MaschineR by RetouchControl

[stp2015]

I bought this yesterday, because I had read a good review of the equivalent for Push, i.e. PushR.

For me, MaschineR is pretty much unusable. Some aspects of it I cannot get up and running, and some aspects are just very disappointing. After watching their advertisement, I had expected a better product.

In any case, I emailed them maybe two hours after I piurchased it, because it immediately became clear that it has no value for me. Asked if they could give me a refund, and was hoping for some sort of flexibility on their part. So far I have not heard back.

Now my question: Am I out of line? The product just really does not do what I expected it to do. Do I have a right to be disappointed that I have not received a response, and potentially a refund?

[chimp_spanner]

Just out of interest what are the main limitations for you? I have a MK3 and a Push 2 so I’ve thought about going this route but ultimately I know nothing is gonna integrate with the Maschine/Push better than Maschine Studio/Live.

[PhillipOrdonez]

It does a pretty good job at controlling a lot of Reason from the hardware. I'm interested in your answer to Paul's question as well.

[stp2015]

My first main issue is that many of the labels shown on screen of the Maschine appear to be hard-coded, not sent live by reason via the remote protocols. Because of this, they seem to have picked general labels in many cases. For example, if you want to edit a rack extension, the different pages of parameters are simply labeled "bank 1", "bank 2", "bank 3" etc. From the product description, I was expecting full bi-directional communication between reason and Maschine. This was the main reason why I wanted this product.

The second issue is that when you change which device you want to play on the pads, that does not mean that you automatically can control that device using the knobs. Instead, you have to navigate manually to the correct knob page using a set of buttons on the Maschine.

I also find that the screens are not as responsive as they could be, i.e. there is a discernible lag between when a parameter changes in reason, and when that change is displayed on the Maschine. I assume this is because everything passes through the MaschineR app on the computer. My own simple Maschine remote map/codec, which is a straight implementation via Lua and the Mackie protocol does not have this issue.

I find the button layout non-intuitive.

The emulated keyboard commands for navigation do nothing. This may be fixable, but I have spent a considerable amount of time on the setup, and I cannot get it to work.

From the review I read, PushR must be better.

[fullforce]

I bought this yesterday, because I had read a good review of the equivalent for Push, i.e. PushR.

For me, MaschineR is pretty much unusable. Some aspects of it I cannot get up and running, and some aspects are just very disappointing. After watching their advertisement, I had expected a better product.

In any case, I emailed them maybe two hours after I piurchased it, because it immediately became clear that it has no value for me. Asked if they could give me a refund, and was hoping for some sort of flexibility on their part. So far I have not heard back.

Now my question: Am I out of line? The product just really does not do what I expected it to do. Do I have a right to be disappointed that I have not received a response, and potentially a refund?

I have PusheR which works fantastic with Reason. Retouchcontrol has always been quick and extremely helpful with support requests.

I don't know. What did you expect? Did you actually look at what it could and could not do?

[stp2015]

Yes, I actually did look what it can and cannot do. I think the promo video oversells the functionality, especially what information the display of the machine shows. And it leaves out the not so nice aspects of their implementation.

In any case, I think I have complained here enough I will try again and send them another email, hopefully I will get a response. In my experience, most company's that make reason products like reason and actually are good people. So I am sure all can be worked out.

Thanks for your responses