The mixer on the Ren sucks

emptysea wrote:

Jonespnice1 wrote:We keep bringing Maschine into the discussion but Maschine is less flexible than the Renaissance in terms of its mixer because it doesn't have a track mixer it only has basically a program mixer ( you can't route the same sound across multiple track) although it has a flexible running system for effects.

Maschine has a much more intuitive mixer and the audio signal routing in Maschine is very flexible. You get 4 module slots per pad (track/sound) and 4 per group to add fx, as well as sends. You can chain the audio signal from a pad to another pad to another to another... etc. So you could have just one instrument loaded but have it run through all other pads and groups and the master.

For once, I have to agree here! With Maschine, being that pads and tracks are one in the same, anywhere you use a pad, the effects on that pad/track follow. So I can use a pad on 20 different scenes/sequences, have a single eq on that pad/track and any adjustment I make to that eq plugin on one sequence applies to EVERY sequence that uses that pad. I don't have to retweak the same eq parameter for all 20 sequences and I can still route that pad to any output I want, or even to another pad if I want.

One thing we have to keep in mind here is that a mixer is not only for mixing. It's also to serve the purpose of getting your sounds to sound the way you want them BEFORE doing an actual mixdown in your DAW! Have to say Maschine's plugin setup makes this much more efficient than the Ren does currently!

emptysea wrote:

Jonespnice1 wrote:We keep bringing Maschine into the discussion but Maschine is less flexible than the Renaissance in terms of its mixer because it doesn't have a track mixer it only has basically a program mixer ( you can't route the same sound across multiple track) although it has a flexible running system for effects.

Maschine has a much more intuitive mixer and the audio signal routing in Maschine is very flexible. You get 4 module slots per pad (track/sound) and 4 per group to add fx, as well as sends. You can chain the audio signal from a pad to another pad to another to another... etc. So you could have just one instrument loaded but have it run through all other pads and groups and the master.

Yes like I stated Machine's pad routing (for effects) is very flexible but that's it (compared to the REN) because you do have the 4 slots per sound but the 4 slots per group affects every sound in the group and that limits sound sculpting to individual sounds (kick, snare, ect.) But consider this you could have a 4 on the floor kick pattern (say 2 bars) and have recorded each single kick onto a separate track (8 tracks total) and process each one differently, so you could have some crazy futuristic type of sound going on (all from that same kick sample from the same program). Now that's flexible. When you're building your song using different sequences your could (for example) copy sequence 1 three times (total of 4 sequences with the same patterns ) and have each sequence with totally different effects. Maschine and the REN both have their pluses and minuses.

Jonespnice1 wrote:

emptysea wrote:

Jonespnice1 wrote:We keep bringing Maschine into the discussion but Maschine is less flexible than the Renaissance in terms of its mixer because it doesn't have a track mixer it only has basically a program mixer ( you can't route the same sound across multiple track) although it has a flexible running system for effects.

Maschine has a much more intuitive mixer and the audio signal routing in Maschine is very flexible. You get 4 module slots per pad (track/sound) and 4 per group to add fx, as well as sends. You can chain the audio signal from a pad to another pad to another to another... etc. So you could have just one instrument loaded but have it run through all other pads and groups and the master.

Yes like I started Machine's pad routing (for effects) is very flexible but that's it (compared to the REN) because you do have the 4 slots per sound but the 4 slots per group affects every sound in the group and that limits sound sculpting to individual sounds (kick, snare, ect.) But consider this you could have a 4 on the floor kick pattern (say 2 bars) and have recorded each single kick onto a separate track (8 tracks total) and process each one differently, so you could have some crazy futuristic type of sound going on (all from that same kick sample from the same program). Now that's flexible. When you're building your song using different sequences your could (for example) copy sequence 1 three times (total of 4 sequences with the same patterns ) and have each sequence with totally different effects. Maschine and the REN both have their pluses and minuses.

You're talking about Group inserts though! That's just one place you can have inserts. You can have inserts on each actual pad too, as well as the Master. So you have your pads, 16 per Group each that can have 4 slots. Then you have your Groups which you have 8 of, which each have 4 slots. Then you have the Master which every pad and Group routes to by default, which gives you another 4 inserts to apply to your entire project.

But where Maschines flexibility lies is the ability to route one pad to another pad. So I can have a pad with 4 inserts, which I can route to another pad and apply another 4 inserts, which I can route to yet another pad and have another 4 inserts. So that's 12 inserts for a single sound, but of course at the expense of useable pads for samples. So you can see with this ability to chain things together almost endlessly, it is very flexible. And you never lose the ability to route sounds to where you want!

hellfire speaks the truth!! one of the things im missing about maschine

Shout outs to DJ Hellfire and emptysea

DJ Hellfire wrote:You're talking about Group inserts though! That's just one place you can have inserts. You can have inserts on each actual pad too, as well as the Master. So you have your pads, 16 per Group each that can have 4 slots. Then you have your Groups which you have 8 of, which each have 4 slots. Then you have the Master which every pad and Group routes to by default, which gives you another 4 inserts to apply to your entire project.

No actually I was trying to make a point that with Maschine if you are using a sound (i.e. kick drum sample) you are limited to how much routing you can do to just that kick drum sample because once you start using the group/master insert effects now you're affecting more than just that kick and you really don't want to do that.

DJ Hellfire wrote:You're talking about Group inserts though! That's just one place you can have inserts. You can have inserts on each actual pad too, as well as the Master. So you have your pads, 16 per Group each that can have 4 slots. Then you have your Groups which you have 8 of, which each have 4 slots. Then you have the Master which every pad and Group routes to by default, which gives you another 4 inserts to apply to your entire project.

DJ Hellfire wrote:But where Maschines flexibility lies is the ability to route one pad to another pad. So I can have a pad with 4 inserts, which I can route to another pad and apply another 4 inserts, which I can route to yet another pad and have another 4 inserts. So that's 12 inserts for a single sound, but of course at the expense of useable pads for samples. So you can see with this ability to chain things together almost endlessly, it is very flexible. And you never lose the ability to route sounds to where you want!

Actually you would only have 10 inserts because the the first slot has to be set to "input", but that's neither here nor there. Maschine is incredible when it comes to series routing but unfortunately there is not alot of series routing you can do before it becomes clumsy sounding. So with Maschine you also have 2 Aux outs so it's possible that you could have a limited series/parallel configuration. With the Ren You could in theory have the same kick drum sample recorded onto all 128 tracks all with 4 inserts plus 4 sends with different levels of the send/return effects. Both Maschine and The Ren are great for what they can do but personally the parallel routing suites me best for how I do things, ultimately both should the Maschine and Ren would benefit from having both parallel and series routing. Examining these 2 routing systems I just see the Ren as being less limiting for real world type mixing because you can only chain in series for so long before everything starts to sound gimmicky.
Here's a video explaining some of what I was saying.

Jonespnice1 wrote:Shout outs to DJ Hellfire and emptysea

DJ Hellfire wrote:You're talking about Group inserts though! That's just one place you can have inserts. You can have inserts on each actual pad too, as well as the Master. So you have your pads, 16 per Group each that can have 4 slots. Then you have your Groups which you have 8 of, which each have 4 slots. Then you have the Master which every pad and Group routes to by default, which gives you another 4 inserts to apply to your entire project.

No actually I was trying to make a point that with Maschine if you are using a sound (i.e. kick drum sample) you are limited to how much routing you can do to just that kick drum sample because once you start using the group/master insert effects now you're affecting more than just that kick and you really don't want to do that.

Gotcha! I actually wish Ren had the ability to have Program inserts. Sometimes if I wanna chop a drum break or a sample into a new program, I want certain effects to apply to the entire program where ever I use it in a project. Track inserts help, but the duplication issue makes this really inconvenient, especially with no quick and easy way to copy plugins from one sequence to the next.

Jonespnice1 wrote:

DJ Hellfire wrote:But where Maschines flexibility lies is the ability to route one pad to another pad. So I can have a pad with 4 inserts, which I can route to another pad and apply another 4 inserts, which I can route to yet another pad and have another 4 inserts. So that's 12 inserts for a single sound, but of course at the expense of useable pads for samples. So you can see with this ability to chain things together almost endlessly, it is very flexible. And you never lose the ability to route sounds to where you want!

Actually you would only have 10 inserts because the the first slot has to be set to "input", but that's neither here nor there. Maschine is incredible when it comes to series routing but unfortunately there is not alot of series routing you can do before it becomes clumsy sounding. So with Maschine you also have 2 Aux outs so it's possible that you could have a limited series/parallel configuration. With the Ren You could in theory have the same kick drum sample recorded onto all 128 tracks all with 4 inserts plus 4 sends with different levels of the send/return effects. Both Maschine and The Ren are great for what they can do but personally the parallel routing suites me best for how I do things, ultimately both should the Maschine and Ren would benefit from having both parallel and series routing. Examining these 2 routing systems I just see the Ren as being less limiting for real world type mixing because you can only chain in series for so long before everything starts to sound gimmicky.
Here's a video explaining some of what I was saying.

I agree. I just think it comes down to how you prefer to work. The Ren is definitely less limiting, but I feel that with Maschine, it's easier to keep my mix organized with everything linked in a sense and going to a single common mixer. With the Ren, you have all these different mixers on different pages with all these different outputs. On a large project with a bunch of sequences, when you start routing individual pads to one place, other pads to another, some pads to submixes that have no outputs, tracks to another route, and it all being sequence independent, it can start to get really messy and confusing!

DJ Hellfire wrote:
Gotcha! I actually wish Ren had the ability to have Program inserts. Sometimes if I wanna chop a drum break or a sample into a new program, I want certain effects to apply to the entire program where ever I use it in a project. Track inserts help, but the duplication issue makes this really inconvenient, especially with no quick and easy way to copy plugins from one sequence to the next.

To be honest you can look at Maschine as a 8 track sampler/drum maschine (if you're using samples and not plugins) because you have 16 drum sounds/pads per group and 8 groups and when you start doing your scenes you are working at the group level and not the sound level, with that being said Maschine's groups operate like a single track in the Ren. So if you chop up a sample in the Ren and make a program and then put insert effects on that track then it is the same as Maschine's groups. Where it differs is when you use plugins inside of Maschine, because Maschine inserts plugins (VSTi) at the sound level and the Ren inserts VSTi plugins at the track level but as far as you using just samples you could think of a track as a group (it operates the same as Maschine).

DJ Hellfire wrote:I agree. I just think it comes down to how you prefer to work. The Ren is definitely less limiting, but I feel that with Maschine, it's easier to keep my mix organized with everything linked in a sense and going to a single common mixer. With the Ren, you have all these different mixers on different pages with all these different outputs. On a large project with a bunch of sequences, when you start routing individual pads to one place, other pads to another, some pads to submixes that have no outputs, tracks to another route, and it all being sequence independent, it can start to get really messy and confusing!

yeah I hear you on that. Hopefully in the near future Akai will clean things up and at the same time give us side-chaining as well as other gems that will make the Ren's mixer alot more flexible.

DJ Hellfire wrote:

JAH wrote:Probably should have not included any Pad Insert FXs and just included Pad Send FXs. Ren users would use it like they have any other MPC (No Pad Inserts)

But we don't want to use it like an old MPC. This is why many of us have moved on from them to newer technology!

'We' meaning some. Not everybody wants or needs the Ren to do many things esepcially functions that DAWs are best suited for. The Ren's mixer needs many things beyond the 'gripes' of Pad Inserts routing to Submixes (non-issue for me). Once the Ren supports audio tracks, I would like to see dedicated audio channels, aux channels, buss channels, more virtual channels, mono channels, headroom, etc. I would like to see a completely revamped mixer in 2.0 instead of small incremental improvements in 1.x as there are several functions that I believe should have a higher priority.

As far as Maschine, it doesn't have a mixer period. The 'features' that some here are discussing are unappealing. I am completely satisfied for the time being what the Ren brings to the table in this regard. I fully acknowledge so feel differently......

Jonespnice1 wrote:you can look at Maschine as a 8 track sampler/drum maschine (if you're using samples and not plugins) because you have 16 drum sounds/pads per group and 8 groups and when you start doing your scenes you are working at the group level and not the sound level, with that being said Maschine's groups operate like a single track in the Ren. So if you chop up a sample in the Ren and make a program and then put insert effects on that track then it is the same as Maschine's groups. Where it differs is when you use plugins inside of Maschine, because Maschine inserts plugins (VSTi) at the sound level and the Ren inserts VSTi plugins at the track level but as far as you using just samples you could think of a track as a group (it operates the same as Maschine).

Maschine has 128 tracks. Pad/Sound = Track

"A MASCHINE Project has up to 128 sounds, split across 8 Groups, and each Group can contain up to 16 Sounds. There is no limit to the number of samples per instance, because each MASCHINE Sound has its own sample map, including key and velocity mapping. In traditional terms, this translates to 128 tracks per instance."

emptysea wrote:

Jonespnice1 wrote:you can look at Maschine as a 8 track sampler/drum maschine (if you're using samples and not plugins) because you have 16 drum sounds/pads per group and 8 groups and when you start doing your scenes you are working at the group level and not the sound level, with that being said Maschine's groups operate like a single track in the Ren. So if you chop up a sample in the Ren and make a program and then put insert effects on that track then it is the same as Maschine's groups. Where it differs is when you use plugins inside of Maschine, because Maschine inserts plugins (VSTi) at the sound level and the Ren inserts VSTi plugins at the track level but as far as you using just samples you could think of a track as a group (it operates the same as Maschine).

Maschine has 128 tracks. Pad/Sound = Track

"A MASCHINE Project has up to 128 sounds, split across 8 Groups, and each Group can contain up to 16 Sounds. There is no limit to the number of samples per instance, because each MASCHINE Sound has its own sample map, including key and velocity mapping. In traditional terms, this translates to 128 tracks per instance."

Ok try this, load 16 samples for each group (a drum kit or whatever) which gives you 128 samples spread across 8 groups right, now program a pattern for each group (on pattern 1 of each group) and place those patterns on scene 1. Now what do you have, 16 sounds/samples (each with filter, 4 insert effects, 2 effect sends, ect.) per group/track (x8 groups) plus 4 insert effects and 2 sends per group. The reason I look at groups as tracks is because when you're building your song (in scene mode) you can only manipulate group patterns (as far as what pattern is on what scene or whatever) and a scene in Machine equates to a sequence in the Ren.
Now let's produce this same setup in the Ren, let's place 16 samples (a drum kit or whatever) on pad bank 1 on tracks 1-8 and make a pattern for each track, now tell me what do we have? You have 16 sounds/samples (each with filter, 4 insert effects, and 4 sends, ect.) per track (x8 tracks) plus 4 insert effects and 4 sends per track. Now each sequence in the MPC Ren operates like a scene in Maschine. Now you brought up that in Maschine each sound can have its own sample map which is true but when you use it like that you no longer have a filter, insert effects, ect. for the different samples that are spread across that sample map of that sound slot. In my earlier post to Hellfire I was referring to the scenario that he stated that if he chopped up a break beat and make a program out of it.
If what I'm stating seems confusing to many of you then I may make a video to explain it much better.

Don't forget about mode+keyboard on maschine - making a group way more than one "track".. Especially if you're only messing with chopped samples.. Each pad can have its own effects, etc

es-k wrote:Don't forget about mode+keyboard on maschine - making a group way more than one "track".. Especially if you're only messing with chopped samples..

Yes but seriously you wouldn't have a sample and play it more than 5-7just semitones in either direction (it would sound ridiculous) without timestretching and the REN lets you select basically +/- 15 semitones.

es-k wrote: Each pad can have its own effects, etc

Yes and each pad on the REN has its own effects, filters, ect.
I don't want anyone to think I'm saying the REN is better or Maschine is better, I use use both, I'm only trying to point out some objective facts about each unit that may help us all use it to its full capabilities.

JAH wrote:

DJ Hellfire wrote:

JAH wrote:Probably should have not included any Pad Insert FXs and just included Pad Send FXs. Ren users would use it like they have any other MPC (No Pad Inserts)

But we don't want to use it like an old MPC. This is why many of us have moved on from them to newer technology!

'We' meaning some. Not everybody wants or needs the Ren to do many things esepcially functions that DAWs are best suited for. The Ren's mixer needs many things beyond the 'gripes' of Pad Inserts routing to Submixes (non-issue for me). Once the Ren supports audio tracks, I would like to see dedicated audio channels, aux channels, buss channels, more virtual channels, mono channels, headroom, etc. I would like to see a completely revamped mixer in 2.0 instead of small incremental improvements in 1.x as there are several functions that I believe should have a higher priority.

As far as Maschine, it doesn't have a mixer period. The 'features' that some here are discussing are unappealing. I am completely satisfied for the time being what the Ren brings to the table in this regard. I fully acknowledge so feel differently......

This is kinda contradicting though. Saying people don't want all these daw like features, yet they want audio tracks. The Ren has a daw like mixer, so it should perform more similar to one.

And Maschine does have a mixer, it's just not laid out visibly like you're used to seeing mixers laid out.

Jonespnice1 wrote:

es-k wrote:Don't forget about mode+keyboard on maschine - making a group way more than one "track".. Especially if you're only messing with chopped samples..

Yes but seriously you wouldn't have a sample and play it more than 5-7just semitones in either direction (it would sound ridiculous) without timestretching and the REN lets you select basically +/- 15 semitones.

es-k wrote: Each pad can have its own effects, etc

Yes but don't forget maschine has non destructive chopping. So you can, for example, chop a 3 minute sample into 128 unique slices and all of this resides on one pad. I do whole beats on maschine using only one group. Ren does make it easier to put individual effects on individual slices.

DJ Hellfire wrote:

Jonespnice1 wrote:

es-k wrote:Don't forget about mode+keyboard on maschine - making a group way more than one "track".. Especially if you're only messing with chopped samples..

Yes but seriously you wouldn't have a sample and play it more than 5-7just semitones in either direction (it would sound ridiculous) without timestretching and the REN lets you select basically +/- 15 semitones.

es-k wrote: Each pad can have its own effects, etc

Yes but don't forget maschine has non destructive chopping. So you can, for example, chop a 3 minute sample into 128 unique slices and all of this resides on one pad. I do whole beats on maschine using only one group. Ren does make it easier to put individual effects on individual slices.

Yes I like Maschines's non destructive chopping, it's great. But when you chop a sample and have it all on 1 pad then you no longer have any sound shaping tools per slice. Your filter, insert effects, vintage mode, ect. now affects all the slices exactly the same (which may not be a bad thing). If you have a lot of slices on 1 pad then it becomes a keygroup instrument, and Machine's keygroups and plugin instruments are applied at the sound/pad level which differs from the REN where keygroups and plugin instruments are applied at the track level. Both units have their own way of working but in my earlier post I was simply suggesting a way to visualize a workflow that may help eliminate some of your frustrations when working with chopped samples. I think these discussions on the forum are cool because it allows me to understand other people's workflows and it helps me to think outside of the box.