
It would be their flagship product. They’ve already sold their Maschines, now get those people to buy Komplete Maschine
Edit: or perhaps make the new software compatible with Maschine/KK so people will own one flagship or both other product
that’s a good point. +1
I wouldn’t mind giving an all-in-one product a go just to mess with my Kontakt synths and battery.
That’s exactly where I landed to and went full Ableton.
Did you ever get export/glitches & bugs?
Cuz that’s what made me switch to Ableton too, along with their dreaded arrangement view.
For some reason certain Arturia plugins would be all glitched out after export.
After various troubleshooting with tech support to no avail I gave up on N.I. and it’s been smooth sailing 
with Ableton since.
Yes, exactly this , could never get export to work well on Maschine Mk3 . Could use it as a vst inside Abeleton to play stuff in “live” and record it to audio that way … yeah clunky! Still use it this way as I like the chord function on maschine to lay down some pad stuff on my latest breakbeat opus . Should probably get a push but I’m a tight erse! Going off topic but my DJS1000 was what I’d hoped my maschine would be , took a few purchases to work that one out .
Yeeeap. You nailed it. Exporting issues galore (I could never really get exporting to work the way I wanted to with scenes and patterns. It wound up being too much hassle). I would also lose automated effects on patterns.
So - I read the article from Kai - It sounds like in a few months they’ll have a “prototype”. That could mean just the software end of things as he does go into details on the improvements (which sounded pretty good). Kai also mentioned that NI is taking this “step by step”. My guess is first they do software, then get buy-in from the community, and then maybe head the new HW route?
On HW, It has been a long while since we’ve seen anything new from them (Maschine MK3 came out in Sept 2017). From a timing aspect (pure speculation here), if they release a flagship product, then I’d predict a release around Sept this year (figure 3 year HW refresh cycle).
Love the Maschine MK3. So much more fluid and quick for sketching than my Push 2, though it has a few annoyances like not being able to swap pads, can’t automate loop points, and the whole “it’s not a DAW but it is a DAW but not really a DAW that I record into a DAW.” But for sketching and coming up with ideas and jamming, it is fast and effortless. I rarely look at my computer screen. Would love a standalone version and/or a complete start to finish DAW experience within Maschine.
It was the same with me. I had the Maschine Mk2 first. Loved it, but I ended up using it as a VST in Ableton.
Sold it and bought the Push2 instead. That was one amazing controller for Ableton.
Still regret selling my Push2 last year, when I needed the money to fund something else.
Though, probably never would have bought the Digitakt, if I still had the Push2 … … … … .
I just find NI stuff really odd over all. I owe them a huge debt for getting me back in to music 8 years or so ago when I bought Maschine on a whim and they make it incredibly easy to jump into Komplete (and then their keyboards). On the face of it, the integration is amazing and if you buy in heavily to their ecosystem it’s a lot of fun.
But then you hit short comings and other niggly things. You start trying to do things that other DAWs can manage very easily or try to export in a non pain in the arse way. You even try using Maschine as an Ableton controller. You then quickly think fuck it, had enough of this and go jump on the Push bandwagon instead.
I’ll always have an interest in their stuff though but I have lost quite a bit of faith in what the overall mission statement/strategy is in recent years.
This article is just talking about a recent post on the NI forum about software updates. This has nothing to do with standalone at all. This is about new arranger functionality coming to allow clips to be positioned freely on the timeline. That’s it.
There is still code in the Maschine software that points to standalone coming one day but that hasn’t been updated in at least a year.