With Maschine, Komplete Kontrol integration finally works the way you’d expect – so if you’re a keyboardist but not a finger drummer, this keyboard at last gets you around your Maschine workflow, too.Īnd there’s popular DAW support. With Komplete software (and NKS-compatible instruments), you get more hands-on controls and easier ways of finding and editing sounds. With a DAW, the keyboard has dedicated controls for transport, undo, and the like, so you can quickly add takes. The Mk2 keyboard, though, is another story, all thanks to some small additions. The sum of all those parts would be almost hard to describe. What you got was a premium keyboard, this colored lighting and touch strip business, the displays and … not much else. The first Komplete Kontrol showed potential, but I could never quite justify its existence. Komplete Kontrol now generally makes more sense. Jam remains interesting mainly for its use as a fader or controlling multiple parameters. Maschine also gets a “Smart Strip.” Touch control of effects and parameters, as seen on Jam, are now on the MK3 – but unlike the Jam, you also get more controls, displays(!), and velocity sensitivity(!). This could also be a reason to choose a 4×4 grid over 8×8 (as on Push). Sensitivity across the pad is fantastic and they’re eminently playable, perhaps finally besting Akai. This is a first impression, not a full review, but - yeah, basically, wow. The 4-directional push encoder makes it really easy to browse through sounds and parameters, and it feels lovely. Komplete Kontrol gets a similar overhaul.īoth have USB bus power. Given that’s the whole point of Maschine, that’s welcome news. More dedicated buttons on Maschine and a thoughtful new layout mean less of the shift+pressing you had to do – and less hunting around for features. (Ableton, Push 3 – with audio, please?)įorget all that shifting around. If the Ableton Live template is as good as the one on Jam, my Ableton Push may cease to leave the studio. 24-bit / 96kHz, though of course we’ll need to test the actual quality. So, the big thing here is, now you get all the workflow power of the Maschine Studio, all that ability to focus on the hardware and not look at the computer screen, but in the MKII footprint. Too big to fit on my studio desk, too big to fit on a bag. I love Maschine Studio – the high-res color screens make sample slicing and production far easier. The screens are great news, especially on Maschine. These look gorgeous, clear, and bright, and they have incredible viewing angles (like you can practically lay on the floor while you play). It’s really a class act, even as some big rivals in this field leapfrog one another.īoth get big, color, high-definition displays. It’s tough to overstate how much more refined these two instruments look and feel. Here’s what’s changed:īoth have terrific new industrial designs. No major new software revisions (though more minor stuff to cover separately) – this is mainly about the hardware. Komplete Kontrol, while a subtler update, goes from being a keyboard with some extras on it to something you’d actually want to use for finding sounds, editing sounds, recording takes, and even working with your DAW or Maschine. And it packs the best pads and control layout yet. It requires looking at your computer screen less, thanks to the displays found on Studio. In short, Maschine Mk3 is now the only hardware you need, thanks to built-in audio. But here are some important things to know – having at least met with the teams that developed the gear and gotten a quick hands-on. We will have a review unit in next week, and you know I like to get in depth with how machines work. My guess is the Maschine MK3 and Komplete Kontrol MKII will make a splash, precisely because they seem focused on how these two users bases work. And for hard-core Komplete users, Komplete Kontrol saw some popularity, though perhaps didn’t radically transform workflows. The MKII, with color, better pads, and better workflow certainly had some people selling their MKIs. Since then, few pieces of hardware have had quite the impact that Maschine MKI did. Maschine was built with software and hardware designed in parallel. This was the year the APC40 and Launchpad had just hit the market – without a screen, and at that point with only limited control capabilities. It’s funny to think that back in 2009, the first release of Maschine really set the bar for integrating production software with a hardware controller. Here are some early impressions of what’s new, in advance of our review. Native Instruments just revised their Maschine and Komplete Kontrol hardware.
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