MPC5000 vs Maschine

I've been having a couple of small problems with my mpc lately (ex. note dragging and nots zeroing out at random) and its been becoming a problem with me bouncing down my tracks an so forth. regardless i still love my mpc i use it for hours every single day and more than anything i love the mpc workflow of quick add this, next track, add this, next track....etc.

but now that i have my macbook pro ive been looking into interrogating it in with more software and vsts and such (pro tools, maybe cubase or logic). and ive noticed will have to get into tracking and doing each track individually and its seem like a lot of unnecessary work.

recently my attention has been brought to NI Maschine and it looks to be amazingly similar to the mpc workflow that i love with a lot easier software interrogation piano roll features and drag and drop. and i was wondering if anyone has experience with it and the mpc. how is the workflow transition? issues? any information will help. also does it have a built in hard drive for those sounds? ive been doin reseach on youtube and goole but it being so new its hard to find exactly the right answers.

just asking for advice and thoughts ... any will help thx.

If you want a good 'interrogation' then you've started the perfect thread.

lol cant wait...

I'm sure someone sensible will answer your questions, but 'X vs Maschine' threads tend to go tits up quite quickly around here.

IF YOU WANT COMPUTER SOUNDING BEATS... YEAH. AWESOME... DO IT.

^^ See what I mean.

I've used both. I'd stick with the MPC. The maschine is appealing on paper but after I bought it I realized it wasn't for me. It's more suited for building loops, you cant really lay out a song with it prior to recording. Not to mention you need a good computer and sound-card to use it. I made some cool tracks with it, but it's been collecting dust. The drum sounds are wack in my opinion although many people actually like them. If you're making synthetic beats that don't involve sampling it's a good investment.

Maschine is just a controller and therefore does not have a HD.

And what do you mean tracking one by one with the 5000? You can track 8 tracks simultaniously with ADAT.

CoinUp! wrote:Maschine is just a controller and therefore does not have a HD.

And what do you mean tracking one by one with the 5000? You can track 8 tracks simultaniously with ADAT.

Hell with some cables and MIDI you can still track 8.


I wonder if you can track 16 with 8 audios and 8 ADATS........not that i'd want to do it that way anyway :/

I have both MPC5000 and Maschine.

Sorry to say but since I have my Maschine, I hardly use MPC5000 anymore.

Why :

1) you could say your MPC can be used to make loops untill the complete song, without touching a computer. Might be true, allthough about 99,9% of the MPC users use it to make a few loops which are then tracked to PC anyway to do the rest of the work in Pro Tools. I tend to make loops in Maschine and just drag&drop them into my DAW

2) you need a decent soundcard for Maschine. True, but don't you need this also to track 8 audiotracks (or ADAT) from your MPC ? yes you do...

3) the samples included in Maschine are not good, according to the hardcore MPC heads.
Well, consider the samples as 'demo' samples (just like to ones you get with the MPC, as a non hiphopper using MPC the Loopmasters sample folder is completely unuseable for me) ...add your own samples !! Output of Maschine will depend on what you put in it, same as MPC.
Knowing that you can add any sample from your harddisk, the size of your harddisk+attached external drives is the max size your sample library can have (read : terrabytes)
Knowing that sample memory in Maschine is dependent of memory of your laptop, you can imagine the 192 Mb of MPC is a joke (read : in Maschine you have Gbytes of 'sample memory')

3) in conjunction with a DAW, the Drag & drop (perfect cut audioloops or MIDI data) is much quicker then 'tracking down' the tracks from MPC...drag & drop is done by pushing one mousebutton, drag the loop to your DAW, release mousebutton, child's play, super fast, and sample accurate loops no further editing needed

4) apart from being able to control the Maschine software, the Maschine controller can be used as Midi controller : every knob, button etc can be used to send midi which -via a sperate application- can be customized completely to your needs. The display also shows the names of the knobs/parameters/etc.

5) if you want the Hardware MPC feeling ("I don't want to look at my computer screen" ) you can just close your laptop your Maschine is attached to, everything you need can be seen on the display of Maschine, computer screen is an 'extra', not a 'must' as opposed to what many people think.

6) any parameter can be automated in Maschine with one touch of a knob.

7) portability : my Maschine runs perfectly even with the internal soundcard of my Macbook : I can put the Maschine controller + laptop in one (record) bag which I can then take (by bycicle) to my friend's place and I have almost a complete studio solution in one bag...I would never take my MPC5000 on my bike

8 ) update : after not 1 year the Maschine software got a serious update...probably new ones will come expanding the possibilities of Maschine .I encountered not one bug myself so not even bugfixes needed...MPC 5000 is just dead in that aspect (it comes with bugs, OS 2.0 slows the Gui down, support and new updates not existing)

Let's say that when you would still be recording on a tapedeck and do not have a PC in your studio, then the MPC 5000 would be a better solution against buying a soundcard+Maschine+laptop

But as almost everyone is using a PC anyway, I don't see the need of making it yourself difficult by using MPC instead of Maschine.

Again : I have both so I know I can compare things and of course I only point out the things that are interesting for me personally.
Yes, MPC 5000 has a synth inside and Maschine has not. I own enough synths and never ever use the poor synth of MPC so for me it's no issue.
MPC has 4 Midi out's and Maschine only 1 : I use a 8 in/out Midinterface to drive my studio so I don't care about the 4 out of MPC .
MPC has 99 tracks , Maschine has 6 groups*16 tracks = only 96 tracks ...99,9% of the youtube 'real' hiphoppers using MPC hardly use 8 tracks in one song, so why bother ?

I'm sure MPC has advantages over Maschine which I would love to know about from people who own(ed) both.

But it's always the same : MPC owners bashing the Maschine/PC users ...I would LOVE to have some reasons to power on my MPC 5000 as it is basically a dust collector right now...but all the reasons I read untill now just come from ignorace about what Maschine really is...I hope I'm wrong

I also would like to add that there is a big overlap between MPC and Maschine, but they have also functions they have not in common. I'm sure some of these features only had in MPC might be THE ones some people here really need so MPC is the only option, and the same goes for Maschine.

thx seiko,

quick question, i kno one thing for me on the mpc and not having to deal with the computer is no latency issues no delay or anything. is this a problem with maschine? I use a two month old Macbook Pro if that helps.

seiko wrote:I have both MPC5000 and Maschine.

Sorry to say but since I have my Maschine, I hardly use MPC5000 anymore.

Why :

1) you could say your MPC can be used to make loops untill the complete song, without touching a computer. Might be true, allthough about 99,9% of the MPC users use it to make a few loops which are then tracked to PC anyway to do the rest of the work in Pro Tools. I tend to make loops in Maschine and just drag&drop them into my DAW

2) you need a decent soundcard for Maschine. True, but don't you need this also to track 8 audiotracks (or ADAT) from your MPC ? yes you do...

3) the samples included in Maschine are not good, according to the hardcore MPC heads.
Well, consider the samples as 'demo' samples (just like to ones you get with the MPC, as a non hiphopper using MPC the Loopmasters sample folder is completely unuseable for me) ...add your own samples !! Output of Maschine will depend on what you put in it, same as MPC.
Knowing that you can add any sample from your harddisk, the size of your harddisk+attached external drives is the max size your sample library can have (read : terrabytes)
Knowing that sample memory in Maschine is dependent of memory of your laptop, you can imagine the 192 Mb of MPC is a joke (read : in Maschine you have Gbytes of 'sample memory')

3) in conjunction with a DAW, the Drag & drop (perfect cut audioloops or MIDI data) is much quicker then 'tracking down' the tracks from MPC...drag & drop is done by pushing one mousebutton, drag the loop to your DAW, release mousebutton, child's play, super fast, and sample accurate loops no further editing needed

4) apart from being able to control the Maschine software, the Maschine controller can be used as Midi controller : every knob, button etc can be used to send midi which -via a sperate application- can be customized completely to your needs. The display also shows the names of the knobs/parameters/etc.

5) if you want the Hardware MPC feeling ("I don't want to look at my computer screen" ) you can just close your laptop your Maschine is attached to, everything you need can be seen on the display of Maschine, computer screen is an 'extra', not a 'must' as opposed to what many people think.

6) any parameter can be automated in Maschine with one touch of a knob.

7) portability : my Maschine runs perfectly even with the internal soundcard of my Macbook : I can put the Maschine controller + laptop in one (record) bag which I can then take (by bycicle) to my friend's place and I have almost a complete studio solution in one bag...I would never take my MPC5000 on my bike

8 ) update : after not 1 year the Maschine software got a serious update...probably new ones will come expanding the possibilities of Maschine .I encountered not one bug myself so not even bugfixes needed...MPC 5000 is just dead in that aspect (it comes with bugs, OS 2.0 slows the Gui down, support and new updates not existing)

Let's say that when you would still be recording on a tapedeck and do not have a PC in your studio, then the MPC 5000 would be a better solution against buying a soundcard+Maschine+laptop

But as almost everyone is using a PC anyway, I don't see the need of making it yourself difficult by using MPC instead of Maschine.

Again : I have both so I know I can compare things and of course I only point out the things that are interesting for me personally.
Yes, MPC 5000 has a synth inside and Maschine has not. I own enough synths and never ever use the poor synth of MPC so for me it's no issue.
MPC has 4 Midi out's and Maschine only 1 : I use a 8 in/out Midinterface to drive my studio so I don't care about the 4 out of MPC .
MPC has 99 tracks , Maschine has 6 groups*16 tracks = only 96 tracks ...99,9% of the youtube 'real' hiphoppers using MPC hardly use 8 tracks in one song, so why bother ?

I'm sure MPC has advantages over Maschine which I would love to know about from people who own(ed) both.

But it's always the same : MPC owners bashing the Maschine/PC users ...I would LOVE to have some reasons to power on my MPC 5000 as it is basically a dust collector right now...but all the reasons I read untill now just come from ignorace about what Maschine really is...I hope I'm wrong

I also would like to add that there is a big overlap between MPC and Maschine, but they have also functions they have not in common. I'm sure some of these features only had in MPC might be THE ones some people here really need so MPC is the only option, and the same goes for Maschine.

lol could agree with everything.
minus i like the synth on the mpc 5000 but you really have to mess with it...

i m gonna cop also the maschine but keep my mpc for offline beatmaking.
but im g onna wait till namm to cop a maschine....

i hope after the apc & ableton maybe they also drop a hybrid groovebox together...hardware akai and software based on ableton live engine...

A100Drumz wrote:thx seiko,

quick question, i kno one thing for me on the mpc and not having to deal with the computer is no latency issues no delay or anything. is this a problem with maschine? I use a two month old Macbook Pro if that helps.

Basically if you export your loops from Maschine or drag and drop them into DAW, there is no latency.

If you mean latency as in : latency between the moment you hit a pad and the moment you hear sound : this depends on your CPU, audiosettings and soundcard. I have a 3 year old Macbook, 2,4 Gz/2 Gb so nothing fancy and a Audio 8 Native INstruments soundcard and I have no audible latency.

The pro on an MPC is that everything is in one box so it will work, as where as with Maschine you are also dependent on your computer, it s settings and the soundcard (more chance on problems allthough in my setup I have no problem whatsoever, even my built in soundcard is good enough)

@Seiko; You are getting repetetive! Shut the F#CK UP! Yes we know with Maschine/Computer/Logic you can edit quicker with most things. How about the fun factor? Inspiration? Satisfaction? Did I mention how fun it is to work with any MPC?

If it's mpc5000 vs Maschine then the mpc5000 is superior.
But looking at them seperatly there both fun to play with and combined they have options wich will go quicker on the one or the other.

And they both have flaws.

In the beginning Maschine was basicly worthless cause it didn't even had any midi came with an later update.

And i tought of it a also being like an sampler, but it's an software synth/sampler with a dedicated controller. Nothing more nothing less, and with a macbook pro it will run fine just don't expect it to be an mpc cause it just ain't.

In the end i gave the maschine away for free cause in my way off working using the daw strictly for midi and running my samples out of a sampler by midi the mpc just sounds so
much better as when i runned it thru the daw and a souncard.

So if u expect it to be an mpc it will dissapoint.
If ya expect it to be another fun toy it won't