Question: MaschineR by Retouchcontrol

[Boombastix]

I stumbled on a Maschine Studio deal that I just could not resist, and now became interested in other users experience with MaschineR by Retouchcontrol.

If you install MaschineR Studio, can you easily move between controlling the Maschine VST and controlling Reason's devices via MaschineR?
The Retouchcontrol videos show some basic control of Reason's built in devices. But what is the real value of that, since you pretty easily just do a map override to one of your controllers knobs (say to dial in a filter setting).

Any long term experience of the MaschineR work flow would be interesting to know. Inserting synths, browsing for sounds (factory and refills), laying down midi tracks, dropping in loops, building/arranging a song. Pro/cons using MaschineR vs "the usual way".

It is a bit hard to state questions when I am uncertain of the actual workflow during a song writing session using MaschineR. I have only seen the somewhat fragmented and pieced together promo videos that Retouchcontrol provides.
I know you can do a fair amount of midi mapping in Maschine's own setup app, and/or by making your own Reason Remote Template.
I do understand MaschineR provides some 2-way connection, so you get info on the Maschine displays, such as mixer settings.

[PhillipOrdonez]

I recently acquired MaschineR (for the mkiii) and I'm quite happy with it!

The Retouchcontrol videos show some basic control of Reason's built in devices. But what is the real value of that, since you pretty easily just do a map override to one of your controllers knobs (say to dial in a filter setting).

Any long term experience of the MaschineR work flow would be interesting to know. Inserting synths, browsing for sounds (factory and refills), laying down midi tracks, dropping in loops, building/arranging a song. Pro/cons using MaschineR vs "the usual way".

The real value of that is you can do a lot of things on the rack without touching the mouse or looking at the screen, so no need to override a knob and waste time mapping, and it is great that it has mappings of a large amount of devices, not only native ones.

While I'm not very fluent on using the browser with it yet, adding synths and FX is very easy. Press two buttons, scroll the big encoder, press the wheel and your device will be on the rack. Then pressing a button switches to the next/previous preset.

Full transport control is also great for arranging and mixing, you can for example move loop sections with a button, navigate the song using the 3d encoder (moving the play head position), create dub/alt lanes, turn on/off the loop, quantise during recording or not, metronome.

Like on maschine, you can undo, quantise, nudge, select, transpose...

Don't know if the studio has the chords and the note repeat functions but they can also be used with Reason...

And switching between Reason and maschine is just pressing two buttons, at least that's how things are on the mkiii, probably easier on the studio as it has more controls?

It does take time to learn, and I'm still learning it, but overall, I'm glad with the speeding workflow and using the mouse less (though you will still need to use it for certain things, I think), making things more fun and hands and providing a new way of doing things, taking me out of habits and routines.

I tried searching for reviews online but for some reason I couldn't find anything worthwhile about it, most people only mention the one for push, so hopefully this clears some doubts?

[Boombastix]

Thanks for the response. If you can and have time, would you do a video of the "best of" features and "special goodies" you have found in MaschineR? Can also be a good project for you to push your own learning forward. Like you said there are no real videos at all showing actual work being done with MaschineR.

[PhillipOrdonez]

Thanks for the response. If you can and have time, would you do a video of the "best of" features and "special goodies" you have found in MaschineR? Can also be a good project for you to push your own learning forward. Like you said there are no real videos at all showing actual work being done with MaschineR.

No time for that currently, sorry. It would take a tremendous amount of time and equipment I do not possess!

I actually meant text reviews describing how it works or if they like it or not! Only found people writing about the one for push...