I’m on the same page. I do see a very real danger of the Maschine software and the hardware drifting further and further apart, due to the fact that the software seems to be developed independently from the hardware, and receiving more priority.
The moment the hardware integration is becoming clunky and not seamless anymore, the Maschine platform is dead to me.
I reckon they’ll be looking at Ableton and seeing the potential. The M+ is like a sweet spot between Move and Push standalone, and NI were there first, so they can see there’s a big market for these devices if they can just get it right.
I’m hoping NI can just see the potential of a bit of forward thinking, but the M+ is much superior to my Push 2 for making music with, the way I want to make music, anyway.
The most disappointing aspect to me. Is the lack of upgrades to the sampler itself. No new filters or modulators when they could just use things from kontakt or battery…never understood the decision to cripple the sound engine
The official release video is pretty good, probably worth watching that before commenting.
For 30euro upgrade price it’s actually decent.
Fingers crossed most of it turns up on Maschine plus.
The official announcement is that the standalone support will be delivered in a late 24 / early 25 update.
meanwhile the maschine+ user still waiting for their firmware update
If that is the official word from NI then you can probably go ahead and tack on another 6 months to the estimate.
Sorry. Beat Maker 3 on the iPad.
For someone like me who does mostly synth-based production, Maschine was a way better value. Ableton Intro comes with a bunch of samplers and one proper synth plug-in. Maschine comes with so many good software instruments.
Life is cruel.
Mpc standalone stems was vastly improved recently… it is not terrible now… not as good as desktop but close… but machine doesn’t even have standalone stems… if the plus gets it I bet it won’t be as good either… lol
I actually like they improved the software to be used to without a controller. I can now fully continue to use the software while on the road or at the office without my controller. My laptop became a Groovebox.
That’s where Maschine 3.0 upgrade is moving into another direction, and I don’t like it. I really do / did love Machine’s simplicity next to / over Ableton’s extensive DAW capabilities. That’s why I’ve bought a Maschine+ in the first place.
When Ableton Live was launched it offered a different approach than Cubase (or other timeline-based DAWs). It’s basically just another view, because even in the Atari-days Cubase did offer original ‘parts’, copies and ghost copies, which could be used with track soloing or muting. But, the way Ableton implemented it as a separate and dedicated view vastly improved the workflow for sketching-out ideas.
With Maschine 2.0 (and now 3.0) focussing on mainly expanding desktop features, I don’t see myself upgrading and/or buying a next version of the hardware. The latter mainly because of the extremely poor support, and commitment from Product Management. Furthermore, version 3 didn’t add anything I can see as usable or easily ported to M+.
And then there’s the new, additional content library… well… uh… not ‘usable’ on Maschine Plus.
Where Akai is using a hardware-first approach developing the new MPC software, they will have less problems expanding their workflow to desktop.
This integration-part is also where NI completely missed the mark… the M+ offers two Hi-Res screens, but for some parts a lousy GUI. Same as the new Kontrol MK3, also using its screen real-estate for eye-candy purposes. Push 2 and 3 offer a much richer experience when it comes to on-device information. Not to mention the exchange of projects… the onboard WiFi module only benefits NI for delivering expansion packs over a ‘direct’ connection.
So hopefully they have the decency to release a ‘final’ version 2 update, instead of just a paid upgrade to version 3 to get the known bugs fixed. After that we as customers have a ‘free’ choice to decide wether would like to move along or enjoy M+ in standalone.
You could have both.
is the new content library not usable on M+? I thought that was the whole point of it, to have well autosampled bread and butter instruments & kits that don’t use the whole CPU/RAM?
I didn’t buy it or M3 so far given the disappointing lack of any relevant features… is a shame to hear if it doesn’t work (tho not unexpected given NI I guess)
Not currently, given it’s made for Maschine 3 and because the M+ is still awaiting Maschine 3.
Maschine+ has something like 90% new code compared to Maschine 2, so a layman like myself would expect that is the reason it hasn’t been updated yet, but perhaps it’s because of the stem support, which took time for AKAI to make it’s version compatible with MPC hardware after it had been released for use in software only. Not sure if Maschine 3 is written from scratch, but presumably not and that might be why the release isn’t as ground breaking as some people were hoping for as most of the team that wrote Maschine 2 had moved on.
If you’re canny and want a freebie, buy the new pack and contact NI complaining that it doesn’t work on the Maschine+ and they will apparently gift you a free pack that is M+ compatible. 
I agree — this is a big benefit of the midi editing updates beyond face value , which i think most people are failing to realize. Sometimes just a laptop is all you can bring (or bust out somewhere like a plane)
If you have a lot of music production hw / sw you’ll probably just use something else. But for people who primarily use maschine , it’s very helpful
I hope they will keep adding shortcuts, for things like variation and a tabbed interface. This would minimize mouse usage.
Besides that, consider the size of the library… how to get that available on the M+?
As far as I know there will be some dedicated expansions for use on the M+ (I think it was mentioned in the quarterly update).
If so, then these should be additional to the current library and the already available expansion packs from for instance Komplete (CE). Otherwise, nothing new there.