maschine and your digital vinyl system - some thoughts and observations

[diezdiazgiant]

i finally got around to setting up maschine with serato, ive had maschine for months now but just recently got a laptop good enough to run both. spent like the past hour trying to feel out the capabilities and just thought i'd share some thoughts on it. most of these thoughts will be under the context of making beats/sampling even though im sure some ideas can be applied to a dj set. ha need more time with this setup to practice, havent even tried anything with VST fx yet...

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the set up im using is a numark v7 into an ecler nuo 2, my send/return is occupied by a kaoss pad meaning in order to sample with maschine i need to use the record output on the ecler into an audio 4 and the audio 4 back into the 3rd channel on the mixer.

things im really digging:
- screen real estate. only need to look at the laptop for serato file browsing
- quantized sample recording is proving really great in combo with itchs beat grids. just keeps everything nice and tight between the two. makes auto slicing that much more painless. does make me wish that maschine had an arpeggiator tho.
- files are semi exchangeable. put a mic into maschine, sample it, sample whatever, but youll be able to find that temporary sample instantly in your documents and be able throw it on a deck.

things im not digging:
- would like an arpeggiator. if youre unfamiliar with the fun an arp can be with a sliced loop: give it a try.
- "record out" being the sampler input means you cant sample pre cue audio

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im sure ill add some more to this list as i spend more time with this combo, anyone else fucking with maschine in their set up?

[oneapemob]

you could buy two rca Y splitters, have half in kp3 and the other to resample (that is in your fx out post fader)

[mostapha]

Congrats for being the only person I've heard of using maschine in a halfway meaninful way for a DJ set. Cool ideas.

[diezdiazgiant]

The splitter won't be useful as it'll still be mono but what youre saying could work.

I feel its hard to get maschine to be really unique in a dj setup. Theres no time stretch so while sampling an 8 beat drum loop is easy to freak with the slicing in maschine, do it with a loop with over lapping voices it becomes an issue. So thats one thing ableton has over maschine. Maschine has dominance over ableton simply in its ability to operate with no computer screen. I think machines deficiencies are: a. No time stretching, b. Minimal scene length is one bar and no arpeggiator limits the amount of stuff you can do as far as scrambling a loop with out having to write patterns. Ableton handles this stuff better but lacks in the controller integration. All in all tho much more functional than any hardware sampler I've ever used

[Street Knowledge]

The splitter won't be useful as it'll still be mono but what youre saying could work.

I feel its hard to get maschine to be really unique in a dj setup. Theres no time stretch so while sampling an 8 beat drum loop is easy to freak with the slicing in maschine

Cant you put abletons midi clock into machine and have everything synced still? Im sure you can with traktor. All that said, I have been REALLY wanting to get a maschine for beat creation. The tactile pads seem like they would be great for a live performance, and more intuitive to me than ableton.

[oneapemob]

it will, you just need to buy two of them :
http://www.cablesnmor.com/rca-y-splitter.html (for example)
the only "problem" is that it will lower the volume a bit, but easily correctable with a compressor and a limiter on your input chain in maschine. as for the arp, the best way ( but still, it is a kludge ) would be with midi utility in osx, or an equivalent in windows, then its maschine midi->midi utility->lightweight midi arp prog (this you'll have to find on krv or smthg but im pretty sure it exist for free)->midi utility->mashine

yep that's a kludge, but it should be doable, or you get yourself a nice little akai lp25 (the small one), and it has an on board arp, not crazy complex, but very usable, plus youll get some portable keys.
Mob

edit : plus two of these in male male version http://www.vpi.us/images/rca-ff.jpg