It’s easily transportable and you don’t need to plug in power or headphones etc so very fast to set up, sure its not ‘just’ a computer,…its a complete studio! Dedicated touch sensitive encoders and instrument controls, great velocity and AT sensitive pads (with release), 8 x CV in/out, 2 in 4 out, audio interface with good pre-amps and low latency (I can record my guitar in directly and there are guitar fx and even a tuner), 4 midi, USB and USB host (If I plug in my USB 1820 I get 18 in 10 out) , decent bar monitor speaker and battery for portable use. That’s a lot of studio gear for the £850 I paid, lots of uses and lots of locations…sometimes in the garden, sometimes sequencing my Eurorack (and recording the output) sometimes a guitar multitrack recorder andsometimes even just a drum machine with great pads!
So, by the time you have an ipad with a decent USB audio interface and maybe a midi interface and a CV out interface (?) and a decent velocity and AT Pad controller (now you will probably need a USB hub) you have a nest of stuff and power supplies and the iPads lovely ‘that device is no longer recognised’ issues…iPad is great on its own, start adding the other stuff and it becomes a bit of a nightmare.
Pretty sure the days of “overpriced apple computers” is behind us unless your head is in the sand and have a bias against apple lol. $300 iPad gets you a lot for your money.
Either way, this is a Maschine+ thread not an MPC thread so we should stay on topic.
My point is, you’re paying $1400 for a computer with 16GB of storage and 2GB of RAM. You could get a controller and an iPad for much cheaper and better specs than that and have a lighter and more portable setup with a better touchscreen. Then you leave the stuff you don’t need to be portable with you at home, like a CV sequencer and audio interface. And then you can get whatever plugins that you want to buy for significantly cheaper (and better sounding).
If you have nothing the MPC Live is a good value if you can put up with its tedious workflow but if you have other gear and a DAW I wouldn’t recommend it, at least in the specific purpose of a portable piece of gear. It’s just too laughably large.
The intial point was Mashcine + was portable than the Live.
Something that has no battery and even speakers can’t be considered more portable something which has those things and was made to be used almost anywhere.
Mac Mini M1 is a fantastic little computer. It’s only when you start moving up their line then they are overpriced. The price of their ram, storage and accessories are ridiculous though. I keep reading that you can buy a laptop etc but for the people that have MPCs, Maschine + etc we are not looking for this solution. We just wanted a stand-alone box with a specific workflow that we enjoy using. I paid £1000 for my + and it is one of my favourite pieces of gear, no regrets whatsoever buying it. If I can sit on the couch with it on my lap then that is portable music making for me.
People like us who use Maschine+, MPC, Circuits, we dont want to use a laptop/computer at a desk after working there all day.
For some reason many seem to think Apple isnt overpriced.
Literally most comparable model of PC will be cheaper.
Not to mention, most software baring Logic runs on PC too.
Unrelated but most were mad at TE pricing OP1 Field so high.
They just stole from the Apple playbook.
I use an XTPower battery with my M+ which makes it portable enough for me. As a bonus, the same battery also works with MPC One.
I had an original Maschine controller that I never used. Same goes for Push 2. It was always easier to just grab the mouse and keyboard rather than learn how to use the controller. Now that I’ve stepped away from the computer and I’m forced to learn the hardware … I am really appreciating the workflow and how quick it is to get ideas down. Love bringing the M+ to other parts of the house/garden. If I had to bring a laptop as well, I probably wouldn’t bother.
They are the full sound engine but the parameters are set up as macros: you have lots of control but you don’t have full control.
There’s not really a piano roll, there’s the step sequencer which is the closest thing, the computer version of Maschine has a piano roll but if that’s what you’re looking for just use a DAW.
It can be used with the computer just like the other Maschines.
On computer they have their standard vst interface, so you can tweak them as if they’re loaded in a daw. On maschine in standalone mode you can only use some of the NI vst, reaktor, monark, fm8, massive, raum and you can only edit the macro you previouslyset up in controller mode.
you can tweak every parameter of synths like monark, so you can also do sounds from scratch.
It‘s a bit tedious, since you have to step through the pages, but doable with simpler subtractive synths. I do it all the time with Juno and SH101 emulations…
On deep synths like fm8, massive etc there are too many parameters to have access to al of them from the hardware.
You can still tweek their presets quite a lot
As an Elektronaut, there’s no denying that the sound design is a bit reminiscent of the Overbridge plugins.
If you take the simpler NI synths as a basis. Only with the reverse history.
The Overbridge plugins have given me a better overview of the synthesizer architecture of my Elektron devices,
which in turn gave me more options for sound design, like now with the M+.
This is where the plugin versions of the included NI synthesizer give me the same positive experience as my bridged Elektron devices.
Unfortunately, the UI on the M+, or the plugins themselves, are simply not designed to work with few control elements. They just didn’t think of that. From today’s perspective, that seems a bit like a bad compromise.
This is where I personally see the most catching up to do, along with various other things that would justify a standalone hardware version.
With the machine (software), I also get a full overview and, if necessary, full control over the projects created in M+. Unfortunately not in real time.
But at least a feature that I would like to have with Overbridge.
In summary, I would say yes, you can use the M+ in “standalone” mode to design sounds “from scratch”, unfortunately with some significant drawbacks. But you get a neat solution for sound design in your DAW through the NI plugin versions.
i prefer M+ so M+ is better 