Renaissance Vs. Beat Thang

Yall are right that in the end it's about making beats, and you can make beats on anything. I don't ever post anywhere on gear that isn't out, in fact, one of the annoyances of looking up people's impressions on gear is wading through the threads written before the product ever came out.

Anyway I do have an update on the BT and I think it is important to know. First of, below is a beat I made with the Beat Thang Sat night after rehearsing with some cats. It's not the greatest, but it showed that it could get the job done, I would have had to export the tracks to get better compression from my gear, so as it is, warts and all, whatever. As I returned the BT yesterday it will never get polished. In making this beat Saturday night, 3 separate times the CPU would freak out and BT would freeze up and just shut off. All the bugginess of software is there. Once I had 7 tracks going and would play the pattern while editing effects and such I would get digital glitches all over the place. This is a crying shame because the live export function would let me mess with effects, but digital glitches would crackle, pop, flange and delay all over the place. This made the box useless, maybe I got a faulty one, I don't know, but the whole point of hardware is getting away from such software glichiness. As I tried exporting a new mix yesterday the BT froze up, wouldn't even turn off as I tried to save my export. The export never got saved, I packed it up and exchanged it for a Dell XPS 8300 with 12 gigs of RAM, for $949.00.. Weird how that works out.

audiounity111 wrote:Yall are right that in the end it's about making beats, and you can make beats on anything. I don't ever post anywhere on gear that isn't out, in fact, one of the annoyances of looking up people's impressions on gear is wading through the threads written before the product ever came out.

Anyway I do have an update on the BT and I think it is important to know. First of, below is a beat I made with the Beat Thang Sat night after rehearsing with some cats. It's not the greatest, but it showed that it could get the job done, I would have had to export the tracks to get better compression from my gear, so as it is, warts and all, whatever. As I returned the BT yesterday it will never get polished. In making this beat Saturday night, 3 separate times the CPU would freak out and BT would freeze up and just shut off. All the bugginess of software is there. Once I had 7 tracks going and would play the pattern while editing effects and such I would get digital glitches all over the place. This is a crying shame because the live export function would let me mess with effects, but digital glitches would crackle, pop, flange and delay all over the place. This made the box useless, maybe I got a faulty one, I don't know, but the whole point of hardware is getting away from such software glichiness. As I tried exporting a new mix yesterday the BT froze up, wouldn't even turn off as I tried to save my export. The export never got saved, I packed it up and exchanged it for a Dell XPS 8300 with 12 gigs of RAM, for $949.00.. Weird how that works out.

Wow! That sucks! Does it perform poorly in standalone mode detached from the computer or does it still glitch?

Also, you mentioned 12GB Ram, were you using the 64-bit version of the software, since 32-bit limits you to 4GB ram? Or does it not have a 64-bit version? This sounds like the area causing your issue!

It was glitching in standalone mode. I never hooked it up to the computer as I didn't open the CD that came with it since I didn't want to have any return issues. The only thing I had hooked up to the BT was a usb stick that held my piano samples. But it shut off by itself once when I first got it too (with nothing hooked up) and at the time I thought that maybe I had accidently somehow hit the power switch. (and maybe my unit was just faulty, I haven't heard of this issue from the unit before, but then again, I heard almost nothing specific about this unit before I got it, from a true user point of view..) I decided to upgrade my computer instead and now have the XPS. I was running a 4 year old XPS laptop before. I have Maschine but the laptop had latency issues once I started getting beyond simple beats so Maschine has been gathering dust for close to 3 years. I'm hoping the new XPS with 3.4 ghz i7 will add some juice and make Maschine workable. I'd rather get an MPC again but for the price, since I already have so much invested on the software side (I have a Roland Cakewalk VS-700 interface and console as well..) it makes sense to beef up my processing power first. Eventually I'd like to get a 5000 or a 4000, but in the meantime, with all this new horsepower, I hope Maschine will do the job latency wise. To get a better sound I plan to run it out of my outs back in to go through my ad and pres. I could also borrow my boys DBX compressor to add umph.

dam thats pretty bad u dont wanna spend a a g on some hardware and have it not do basic shit like export waves.

its a shame cos the build quality looks good but just lil cosmetic things that look gaudy but obviously there is some software bugzs.

audiounity111 wrote:It was glitching in standalone mode. I never hooked it up to the computer as I didn't open the CD that came with it since I didn't want to have any return issues. The only thing I had hooked up to the BT was a usb stick that held my piano samples. But it shut off by itself once when I first got it too (with nothing hooked up) and at the time I thought that maybe I had accidently somehow hit the power switch. (and maybe my unit was just faulty, I haven't heard of this issue from the unit before, but then again, I heard almost nothing specific about this unit before I got it, from a true user point of view..) I decided to upgrade my computer instead and now have the XPS. I was running a 4 year old XPS laptop before. I have Maschine but the laptop had latency issues once I started getting beyond simple beats so Maschine has been gathering dust for close to 3 years. I'm hoping the new XPS with 3.4 ghz i7 will add some juice and make Maschine workable. I'd rather get an MPC again but for the price, since I already have so much invested on the software side (I have a Roland Cakewalk VS-700 interface and console as well..) it makes sense to beef up my processing power first. Eventually I'd like to get a 5000 or a 4000, but in the meantime, with all this new horsepower, I hope Maschine will do the job latency wise. To get a better sound I plan to run it out of my outs back in to go through my ad and pres. I could also borrow my boys DBX compressor to add umph.

I don't have any latency issues with my Maschine, but I see you were probably using it since os 1.0 or similar. I came in at 1.7. My one computer in the living room is a Dell Inspiron 530 with a 2.5GHz core 2 quad and 4GB ram. Plays Maschine just fine with no latency issues. I do get slight pops and clicks though when using more than 2 virtual instrument instances. Mainly because I am limited to the 32 bit app since all my VI's are 32-bit, and NI hasn't given us a 64-bit bridge. Wouldn't really matter anyway on this computer since 4GB is the max I can put in it. But in my Studio, I have a PC that I built that has a 2.4GHz quad core overclocked to 3.4GHz and 16GB ram. So having the 64-bit bridge would benefit me a lot when I work in the studio. Hopefully they add one!

Yeah, I walked into guitar center the other day and one of my friends works the computer audio department. I told him about my Maschine issue so he let me try theirs on a good Mac. I tried to get it to have issues like I experienced and I couldn't, so I put it down to the processing power on my laptop. Hopefully the new computer will do it's thing. Do you mean you have issue in loading 32 bit plugins in 64bit Maschine (because of the lack of bridge)?

Edit: I see where you said all your VI's are 32 bit.

jpeg wrote:dam thats pretty bad u dont wanna spend a a g on some hardware and have it not do basic **** like export waves.

its a shame cos the build quality looks good but just lil cosmetic things that look gaudy but obviously there is some software bugzs.

My first export went fine, but my live export where I did things like soloed tracks, turned effects on and off, etc. crashed it. Maybe if I tried again it would have worked, but I didn't want to deal with it. I do not consider it reliable for live use. And the glitches, I mean digital glitches like you get when you load a plugin on a computer that is already maxing out. Like the sound skips and almost get a machine gun flange effect before the cpu catches up. Maybe my unit was defective but it seems like a software issue. BT definitely does not like you messing with too many parameters while the pattern is playing, in my case. Also, unless I missed something, once you turn on an effect like freak everything gets routed to it. If you lower the track send to freak to 0, you lose all sound for that track. If you put on a phaser it effects all tracks, no way to get a dry track through.

I guess its official.

Sweetwater carries the Beat Thang now http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/BeatThang/


Since Ren is coming out Q3 this year, I think I may pick this up. Looks cool.

^ When dudes first posts are like that the red flag goes a flying

poundaproblem wrote:^ When dudes first posts are like that the red flag goes a flying

Word! Random as ****!

poundaproblem wrote:^ When dudes first posts are like that the red flag goes a flying

which is understandable , but I just saw it on Sweetwater and wanted to share. I couldve posted a new thread, but I put it here out of respect for the community. I actually have been a looong time MPC user and reader of this forum, if thats worth anything. No red flags only white ones

EmuSp1200YamahaRs7000 wrote:

poundaproblem wrote:^ When dudes first posts are like that the red flag goes a flying

which is understandable , but I just saw it on Sweetwater and wanted to share. I couldve posted a new thread, but I put it here out of respect for the community. I actually have been a looong time MPC user and reader of this forum, if thats worth anything. No red flags only white ones

So, you telling me you've been using MPC's for such a long time and reading this forum for such a long time, yet you just now signed up TODAY just to post about Beat Thang?

DJ Hellfire wrote:

EmuSp1200YamahaRs7000 wrote:

poundaproblem wrote:^ When dudes first posts are like that the red flag goes a flying

which is understandable , but I just saw it on Sweetwater and wanted to share. I couldve posted a new thread, but I put it here out of respect for the community. I actually have been a looong time MPC user and reader of this forum, if thats worth anything. No red flags only white ones

So, you telling me you've been using MPC's for such a long time and reading this forum for such a long time, yet you just now signed up TODAY just to post about Beat Thang?

why not?! i hope thats not offensive..... i also use the maschine sine it first came out and I have yet to sign up on their forums. also i may add that i never used a beat thang. also if i offended anyone with my post, please accept my most humble apologies.

EmuSp1200YamahaRs7000 wrote:

DJ Hellfire wrote:
So, you telling me you've been using MPC's for such a long time and reading this forum for such a long time, yet you just now signed up TODAY just to post about Beat Thang?

why not?! i hope thats not offensive..... i also use the maschine, but i never used a beat thang. also if i offended anyone with my post, please accept my most humble apologies.

Nah, you didn't offend us. But the Beat Kangs are known for spamming and advertising around here!

DJ Hellfire wrote:

EmuSp1200YamahaRs7000 wrote:

DJ Hellfire wrote:
So, you telling me you've been using MPC's for such a long time and reading this forum for such a long time, yet you just now signed up TODAY just to post about Beat Thang?

why not?! i hope thats not offensive..... i also use the maschine, but i never used a beat thang. also if i offended anyone with my post, please accept my most humble apologies.

Nah, you didn't offend us. But the Beat Kangs are known for spamming and advertising around here!

oh wow! thats crazed..... anyways i peeped your site. you have some good tunes. the quality is warm and punchy, real nice!