Hi, A bit over a year ago I asked "What is your favourite drum programme and why?", on this forum. Well if anyone is considering Maschine by Native Instruments, my advice is go for it. It is my favourite now because it does just about everthing. Having a physical interface makes programming beats easier. There are a great collection of sounds. Most of all it interfaces with Logic beautifully. To put it in perspective I also have the following drum programs, and Maschine is still the best: Battery 3, Ultrabeat, Stylus RMX, EXS24 and EZdrummer lite. I hope someone finds this helpful.

Hi Darren, Thanks for the feedback! What makes it easier to create patterns in Maschine than UB? Cheers Rounik

Hi Rounik, I'm glad you asked. For me its Maschines physical interface. It can be put into a Stepped sequence mode, and individual sounds can be turned on and off from the pads as it steps through. It's like having a physical matrix editor. I find the tactile knobs make me more likely to tweak things. With a mouse you can only do one thing at a time, but with the physical interface things can be reversed, tuned or otherwise effected while playing. It can also be played as a normal drum pad. The software has an amazing number of sounds, and they can be auditioned during playback, by kit or sound, this makes finding the perfect Kick drum a lot faster. The only thing missing from Maschine that I used in UB is the ability to drag a Midi file to the arrange window. What it has instead is the ability to drag an audio file there instead, or record the physical midi out.

Thanks Darren! (I knew you were just itching to talk more about Maschine ;) It sounds great! That's one downside with UB - not being able to build patterns or interact with the step sequencer in UB using a MIDI Controller. So in terms of the sound library of Maschine, in what genres of music is it strongest? :) Rounik

Hi Rounik, The drum kit sounds are divided into Digital, Analogue and Acoustic. The analogue bank is the biggest, with several versions of 808, 909 and a heap of other analogue samples. For this reason I would say that Maschine's strongest Genres would be Electronica, D&B and Hip Hop. There are some really nice acoustic kits though, some of which have the most realistic cymbal, snare and hat samples I have. So there is certainly latitude for Rock, Jazz etc. I should have mentioned that I also have a Roland HPD15 and SPDS, and I still prefer the Maschine for most things. The HPD15 is a lot of fun to play though.

Thanks Darren! Now... if only Santa would remember me this year ;-) btw, do you know if the hardware controller that comes bundled with maschine can be used with any other software? Are the pads and buttons mappable in Logic? Do they send standard CC messages? Cheers Rounik

Hi, Yes, Really well actually. I just pressed shift control on the controller, and it has gone into midi mode. The windows above the knobs display the cc value eg. cc20. The buttons above the windows are similarly labelled with the cc value. There are a number of preloaded midi templates, that inclubd things like Battery 3, Logic Control (cc Controlers above), GM Midi and several others. You can also make your own templates, but it's still a new toy and I haven't explored that yet. For the DJ's it can control Tractor Pro. Take care Darren

Sounds great Darren! Oh dear... I feel a case of gear lust coming on... I was going to get an Akai LPD8, now you've got me thinking of Maschine & LPD8 ;-) Rounik

Hey I have an Akai LPK25 for my laptop, and it's a good quality unit, so I assume the LPD8 is too. I think either/both would be a wise purchase.

Maschine now includes midi drag and drop. I think that it is now officially the best drum plug in there is. Just my opinion, but I doubt there is an other with more features.