What advantages does the Mpc Ren offer over Maschine

This thread, again?

How many more times...

KevWestBeats wrote:My workflow will pretty much consists of Live, Reason and Mpc/Maschine. I miss the aspect of working on a drum machine and MPDs and Kong/Drum Racks regardless of how powerful they are just don't cut it for the hands on aspect of programming drums.

If this is your workflow then you probably might want to serious consider the Ren, not Maschine, and also not the MPC Studio. You have to keep in mind that the Maschine (and MPC Studio) will use your current audio interface so you are limited to using all 3 of your apps in a single host. With the Ren, you have a secondary interface. So you can run both Live and Ren in standalone mode and route the audio from the Ren's outputs into your main interface for monitoring or tracking. And you can insert Reason in Live in rewire and use Reason and Live (3rd party VST instruments) both as sound modules for the MPC. You can't do this with the MPC in plugin mode (nor Maschine) because they don't send midi out in plugin mode. So having the audio interface the Ren has, you can use physical midi to use your other apps as sound module running Ren separately and still have audio from the Ren. You can also run Reason and Ren both in standalone mode and use Reason as your sound module. You can do the same with Pro Tools and Ren using Pro Tools as a sound module. Or any other DAW. So the Ren having the interface, which a lot of people can't see the value in for some reason, is a lot more flexible.


As far as other useful comparisons that might help your decision, one is the hardware feel, specifically the buttons. I personally don't like Maschine's "squishy" button feel and prefer the MPC's more "clicky" buttons. However, these clicky buttons on MPC's tend to break after some abuse. But Akai says they fixed that issue with the Ren. I believe the Studio also has the squishy buttons.

Maschine has MUCH BETTER gain staging for mixing. Maschine's gain system is setup like every tradition DAW and mixer having a +12 to -∞ structure, with 0 as unity as well as the default level for all pads and master fader. The MPC has 0-100 gain set up with all pads/tracks/master set at 100, leaving absolutely no headroom to increase low volume sounds. A lot of people complain that Maschine has no gain meters for the individual pads, but you really don't need it. You can simply just solo a desired pad and view the main volume meter to use as a gain meter. As long as your main master fader is set to 0, you will get an accurate gain reading of your pad. So in the aspect, Maschine is much easier and better to properly mix with as well as doing a simple mastering to your beat. Even though the MPC has gain meters per track, everything being set at max volume is terrible for mixing.

Maschine's nature of a pad being equal to a track is another thing that makes mixing in Maschine quicker and easier. Being that Maschine technically doesn't use tracks, if I adjust any pad parameter it get's applied to that sound in any sequence (or scene) that pad is used in. The MPC uses tracks, so if I make a track fader movement, I have to manually make the same adjustment per sequence. So if my beat is 10 sequences, I have to move that fader 10 times. Alternatively in the MPC, you can adjust pad volume which will affect every sequence, but your all your sounds aren't always in the same program so you'd have to jump around a lot. On Maschine I can do an entire beat, including samples and VST instruments using a single group so that when I mix it, all of my sounds/tracks are in the same view. Also, with the MPC, if you start moving pad volumes, it will affect the volume of that pad going into any plugins you have inserted on the track. So if you have a compressor inserted on the track that pad is on, changing the volume of that pad is now going to affect your compressor settings beings now you have lower input. You can insert that compressor on the pad itself, but then your audio will be forced to go out of a sub mix instead of your track mix, which is a whole other issue with MPC.

MPC has much more programs to load more sounds.

MPC has global program edit that allows you to edit multiple pad parameters at once. Maschine doesn't have this. To change the volume of every pad in a group on Maschine, you have to do them one by one.

MPC has more physical midi ports, both in and out.

Maschine allows you to use vintage mode per pad. MPC only allows you to use it on the entire beat. Maschine also remembers your vintage mode setting. MPC doesn't. Maschine's SP1200 mode sounds better than MPC's. MPC's MPC60 mode sounds better than Maschine's. This is my opinion.

MPC has swing with note repeat. I believe Maschine still doesn't have this.

Maschine is 64 bit.

MPC uses pad banks to navigate samples 17 and up. So if I want to quickly jump from sample 12 on Bank A to sample 61 on Bank D, I just quickly hit the Bank D button to jump from A to D. Maschine uses an octave system that you have to scroll in order. To put this in MPC perspective, if I wanted to go from A to D, you have to scroll through B and C. Can't just quickly jump around! And on Maschine you have to go into a separate screen to accomplish this while the MPC has dedicated buttons. And it's the same situation for accession different octaves of an instrument with the pads!

Maschine has drag and drop to DAW, but I never use it. I prefer to track in real time. Also, Maschine doesn't apply vintage mode when using drag and drop, from what I've read.

Regarding tracking in real time, Maschine gives you twice the amount of virtual outputs as the MPC.

I think as far as how much can be done from the hardware versus what has to be done in the software, they are pretty much equal.

As you can see, both pieces are highly neck and neck. It's really something you need to have experience with both to decide which one you prefer.

"Maschine has MUCH BETTER gain staging for mixing. Maschine's gain system is setup like every tradition DAW and mixer having a +12 to -∞ structure, with 0 as unity as well as the default level for all pads and master fader. The MPC has 0-100 gain set up with all pads/tracks/master set at 100, leaving absolutely no headroom to increase low volume sounds. A lot of people complain that Maschine has no gain meters for the individual pads, but you really don't need it. You can simply just solo a desired pad and view the main volume meter to use as a gain meter. As long as your main master fader is set to 0, you will get an accurate gain reading of your pad. So in the aspect, Maschine is much easier and better to properly mix with as well as doing a simple mastering to your beat. Even though the MPC has gain meters per track, everything being set at max volume is terrible for mixing."

Agreed the default 100 is nuts. HEADROOM AKAI HEADROOM!
Change the defaults! Noone mixes starting from everything set flat out
G

Danny wrote:NI could of had this dead and buried ages ago if the just straight out just copied the mpc as close as legally possible. then added all their extra bells and whistles. i know some say they probably did but they didn't quite nail it that's why got a this back and forth all the time.

I agree.

foge1 wrote:"Maschine has MUCH BETTER gain staging for mixing. Maschine's gain system is setup like every tradition DAW and mixer having a +12 to -∞ structure, with 0 as unity as well as the default level for all pads and master fader. The MPC has 0-100 gain set up with all pads/tracks/master set at 100, leaving absolutely no headroom to increase low volume sounds. A lot of people complain that Maschine has no gain meters for the individual pads, but you really don't need it. You can simply just solo a desired pad and view the main volume meter to use as a gain meter. As long as your main master fader is set to 0, you will get an accurate gain reading of your pad. So in the aspect, Maschine is much easier and better to properly mix with as well as doing a simple mastering to your beat. Even though the MPC has gain meters per track, everything being set at max volume is terrible for mixing."

Agreed the default 100 is nuts. HEADROOM AKAI HEADROOM!
Change the defaults! Noone mixes starting from everything set flat out
G

Yes Akai needs to improve their mixer gain structure but I wouldn't look at that as a game changer to not cop a MPC Ren. One thing that you could do to compensate for this deficiency is to use a simple volume plugin (like free ones from Reaper's ReaJS or GGain from GVST), I use them alot even when working in my Daw. They are very CPU light. The reason that I use them with my Daw is because I don't like to have my faders all over the place when mixing and the way that faders are setup in Daws you have greater flexibility to make small incremental changes (during mixing) when the fader is set close to 0 (unity gain). So since the Ren has the ability to add insert effects at the pad (sound) level then it is very easy to use a volume plugin to compensate for low level sounds. In my opinion I think the Ren has a bigger disadvantage in its sound shaping capabilities, drag and drop, and stability (which should be fixed in 1.3).

nobledru wrote:I never used the maschine but not being able to have different swing settings per track and drum layering is a deal breaker.

You're obviously misinformed but it's understandable since you've never used Maschine. Maschine has independent swing settings per sound/group/master and it works in realtime. MPC's swing, on the other hand, is very simplistic and it's just lumped together with grid and quantize. There's really no comparison in terms of power and flexibility. Maschine's swing even has a Cycle feature which changes on what intervals that swing is applied by affecting what note positions get shifted. Also, Maschine has multiple ways of easily layering drums.

DJ Hellfire wrote: Maschine doesn't apply vintage mode when using drag and drop, from what I've read.

What you read was wrong.

emptysea wrote:

nobledru wrote:I never used the maschine but not being able to have different swing settings per track and drum layering is a deal breaker.

You're obviously misinformed but it's understandable since you've never used Maschine. Maschine has independent swing settings per sound/group/master and it works in realtime. MPC's swing, on the other hand, is very simplistic and it's just lumped together with grid and quantize. There's really no comparison in terms of power and flexibility. Maschine's swing even has a Cycle feature which changes on what intervals that swing is applied by affecting what note positions get shifted. Also, Maschine has multiple ways of easily layering drums.

I think they are referring to having say a kick, snare, and hi hats on the same track (maybe you're using a Rex file) and maybe you want the snare to have no swing but you want the kick to swing differently than the hi hats, you can do this in the Ren but not in Maschine. Maschine is great but the swing is not intuitive and difficult to get the desired results.

Jonespnice1 wrote:I think they are referring to having say a kick, snare, and hi hats on the same track (maybe you're using a Rex file) and maybe you want the snare to have no swing but you want the kick to swing differently than the hi hats, you can do this in the Ren but not in Maschine.

Again, that's not true at all. It's actually the opposite. Maschine has separate independent swing settings per sound/group/master.

emptysea wrote:

Jonespnice1 wrote:I think they are referring to having say a kick, snare, and hi hats on the same track (maybe you're using a Rex file) and maybe you want the snare to have no swing but you want the kick to swing differently than the hi hats, you can do this in the Ren but not in Maschine.

Again, that's not true at all. It's actually the opposite. Maschine has separate independent swing settings per sound/group/master.

I think emptysea allays comes with a very valid point.

Today i opened my mail box and just discovered price reduction about komplete 8 and komplete 8 ultimateA, actually abig price reduction (like 30/).

Do you know what probably means?

E

So the 26th of march is coming out komplete 9...whith reaktor 6, battery 4, fm9 new massive and new absynth...and a new update (1.9) about maschine.

Maybe im just dreaming, but i guess this is gonna be embarassing for akai...it is like david **** with goliath.

Dont get my wrong i love my 2500 with jjos xl, but if wasnt for jj i would trow it in the trash bin times ago.

Akai can try to ride with ni for a limited period but in the long run akais resources are gonna finish.

Anyway if they drop an os 3 for the 5000 i will buy it

emptysea wrote:

Jonespnice1 wrote:I think they are referring to having say a kick, snare, and hi hats on the same track (maybe you're using a Rex file) and maybe you want the snare to have no swing but you want the kick to swing differently than the hi hats, you can do this in the Ren but not in Maschine.

Again, that's not true at all. It's actually the opposite. Maschine has separate independent swing settings per sound/group/master.

Yes I understand that but what if you have a drum instrument (with several drum sounds on one single sound slot) and since you only have real time swing it makes it impossible to have different swing vaules for the different drum hits that are on the "same" sound slot. I know you also have group/master swing but using that will affect more than just that one individual sound slot. If there is a way to do this then please explain.

Ok this is my prediction:

Around the half of february is coming out 1.9 with multicore and full midi implementation (multitimbral) and other updates request for a long time.

At least ni wants pair with renaissance 1.3 about features.

27th of march is gonna com out komplete 9 which will have the updates mentioned above and an insane integration with maschine.

In about a year will arrive maschine 2 which will be an expanded version of maschine with daw like feature.

emptysea wrote:

nobledru wrote:I never used the maschine but not being able to have different swing settings per track and drum layering is a deal breaker.

You're obviously misinformed but it's understandable since you've never used Maschine. Maschine has independent swing settings per sound/group/master and it works in realtime. MPC's swing, on the other hand, is very simplistic and it's just lumped together with grid and quantize. There's really no comparison in terms of power and flexibility. Maschine's swing even has a Cycle feature which changes on what intervals that swing is applied by affecting what note positions get shifted. Also, Maschine has multiple ways of easily layering drums.

You cannot have more than one swing setting per pad. To say other wise is a lie. It's real time swing meaning you set the swing for a pad and that is it. You cannot use a different swing setting for multiple parts of a pattern on the same pad. It's either one setting or another. If you need to use a different swing for the same pad at a different point in your beat, you have to duplicate the pad. Mpc's setting is simple and effective. Not everything needs to be overly complicated to be useful.

Metatron72 wrote:

KevWestBeats wrote:

Danny wrote:its real shame you can't demo the ren at that place
well let us know what you get
i'm sure it will make another lively thread

Yeah it is a shame. Right now though I am and have been leaning towards more so maschine. The Mpc looks great but I am not sure how it will intergrate with the rest of my workflow as of right now and that is what concerns me the most. YouTube and forums only go so far and I don't think Push will intergrate as well with Live as Ableton is promoting because if it did they would have mentioned it. My workflow will pretty much consists of Live, Reason and Mpc/Maschine. I miss the aspect of working on a drum machine and MPDs and Kong/Drum Racks regardless of how powerful they are just don't cut it for the hands on aspect of programming drums.

If it's Live+Reason with either the Ren or Maschine (as a VST in Live you mentioned), Maschine's controller mode might be a big plus. It takes a little while to make templates (NI has a solid Ableton one though). It's nice to toggle only one MIDI controller for all three apps. (I use Maschine with Live and Reason with rewire, still have my hardware MPC's).

I am finding a lot of videos showing Maschine being controlled with Maschine and it looks great. As of right now I am 99.9% sure that Maschine is the better option for me. This thread was a lot of help in that decision. Thanks for all of the replies. I am going to read the rest as well.

DJ Hellfire wrote:

KevWestBeats wrote:My workflow will pretty much consists of Live, Reason and Mpc/Maschine. I miss the aspect of working on a drum machine and MPDs and Kong/Drum Racks regardless of how powerful they are just don't cut it for the hands on aspect of programming drums.

If this is your workflow then you probably might want to serious consider the Ren, not Maschine, and also not the MPC Studio. You have to keep in mind that the Maschine (and MPC Studio) will use your current audio interface so you are limited to using all 3 of your apps in a single host. With the Ren, you have a secondary interface. So you can run both Live and Ren in standalone mode and route the audio from the Ren's outputs into your main interface for monitoring or tracking. And you can insert Reason in Live in rewire and use Reason and Live (3rd party VST instruments) both as sound modules for the MPC. You can't do this with the MPC in plugin mode (nor Maschine) because they don't send midi out in plugin mode. So having the audio interface the Ren has, you can use physical midi to use your other apps as sound module running Ren separately and still have audio from the Ren. You can also run Reason and Ren both in standalone mode and use Reason as your sound module. You can do the same with Pro Tools and Ren using Pro Tools as a sound module. Or any other DAW. So the Ren having the interface, which a lot of people can't see the value in for some reason, is a lot more flexible.


As far as other useful comparisons that might help your decision, one is the hardware feel, specifically the buttons. I personally don't like Maschine's "squishy" button feel and prefer the MPC's more "clicky" buttons. However, these clicky buttons on MPC's tend to break after some abuse. But Akai says they fixed that issue with the Ren. I believe the Studio also has the squishy buttons.

Maschine has MUCH BETTER gain staging for mixing. Maschine's gain system is setup like every tradition DAW and mixer having a +12 to -∞ structure, with 0 as unity as well as the default level for all pads and master fader. The MPC has 0-100 gain set up with all pads/tracks/master set at 100, leaving absolutely no headroom to increase low volume sounds. A lot of people complain that Maschine has no gain meters for the individual pads, but you really don't need it. You can simply just solo a desired pad and view the main volume meter to use as a gain meter. As long as your main master fader is set to 0, you will get an accurate gain reading of your pad. So in the aspect, Maschine is much easier and better to properly mix with as well as doing a simple mastering to your beat. Even though the MPC has gain meters per track, everything being set at max volume is terrible for mixing.

Maschine's nature of a pad being equal to a track is another thing that makes mixing in Maschine quicker and easier. Being that Maschine technically doesn't use tracks, if I adjust any pad parameter it get's applied to that sound in any sequence (or scene) that pad is used in. The MPC uses tracks, so if I make a track fader movement, I have to manually make the same adjustment per sequence. So if my beat is 10 sequences, I have to move that fader 10 times. Alternatively in the MPC, you can adjust pad volume which will affect every sequence, but your all your sounds aren't always in the same program so you'd have to jump around a lot. On Maschine I can do an entire beat, including samples and VST instruments using a single group so that when I mix it, all of my sounds/tracks are in the same view. Also, with the MPC, if you start moving pad volumes, it will affect the volume of that pad going into any plugins you have inserted on the track. So if you have a compressor inserted on the track that pad is on, changing the volume of that pad is now going to affect your compressor settings beings now you have lower input. You can insert that compressor on the pad itself, but then your audio will be forced to go out of a sub mix instead of your track mix, which is a whole other issue with MPC.

MPC has much more programs to load more sounds.

MPC has global program edit that allows you to edit multiple pad parameters at once. Maschine doesn't have this. To change the volume of every pad in a group on Maschine, you have to do them one by one.

MPC has more physical midi ports, both in and out.

Maschine allows you to use vintage mode per pad. MPC only allows you to use it on the entire beat. Maschine also remembers your vintage mode setting. MPC doesn't. Maschine's SP1200 mode sounds better than MPC's. MPC's MPC60 mode sounds better than Maschine's. This is my opinion.

MPC has swing with note repeat. I believe Maschine still doesn't have this.

Maschine is 64 bit.

MPC uses pad banks to navigate samples 17 and up. So if I want to quickly jump from sample 12 on Bank A to sample 61 on Bank D, I just quickly hit the Bank D button to jump from A to D. Maschine uses an octave system that you have to scroll in order. To put this in MPC perspective, if I wanted to go from A to D, you have to scroll through B and C. Can't just quickly jump around! And on Maschine you have to go into a separate screen to accomplish this while the MPC has dedicated buttons. And it's the same situation for accession different octaves of an instrument with the pads!

Maschine has drag and drop to DAW, but I never use it. I prefer to track in real time. Also, Maschine doesn't apply vintage mode when using drag and drop, from what I've read.

Regarding tracking in real time, Maschine gives you twice the amount of virtual outputs as the MPC.

I think as far as how much can be done from the hardware versus what has to be done in the software, they are pretty much equal.

As you can see, both pieces are highly neck and neck. It's really something you need to have experience with both to decide which one you prefer.

Thank you everything I am reading here really favors Maschine for my workflow. The idea is that the drum machine will be run as a vst regardless and everything will be sequenced into Live. I don't like having several sequencers and resampling ect. This would be more like say using a Mpc side by side with a Motif where I don't sample much but I like the workflow of having a drum machine and the fact that I can control Live from maschine is a big plus I am not sure that I can do this with the Ren but I do think I saw a video doing so on YouTube. I will probably just record the audio from Maschine into Live's arrangement view when its time to track as well or bounce from Live and have all of my outputs setup going from Maschine to Live right away. The only appeal for me using either device stand alone would be for saving cpu since we all know that Live is a cpu hog.