General Questions on Drum Machines

[BM0]

Originally Posted by goatscape

And why NI went through the painstaking process of creating vintage sampling modes for Maschine that emulates the 12bit sound of SP1200 and MPC60 by modeling the entire signal path of each hardware.

Because they wanted to design something different with many capabilties. Even will all the modeling the Maschine can do, it cannot genuinely replicate the analog filters and VCA's used in those old samplers. As for the digital aspects it replicates, I'm sure it does pretty well.

[boon]

anyway - random drum machine jam...

decent drum machine in the right hands = awesome.

MPC500 Aphex Twin on Vimeo

[zerocrossing]

Originally Posted by Jomox

So your saying Maschine is a real drum machine that can be used on it's own without any software or pc? not just a controller?

Are you saying software sounds as good as hardware? even though it's not analog? so your saying analog drum machines don't sound more raw, warm and powerful? and that a pc don't have that digital sound?

I have vast experience with both and infact use both. Not saying software can't sound nice because it can but there's a difference in sound which is obvious, and there's nothing like having a fat sounding drum machine in front of you or playing it out live on a big rig.

to the above post.

Of course Maschine needs a computer.

Yes, it does sound as good as hardware. It's a sampler. If you're recording your music via a DAW (which I assume you do) than it can sound identical to the recordings of the output of your beloved 808, 909 or what ever. In terms of "playability" I'd also say that Maschine trumps an 808 and it's limited dinky knobs for sure. So, for me, I'd much rather have a Goldbaby sample set of an 808 put into Battery or Maschine any day.

In terms of playability, there are much better drum machines than than the TR-808 though, and there is something to be said for being able to dig into a good drum machine/groovebox/sampler/etc. However, unless I'm doing pretty simplistic dance music beats, I find using those to create a song is constrictive. Trust me, I used them for years. The first time I got Studio Vision Pro running on my old Macintosh, I was done with using drum machine's as sequencers.

I'll also say, again, that (if it's ever released) a bit of gear like Tempest, with it's pressure sensitive ribbon controllers and aftertouch enabled pads is going to be a m-f'er. Looks like a lot of fun.... but I can't help but think that no matter what it's sequencer is doing it's not going to be as intuitive or flexible as what I can do in a DAW. If I decide to get one it'll be because of its sound, and to a great degree it's flexibility in sound generation, not it's sequencer. That said, I may just wait until someone like Goldbaby releases a good sample set of it and be done with it. It's not like I'm lacking a library of good analog drum machine samples.

Take all of this with a grain of salt. I don't produce dance music. I'm a guitar/keyboard player who does prog-rockish hip-hop flavored instrumental music. Maybe if I did straight hip-hop or some flavor of techno I'd be agreeing with you.