Maschine for making drum breaks and playing a synth along with traktor?

[mostapha]

Maschine and Traktor are not the least bit redundant. They only are if you're not using Maschine for live production work.

What you want to do is definitely possible, but I have no idea how to do it on Windows. You need something to get the midi clock between them and possibly something to get the audio between them…but if all you want to do is play beats along with your Traktor set, you can just give Maschine it's own sound card and run it to an input on the S4…assign it to a deck, and pick "Live Input" as the deck type. I've done that, and it works very well, though if you're using real sound cards (as opposed to virtual sound cards like Soundflower or Jack) then the latency gets to be an issue very quickly if you're planning on playing anything live.

As far as playing live goes…I don't see the point. If all you want is drum pads attached to samples, sync'd to a midi clock…I'd probably get an MPC over Maschine. But I like simple. And just triggering samples is far to simple to be worth the hassle, even for me.

On Windows and especially with the S4, I'd go ahead and give up on any aspirations of sampling into Maschine in real time or using Maschine's effects on your Traktor audio…it's a hack at best and kind of requires other software, since Traktor can't use volume controls while in external mixing mode, and Maschine can't take input from other controllers (other than a basic keyboard).

I figured out how to do it using Ableton as well…but I wouldn't trust it at all in a live situation.

If you used a real mixer, it'd be a lot easier. It's just one more reason that I think these all-in-one DJ consoles are a fad. They're not adaptable enough.

Now, I have done it with all controllers just routing Maschine's audio into Traktor to use as an extra deck, and it was brilliant. You could do that fairly easily. Well…you can on a Mac. I assume it's possible on a PC, but I have no idea the specifics of how to do it.

I'm going to run an experiment some time this week of running Traktor's audio into Maschine and using Maschine as both a groove box and a mixer. It'll be weird, but I'm convinced it'll work. It might even be a lot of fun, though I can't see it appealing to too many people.

[keeb]

Keep in mind that with ASIO drivers, you can only use the soundcard for one application at a time. I'm not sure if Maschine has specific audio routing capabilities beyond what Traktor has, but if not you're going to have to use something like Asio4all and/or Virtual Audio cable; having done this on my former windows setup with Traktor and Ableton, I can't recommend it given the latency (granted this was on a 5 year old laptop, but even on my desktop it wasn't much better). Keep in mind that most people doing this routing (at least professionally; like Richie Hawtin) are on macs and Soundflower works a hell of a lot better for routing audio than any windows equivalent I've found. YMMV.

[mostapha]

Soundflower really is brilliant.

If Windows can't let multiple programs access the same sound card, and if there's no simple way to route audio between programs at virtually 0 latency…that's a hardcore reason to switch to OS X right there. I don't even think about it anymore. The worst thing that's happened along those lines to me in years is only having 16 channels to do it with.

[frijec]

You don't need any external cables at all for syncing everything up, dubspot did a nice guide for doing it (Check at the bottom of my post). So for playing along with your S4, you need to route it into a channel that you don't use on the S4. This could be Deck D, and then you just put the deck into Direct Input inside traktor. If you want to take fully advantage of the mixing abilities, I don't know how that is done, but I can imagine that you need to aggregate your soundcard somehow or buy and extra one and cable it into the Input Channel D on your S4.

The showstopper for you right now is not having another soundcard and/or not running it on a mac.

I think most people doing the live part with Maschine is doing it in Step sequencer, to make it a bit easier and then add some swing to it. The hard part, is to make it sound natural and that is where your practice and preparation lies within. Usually helps to put compression and some light fx on your master out of Maschine to make it blend better with a mixed and mastered sound.

Two DJs mastering all this are Dubfire and Richie Hawting, you should have a look and see if it is something for you.

You can have a look at them in a live set here:

Boilerroom.tv performance - Dubfire
Boilerroom.tv performance - Richie Hawtin

Setup guide from dubspot:
Here

I hope this helped a bit

[Tha Gooch]

http://www.traktorbible.com/en/t2_maschine_ks4_win.aspx
This is the tutorial for syncing Maschine with the S4 on a Windows machine. I haven't gone through the setup yet so I don't know how well it works. I've read that the midi clock drifts a little. There are plenty of effects in the Maschine software and the effects could be limitless with the addition of VST's. I'm planning on syncing everything up at some point but whenever I sit down to do it I just end up playing accapellas in Traktor and beats on the Maschine beat matching by ear.