Native Instruments Maschine

Native Instruments Maschine - groove production studio comprising pad controller and software sampler/sequencer. Controller: 16 velocity-sensitive illuminated pads with aftertouch, two 256x64 pixel backlit displays, 11 rotary knobs, 41 buttons, bus powered via USB 2.0, MIDI I/O. Software: pattern-based sequencer with 64 patterns per group, two recording modes (step sequence programming and real-time recording), drum grid and piano roll editors. Sampler, more than 20 integrated effects, more than 5GB sounds with more than 15000 samples and hundreds of patterns. Standalone/VST/AU/RTAS, ASIO/Core Audio/DirectSound and WASAPI. PC/Mac

Native Instruments Maschine - groove production studio comprising pad controller and software sampler/sequencer. Controller: 16 velocity-sensitive illuminated pads with aftertouch, two 256x64 pixel backlit displays, 11 rotary knobs, 41 buttons, bus powered via USB 2.0, MIDI I/O. Software: pattern-based sequencer with 64 patterns per group, two recording modes (step sequence programming and real-time recording), drum grid and piano roll editors. Sampler, more than 20 integrated effects, more than 5GB sounds with more than 15000 samples and hundreds of patterns. Standaone/VST/AU/RTAS, ASIO/Core Audio/DirectSound and WASAPI. PC/Mac

Ok, Machine isn't really a traditional MIDI interface, but we classified it under MIDI I/O interfaces because it has no audio in/out and because other grooveboxes have built-in audio outputs (and often audio-inputs for sampling audio).

Maschine offers a software and hardware package all in/one, but you will need also a proper audio-interface in order to "play" Maschine in realtime with low-latency. You can think of Maschine therefore as a "Akai MPC style" unit, but which utilises the host computer's memory, processing, storage and audio-interface for editing, storing, sampling of sounds, creating of midi song patterns & audio-playback. Checkout the videos below for more info.

We have not reviewed this unit, but there are quite alot of reports concerning the faceplate of the unit coming "un-glued" and rising up, so that the buttons become level ith the faceplate rather than protruding above the faceplate. There are also other hardware problems being reported. So, that's something to be aware of, possible China-manufacturing problem, it seems that NI tried to keep the price down too much and consequently the quality isn't as good as it could be... let's face it, these Maschine units aren't in the old-skool Akai MPC price territory & thus it seems, aren't going to have the old-skool MPC solidity.

If you use Maschine, please add some user comments or a mini-review below & let others hear what you think of it. Cheers!