MPC renaissance and Maschine MkII

[starving student]

@starvingstudent remember when the 2000XL first came out and it was perfected by version 1.14 ? Yes, haters gonna hate. 1998 til infinity !

[starving student]

obviously this is retarder.
Why do you need a soundcard into a MIDI CONTROLER? to fake that it's like an old MPC ?
I much prefer to have maschine + an RME or motu and be efficient than having an MPC ren and an half assed Midi controler + cheap soundcard

all of those choices you list offer different things to the end user, the people who are familiar with that circuitry and what akai are trying to emulate fully understand what they are trying to bring together.


it's like saying why even sample from records at all, why not just buy 24bit sample libraries…. the answer is because it's two different things. not like one is better than the other just more appropriate or not depending on the artist.

[Monchai]

Kinda no reminiscing of what I wanna know, so can anyone here tell me of creative use of touch sensitive knob on the MPC Ren? Can I use them to control the Live Device parameter.

[botstein]

Kinda no reminiscing of what I wanna know, so can anyone here tell me of creative use of touch sensitive knob on the MPC Ren? Can I use them to control the Live Device parameter.

The Ren's knobs are probably MIDI mappable, so if the paramater you would like to control in Live is (many are), you very likely could.

A creative use might be LFO speed on a synth or the transposition on a clip.

[Antonio Sage]

I have to chime in with the Ren haters here. This is a beautiful looking and feeling MPC and would/could be the next groove"renaissance" once implemented properly.
I agree with those that remind us of the years of development that NI had to work out their product. However, I am dismayed that this fancy "Midi controller" cost 3 times as much as the Maschine and it is substandard in so many ways to (A) a real MPC and (B) NI's Maschine and even Arturia Spark runs circles around this thing (for the time being).

[cmreal04]

I use maschine in standalone 85% of the time, with Ableton 18%, and spend 2% of my time in the Akai Ren forum for comedy relief.

[Mike Goodwin]

This might help.

"MPC Ren's limitations compared to Maschine:

- the Ren still requires you to use the mouse for a lot of things. You can't even nudge notes from the Ren controller (source: Jahrome) and you can't open/close instrument plugin windows from the Ren controller (source: Pete blues, Akai)

- you have to stop the Ren's sequencer to do basic things like loading samples/files (source: Jahrome)

- no 64bit support (source: Jahrome)

- no RTAS support (for anyone using Pro Tools) (source: Dan Gill, Akai)

- it doesn't receive MIDI clock or MTC in standalone mode(source: Jahrome)

- Ren doesn't have independent swing (Maschine has it per sound/group/master) and it doesn't work in realtime (source: Dan Gill, Akai)

- you can't manually add/remove slices (source: IMAKEMADBEATS)

- Ren's software will not run without the Ren controller being attached (source: Dan Gill, Akai)

- the Renaissance controller is not usb bus-powered and requires an ac adapter (source: Bremen)

- the Ren doesn't have a fast pad duplicate feature like Maschine and even if you copy samples to different pads in the Ren, editing a pad will affect all pads instead of each pad having its own setting like Maschine (source: LMSW, Blue Haze)

- copying sequences eats up memory when you're using plugins on the Ren's software. Only the sample kits qualify as programs that can be shared across sequences. That means a few instances of a heavy plugin will peak your CPU. (source: Jahrome)

- Ren doesn't even output MIDI as a plugin (source: bobbybland)

- Ren can't even export a program out to separate sounds. You can't get anything other then a single wave file for an entire sequence and .pgm. Ren forces you to manually copy and paste separate tracks for each drum hit that you want separate, which is extremely tedious and a complete workflow killer. (source: bobbybland)

- using Ren's timestretch and pitchshift overwrites the original sample without giving you an option. Maschine's way doesn't interrupt the workflow because it doesn't prompt you to save as new or overwrite the original in the process, and it's easy to undo. (source: MIDIchlorian)

- editing multiple pads on Maschine is much quicker. When editing multiple samples on different pads on Maschine, as soon as you hit the pad it pulls up the sample on screen ready to be edited. On the Ren, if you want to switch to another sample to edit.. you have to scroll to it, which is a workflow killer. (source: KnockSquared)

- it's hard to do anything but the most basic functions with the Ren controller's built in screen alone. You can do just about anything on Maschine's hardware with my laptop closed. (source: Bremen)

- And even with all that clicking around on the computer screen required on the Ren, it can't even highlight and drag more than one sample at a time. (source: SquareBanger)

- the Ren's sequencer stops every time you simply drag a sample from the browser to a pad (source: Jahrome)

- you can't drag and drop to bounce/export. (source: bobbybland)

- it doesn't even support all of Akai's own legacy MPC file formats (doesn't read .ALL or .APS and ignores things like "Effects, Q Link slider events, Mute groups/mute targets, velocity sensitive parameters (V > Att etc), LFO, sequence track assignments, song files, any JJOSXL specific feature (e.g. NDC related data etc") (source: MPC-Tutor)

- there's a growing list of bugs that the beta testers missed. Simplest things makes it crash (Copying sequences, Clearing programs, Duplicating Inst Program...etc.)
and other bugs like notes getting stuck, screen problems...etc.

and it obviously doesn't have Komplete 8 integration that Maschine has where all presets from Komplete 8 can be browsed and loaded just from the hardware."

Killer post!