MPC Live 2 vs Maschine + | The Ultimate Comparison

[Music] welcome to the black hole my name is bless beats it is here the battle of the champs the two standalone units that everybody's still talking about which one is the best which one is the better the npc live 2 or the machina plus i've made a quite a few videos on this before we've had some discussations with begs and aiken for example following him to the buying store getting it leading up to the event in time where he decided to part ways with it and trade it in for a marginal plus instead i've had the first npc live the npc owner of course all the mashinas you know i'm a match in the head so i'm a partially biased toward the machina plus you should know that coming in here but the thing is the flavor is like the butt it is divided so when people ask me which one should i pick it is way too complex to break it down based on that little sentence alone in them say so many different variables that have to do with the way that you prefer to work that makes it impossible for me to break it down based on just that you know i'm saying so i decided this is the first time that i have both of the machines in my possession right here i have the mpc live 2 and the mashina plus i have the luxury of having them both most people i realize do not have that luxury of being able to have them both i can right now so god damn it i will but i'm going to try to break some things down that i haven't seen in other videos out there just to give a clearer picture for you maybe make that decision a little bit more easier for you the startup time that can be fun to see boom there we are almost the same npc live is not too far behind there they take a little while to boot up but booting up your computer is probably going to take even longer and let's face it why would you need what what type of life-threatening situation is it that you're going to be in where this will matter i don't know first let us briefly touch upon the build and feel of these machines both of them are really superb quality very professional feeling this one has a thick plastic you know say and this one is also a thick plastic but actually has some aluminium components to it like these knobs right here are light aluminium aluminum smart q-link sliders they feel great yeah aluminum i know these knobs feel a little bit more great the resistance in them is a little bit greater but i cannot complain about either one of them also very satisfying click in the jog wheel here the machine jog wheel is a little bit different it's more clicky but it also serves as a four-way joystick so in a lot of cases for example in these channel menus you can nudge them or in the events if you have some note information here you can select these you can nudge them around using this joystick here which comes in handy but overall they both have a very satisfying touch to them all these buttons here there's an initial rubber soft touchdown and then a satisfying click at the end that it's not too mechanical and hard feedback npc live 2 i would say also even a little bit more satisfying rubber touch the initial rubber touch of these buttons here it's a little bit even more satisfying to press them and these things are important it might be a little bit geeky we might be over analyzing here over here to big music or are we here to you know masturbate but i think these things are important the tactile feel of these things when when it comes to the layout of them we're going to dive into the architecture in just a minute but i think the maschine plus wins here because you have one dedicated button for almost everything here if you got the npc one there's a few more dedicated buttons but there's also shortcuts so for the menu for example if i hold down menu you see we have 16 options here all these pads they correspond with these options so for example if i wanted to go into the track mute menu i can just press pad six there so it's not a big asian melody and i'm saying there's a little bit more menu diving in general on the npc than on the maschine plus but it's not that notable where it does become notable is in the architecture the way that everything is built up the way you structure banks of samples and the way you sequence on them but i think both of them are very well designed for what they are i mean the npc is staying true to its origins the original og structure of sequencing while the machine has a completely different approach to it this is what's hard to explain in theory so we're going to get into that first let's talk about the pads for a second here these pads they feel like some regular ass npc pads and that's and i say that with the best intentions in a good way npc pads are good for those that want to smash the pads if you really love to smash them you have that solidity there on the other hand if you want to be more gentle and have that soft touch maybe for playing some type of other sounds that are not you know drums that you're smashing really hard it's not as sensitive as the maschine plus maschine plus on the other hand is a little bit more all around you can touch it really gently like this and it will pick right up on it but you can also choose to smash it and it's gonna handle it it feels almost like it will not handle it though because this one is a thicker rubber it's a thicker rubber material with a little bit more bounce to it a little bit more recoil worry not however the machine can take a beating it's just a sensation there so if you're somebody that really loves to smash the pads i would probably pick the mpc live too especially if you're a finger drummer you know i'm saying let's talk about the sound management because these do differ a lot from the machine plus to the mpc live 2. let's start with the maschine plus right here what i really love about the maschine plus is the tagging system let's hop into the menu here everything is so neatly organized so if you're using maschine expansions or anything that's compatible with the machine you have everything beautifully sorted for you the first way you can filter your sounds is by projects groups sounds instruments effects loops or one shots so if i wanted to load up an entire group the next step we can filter by is which expansion pack do we want to look in let's say we want to look at the faded real ones now we're filtering out entire groups only from the faded reels kits from there we can filter it down even more to kids acoustic melodic percussion urban vinyl kit boom that's that's as deep as it goes for that one but let's take a look at instruments instead here is where it's so beautiful from a bread and butter standpoint when you're already a little bit into your beat and you have an idea in your head of a sound that you want right then and there chances are you're probably going to find it just by filtering out really quickly bass basin both strings brass drums let's go with the synth lead for example from there you can filter down even more classic mono synth classic polishing poly synth other soft synths so down to even a character all of these sounds are tagged for you to be able to filter it down to exactly what you need and that is what i think is the beauty about the file management on the maschine plus where it doesn't really translate in the transition from machine being a hybrid of software and hardware to a standalone unit is managing your own samples let us pretend i didn't have any of my own samples on there now i have a usb stick with some samples on it this is one way that you can access them they have actually fixed it so you can use a usb stick now but there's a downside to it and you will see in just a sec check them out i'm going into the browser here now if i want to browse anything that's related to my own sounds that doesn't have anything to do with maschine expansions or machine plugins i'll have to check this user thing here now if i go into my one shots menu you will see my usb stick that's named sounds pops up here all right so far so good let me go check them out okay so you'll notice here that this is not a traditional file browser the folders will be assigned to these filtering knobs right here and you cannot have unlimited levels of like you can't have you can't have files that are 10 folders deep for example let me check what folders i have in here okay i have grime wave folder see i i have to keep it that way i can only go two or three i think three folders deep and a lot of times you might want to organize if you have a usb stick that's full of uh sample libraries you might have one that's okay the first folder is the name of the of the of the sample pack for example the second folder is whether it's drums or instruments or percussion or something some other category like that okay that's another folder that you wasted and then the third one might be let's say we're in the drums folder now it's kicks snares hi-hats etc that is one more and that's that's as deep as you can go you can't have more folders than that i would prefer it if there is a way to just if there is also a regular ass file browser on here next con in this is the way it's so beautifully tagged everything in here with the factory sounds with the expansions that you get and the plugins you can do that with your own sounds as well but that means you're gonna have to do it in the machine software tag them and then import them into the machine standalone and there you just have a lot of of pre-work there a lot of management you might have to take a day or two depending on the size of your sample library and what you want to use to prepare it just to have that smoothly and readily available let me eject that and show you another way that you can transfer samples project files and what have you to your machine a plus you can actually go into settings and go into storage mode right here boom that will put it into usb mode and if we have a look at the at the computer or the data device we get access to the sd card and here's another thing the operating system and all the samples they're stored on an sd card here on the side when it comes to cpu performance a lot of it is dependent on that so you need to make sure that you have the most ultra fast sd card for the best performance you know say we're gonna get into that later also however let's say i wanted to put some samples in here i would need to make sure that i go into the user content folder now i can drag and drop drag and drop a sample there ejaculate the drive and now we should be able to access it from the library you will then find it under the user content folder the bank will be have the same name as the folder you dropped it in and now you can access it so it's not perfect it's not the whole world at the same time i haven't had any major problems with it i just think it's a little bit annoying that you can't have the options of both browsing it as a regular file browser and in this beautiful tagged system that they made for themselves at the same time i understand that it's hard to marry the logic of the two now let's have a look see at the mpc live 2 how that works mpc live 2 browser now you can see there are significantly less ways of filtering your samples you can basically only filter it by file type drums that'll be drum kit files in an entire kit that you load up a program as it's called in the npc world instruments is another type of program it's an instrument program clips are essentially audio clips samples which would be the equivalent of one shots any file or splice synchronize that's a beautiful thing if you're a frequent splice user you can sync your splice samples directly with your npc all you need to do is set your wi-fi up and sync it i don't use it that much personally but i know a lot of people do so that might even be a tipping point decision maker for you i don't know once you have them synchronized it kind of with the splice samples it makes up for it because it automatically makes a folder system for all your samples since the splice samples are all tagged in the metadata you can browse them by a folder like this so you can browse them by key and and you'll have folders for all the keys that your samples existing samples are in by instruments basically any tag that the supply samples are tagged by this is not the same for the machine samples the the machine samples and programs that are in the expansions though there are no meta tags so we can browse by expansion for example and then we go in here what we would have to do is actually search it just like any regular file browser so there is a drawback to to having the regular browser like that is that you don't get the beautiful tagging that you get in the native instruments world also arguably this is not a huge deal you can type it in on a touch screen like this kick and now i can browse all the kicks that are within that expansion if i wanted to browse for example my sd card that is in here i can just go to places press my sd card now clear out this field here and i can browse the folders that i can organize whichever way i want for example if i wanted to check out my own sample packs right here we can go into the under sound kit and [Music] instantly preview them like that that is something i should mention that has to do with performance also if you have a lot of samples loaded up in the user content folder on the mashina your mother your mother should know your mother should know sometimes you'll come across these bigger samples and scrolling them can be a little bit slow that is significantly better now than it was before but don't be surprised if you catch a little slow down here and there browsing your samples when it's streaming directly from the the sd card or the usb stick [Music] way you can solve that is by just turning off the automatic auditioning of the samples the pre here here then you'll be able to scroll away faster than the speed of light you know i'm saying but you cannot hear the sounds at the same time another thing that kind of sucks about it is you would expect maybe this magnifying glass to bring up a prompt where you can search by typing in but there's no way to do that so you will have to find it by filtering so there you don't say i think the pros and cons kind of even themselves out it depends a little bit what how you organize your samples from the beginning and how you like to structure your workflow you know i'm saying but it's a good thing to know now i'm going to try to break down the difference between the architecture on these two devices for you it's a little bit complicated to say first let us look at this graph right here okay so i'm going to load up the same sample on both of these [Music] let's begin with the machina the machina has a little bit more everything within arm's reach let me say you have these groups here and they all contain 16 samples or sounds which also double as tracks at the same time these groups also contain the patterns so the way that you structure sounds is going to be completely different you're not limited to these eight groups as a matter of fact you can just go on for eternity creating new groups more groups than you'll ever need but it's a little bit easier to manage when all the patterns all the patterns that use these sounds live within the group and also all the tracks that you sequence live within the pad so this is the sound that we hear here and it's also the track let me just show you let's bring up the screen here let's set the tempo to what the sample is and i'm just gonna pop it in there [Music] see now we're sequencing now we made our first pattern there and this pattern lives within this group this sound [Music] which also lives in this group doesn't need to be assigned to a track because the pad also doubles as a track at the same time so you don't need to think about managing that that will always be in the same place it will be on track one or sound one because there's there's not even a thing such as tracks but you can think of it as a track that lives on the same pad as the sound and this is going to be very confusing at first if you're coming from a daw on the computer or from the npc this concept is a little bit different it can be tricky to wrap your head around looking at doing the same thing on the mpc live 2 here there's already three layers to it where there was one layer to it on the machine so we have our sample here [Music] okay so first we have eight pad banks here our sample lives in pad bank a of this program so the first thing you'll have to do is set up your program there are several different types of programs that you need to keep track of you can have a drum program which is what this is right here in this case once we have this sample we will attach it to the drum program then we will go in and edit all the parameters of this program the polyphony of the entire program and the pitch of the entire program mute groups sample editing envelopes filters you name it every parameter lives within this program and it is a very flexible way but it adds a few more layers of complexity to it so now that our sample lives in program 001 right here we can actually rename it if we want to be even more tidy and we want to begin to sequence it we need to first keep track of which sequence are we on we're on the number first sequence let's set the bpm up there now we need to select which track we're on we're on track number one we need to select which type of program should this track have it has a drum program the other types are plugin program instrument program clip program midi program or cv program on a machine it doesn't matter any group any sound within any group can be any type of program if you would translate it you can have a vst plugin here a one-shot sample there an audio clip there you name it it is more flexible within the group like that so now that we selected which type of program this track is going to host we have to select which program it's going to host and it's we only have one drone program right here which is a sample drum program okay now we're good to go now we can start sequencing it [Music] this along with also having to set up before how many bars you want it to be while if we make a new pattern right here on the machine we can actually [Music] have it automatically extend for however long we want you know depending on how you see it it might be more flexible but it can't become problematic because you have to think ahead of time you have to organize and be a lot more aware with how you organize things on the npc because for example you can make a new track and have the same drum program on there [Music] and you can see here already here it can become a little bit confusing because now you got two tracks but we hear the same sample [Music] and we're like why why is the sample being triggered so we have to go looking through the other tracks and once you get up to 18 19 20 tracks you will need to make sure that you're always sticking to the same track because you might be working on one sequence here and you're adding a bunch of tracks but you've already started working on sequence number two and you have ten tracks on sequence number two while you added eight new tracks on sequence number one now when you want to start to replicate that you're going to either have to go in and one by one copy this node information copy these events from this sequence to sequence number two copy all of the events from from uh track 13 for example and do that one by one which becomes a hell of a cumbersome thing the way that i work around this is number one always be very sure that you're naming your tracks so you can make sure you're sequencing your samples to the same track and be consistent with that and also i tend to stick with one sequence and build and stack the entire thing up before i start making new sequences because it can just become a cluster of a hell to keep track of things later if you make something that's a little bit more complicated on the machine everything is always tied together so you don't really need to think about keeping track of things like that a sound a pad contains a sound that same pad is also the track for the sound it always lives in the same group and all of the patterns they live inside of the group as well so once you have a couple of these patterns once you have a couple of these groups now instead of a sequence with multiple tracks we have a scene with multiple tracks so you can mix and match these patterns that all live within the groups and make different variations of them and once you make a new scene all you need all you would really need to do is change the pattern on that one and it's also flexible in the way that if you've made more patterns but you've been in other scenes while you make these patterns the scenes are the equivalent of sequences pretty much you'll have instant access to all of these new patterns that you made and you simply would have to go in and add them to the new scenes if you wanted to and this is a little bit weird to wrap your head around if you're not used to it at the same time if you have been using the npcs for 20 years you know exactly how it works you know that's the way that's the logic that's the way it goes and it's not going to be a problem at all for you i was on npc's 10 years before i switched over to the machine it was a little bit confusing at first but once i wrapped my head around it it was so much more flexible this layout right there that architecture can also become a little bit confusing when it comes to for example mixing right here because there's many different layers to it for example on this mix screen right here we see the different programs here laid out and we can adjust the volume the pan the effects for those it will be global for the programs on a machine it would just be directly on the group here we have our sample there we can go to the group and we can add an effect to there or we can go into the mixer and adjust the volume and the pan of it that's really all you need to keep track of here you can adjust it on a program level so our sample is on this program right here we can add four effects to it but there's also the return menu the sub mixes the masters audio tracks midi tracks and there's another mix menu where you can do it individually for each pad in the program right here until you get used to that you're probably gonna a thing or two up you know say same thing when it comes to the mutes you can go in and mute a program or a track and you can also mute a sample i mean it's uh to become quick and efficient at that it takes some time to get used to it and wrap your head around while on the machine it's like okay i want to mute the sounds that are in this group you bye-bye i want to mute i want to mute this sound that is in this group all right i'll go to this group and i'll mute that sound and it's much more immediate in that way there's really no valid purpose of the complexity of the architecture of the npc other than to make it fit the mold of the classic npc workflow this in my opinion is just a more modern way of tackling it and making it make sense where you have everything in one box and one standalone box and there's a lot to keep track of so you want as little things as possible to keep track of while maintaining this immediacy of grabbing out and touching it just one or two pushes away that is really the biggest difference between the two that is the biggest difference of all and that is the only reason why i prefer the machine over the mpc because there's other stuff that the npc does way better let us dive into some more sound library in my opinion the sound library that comes with the maschine plus it is way better than the npc although there are some very great expansions for the mpc live and after all they're both samplers so you know you stuff it with whatever you want to put in there but let's talk about the synthesizers on this one we have access to some great plugins here contact libraries there's the massive synth which is still incredible and holds up to this day the monarch which is a mini moog essentially prism reactor and retro machines just out the gate like that and there's some pretty superb synths let's load up something from massive in here say a base below 2 that's a great 808 preset to begin with here comes a problem though there is no gui and the way that the machine is built we are probably not going to see a visual interface for these plugins in this version of the machine unfortunately which makes it a let's be honest to make your own sounds or to even edit it i mean you can find your parameters in here but right now we're in the massive plugin we have 16 pages of parameters 16 pages if you already have some experience with massive you'll know how everything is laid out and your note you'll know that okay typically it's envelope 4 that's assigned to the basic you know like the attack [Music] you can find the parameters that you want to in there and it's fully fledged i mean it's the full version of massive is is the engine is exactly what it is on the computer but making your own sounds from scratch you can just forget about that it's uh it's not fun it's just not fun while on the mpc let me introduce you to another type of program which is the plug-in program we have at our disposal three different synth plugins and a whole bunch of uh drum synth plugins as well we'll take a quick look at that later but let's load up the baseline right here and now if we want to go in and edit this we can go into program edit and we have a beautiful gui a graphical user interface which makes it so much easier to make your own patches there's a whole lot of good presets here so it's much easier to edit it here but let me show you a drawback here if we switch this synth plug-in for the tube synth instead something that is a little bit boring about this is it's limited to four-note polyphony so you can't make those fleshy you know eighth note chords with this plug-in alone although it has some great sounds and it's much easier to edit it if we go into chords mode here for example yep that is the drawback so on the machine you have way better sounds you have more much more powerful plugins but you're a little bit limited when it comes to editing making your own sounds from scratch or even modifying them exactly how you want them to it will take a little while to browse around there because it's not quite as intuitive as having a graphical interface on the npc better library better presets shitty editing not as good library not as good presets limited polyphony but easier to edit you can make up for this by getting the mini school that me and cashman made which is actually a modified version of massive where the parameters are laid out in a more intuitive way from a to b and you can get this on my website where you can just load up one of these init presets mono there's four different five different mono presets five different poly presets and if you load up any one of these we've laid out the configuration so it's much more intuitive start off with the first oscillator move on to the second oscillator sub oscillator noise filter feedback filter envelope and you can get quite advanced with your sound design but it still has a way more intuitive layout there's a secret thing coming up for the the update but right now i think this is the best option that you have for designing your own sounds from scratch if that's what you're into the drum synths on the npc are really dope and the q-link sliders work really well here you just click somewhere for where the the area of parameters you want to edit and the four q links will always be where you want them to and that drives us into the next territory which is the touch screen but before we talk about the touch screen let's talk about the sample editing we have already loaded up a sample here same sample on both of them let me show you first on the machine what editing samples is like first of all you have all the parameters they will pop up on your screen immediately once you select the sample that you want to be at like i said the sense of immediacy i press this pad i get the parameters that i want to see for that pad so we have the polyphony for it we have the type whether it's a one shot a hd or adsr envelope and then followed by a shitload of other parameters npc select your program go into the program [Music] in here there's some quick sample editing parameters layering of the samples etc and while there's a sample editor that is attached to the program edit there's also another sample editor that's separate from that one and this can be a little bit confusing at first uh there's one tab right here where you do think of it as a little bit more destructive or it's like your sample editing workshop while on the program tab you will edit parameters that are specific to the program it's assigned to so there's a lot of menus and stuff you can get caught up in on the machine you have the sampler this is the sampler you record your samples on the first tab you edit your samples on the second tab this is the immediate sample edit part so if we wanted to for example manually edit our sample i have never experienced a faster way of doing that you can just duplicate your sample right here we'll set them up to the same choke group right there that's just one menu deep set both of them to that and now that we duplicate it all the parameters will be duplicated also [Music] zoom in and navigate on the right screen right here edit your start and end points on the first with the first knobs on this screen you can get the selection range here and just take a selection and do any of these edit functions here so it's very immediate and hands-on and that you have all of these eight knobs out here this is why i don't like the micro because you don't really don't get that immediate touch it's like you have the samples in your hands it also has a slice modes with a couple of different modes like the manual mode which is very dope yeah that was terrible you do it manually with time like that npc also has that there's a threshold mode that it detects and you set the sensitivity npc also has that there's a split mode where you split it into even parts the npc also has that and there's a grid mode where you also split it into slices according to a bpm so in terms of editing right here you have everything you need and there's two different ways actually now the manual chops i did right here they actually take up now this real estate in this group so they take up eight pads or eight sounds that's half of the group right there so but another thing that you can do is if you chop it up for example with one of the slice modes right here let's use the manual mode here remove all the slices [Music] so all right that's our slices and now that we apply these slices we get this we get the option to select which pad we want to assign it to and this is because when we select one of the these here we go out into the pad mode to see all of our pads we have all of our chops contained within one of these pads here so now we can actually dive into this by pressing keyboard and going all the way down in octaves because it's laid out as if it was on a keyboard it was would be c minus one like the lowest key c minus two i'm sorry [Music] now we have all the chops laid out there so there's a lot of possibilities how you want to arrange your samples and how you want to organize them you know say but what i prefer about the machine is this immediacy of editing the samples just by [Music] pressing the pad you want to edit and there you have it you're editing it and you have both the start and the end points and the zooming and the navigation on the screen everything is there on the same spot you just have to know which group is your sample in which pad is your sample on press it and you're there it's a little bit more complex on the npc you would have to navigate to the sample that you want to edit and if you have a lot of samples in here it can be a cumbersome thing depending on what mode you're in therefore i prefer to chop my samples directly from the program edit so in the program edit uh we can just press the pad and now we have instant access to accessing them but from here we can't access all the fancy chopping modes and for that we need to be in the sample edit mode and from here you can click the trim menu and we have the basically the same ways of chopping it the manual all right so now we have our chops there and we can edit the start point or the end point we have to actually switch with the q link button here to switch between uh the start and end points and these will define how fine the tuning of the start and or the end point is so we can do it pro of this is you can use the touch screen to zoom in but i actually don't think or you can use the zoom here but i actually think it's a little bit faster on the machine to just use this [Music] anyways once you have your chops you can press shift and convert these and then you would either need to make a new drum program which you then assign to a track and then sequence from there or you can assign specific slices to pads there are more steps to it there's no way there's no way of getting around that one pro though is you can customize the q link knobs here so you could actually set it up to control both the start and the end point and do it a little bit quicker that way i prefer to just do it from the program edit because then you can duplicate the pads just as you do on the machine like let's put that one there and now we can go in and start the edits then you might also want to set the polyphony of your entire program or set the mute groups up so they mute each other [Music] so so as you can see it is rather quick to do it on the mpc2 this is a little bit more complicated and i don't experience just the same hands-on control of feeling like the sample is in my hands and i'm shaping it as i do with the machine of course someone who has more experience with the npc will feel the complete opposite way if they sit down at the machine and they haven't learned it but trust me i have spent my fair share of time with the both of them the differences once you learn it are so miniscule that it's not going to be you know a deal breaker put it that way but i do think machine wins in this on the other hand there are other ways of dealing with your samples on the npc like for example one since you have all your samples assigned to a program there are global program parameters that you can manipulate here for example if i wanted to change the tuning of the entire group that you would deal with that on a machine in a somewhat different way you would just select all of them and then go [Music] so it doesn't have a global tuning for this group but you can easily select all of the samples and change any parameter of them at the same time which you can also do on the npc here could the touchscreen be a deal breaker i find that the touchscreen does make things a little bit faster in some occasions like for example selecting multiple nodes like this and being specific with it but that's really about it on the machine if i wanted to select all four of these notes i would press select i'll select an area or i would just press the notes that i want to select and that's it i mean it's it's not that much it's not that much slower it does make up for having less knobs though because as i showed you before for example in this plugin right here you can just press whatever selection you want to edit and you're editing those parameters but the machine kind of makes up for that by having more knobs and the layout of everything is so well designed that you know the knobs always control what they need to control when you're in a certain menu so i never really feel like i want to reach out and touch the screen i would think another one occasion is typing things for example if i wanted to save this project i'll hit save as and i'll just type the name in with the touch screen blah blah blah and it's pretty quick but on a machine if we want to save this for example it's way faster than typing with a ps4 controller if you've ever tried youtube on a ps4 it's just horrible typing it in since it's a four directional uh joystick slash a scroll wheel it's just really fast we can even go in here and rename this group to sample for example done that's it i mean it's it's a little bit faster with the touchscreen but the the touchscreen versus non-touch screen because of the way that these things are designed this makes sense to have a touchscreen with this not so much it's a non-issue so we can drop that now stability let's grab that dragon by the tail alright because when the machine plus came out it was notorious for its instability it was crashing left and right i condemned it i would not want to make a beat on it because i was afraid of losing it and you still have to you know be cautious around it but it's more about the responsibility of not overloading the cpu is kind of in your hands on this one if you have too many plug-ins in there they're pretty cpu intense if you have many different plugins of different kinds or if you have groups that have very many very long chains of effects on them you will easily overload them and get these sound buffer issues and it's not ideal for a live situation i don't know even at this point if i would dare to take it to a live situation which might be a big point for someone to buy this and some of these groups for example let's take one that is notorious for this crate cuts for some reason most of these kits are just smashed to the brim with effects so look at th this is the the group channel right these are the effects that are on the entire group low-fi filter chorus phaser metaverb grain delay perform effects grain stretch compressor limiter and then we go down to the sound level and imagine that these are 16 different sounds in here let's take a look at what we have on them all right actually not so much in this in this case just a few compressors but you'll find other groups when you load up that have like 8 to 16 effects on one sound and then imagine having that many effects on each sound in one group that is going to smash your cpu pretty quickly once you have a few of these groups loaded up so no matter how you sugarcoat it it doesn't matter the cpu does not handle as much as it should be for you to be able to comfortably use this in any situation where it doesn't matter if you get a little buffer sound every now and then the npc however it kind of polices you for example let's go into the mix here and go to the insert effects for uh this first sample right here on the first pad we can only have four insert effects on one pad then you can add another effect to the group or to the program i mean i'm sorry i'm getting confused here caught between these two worlds but also there only four effects slots and let's talk about the effects that's the next part there both of them really have everything that you need the mpc has some great delay and reverb effects on it great dynamics effects good compressors good eq's good filters and some more artistic choices like distortion frequency shifter low-fi talkbox tube drive decimator you know for lo-fi effects uh modulation stuff like ensemble flanker it has everything you need and the same goes for the machine the effects on here they're really good compressor gate transient master limiter maximizer eq filter cabinet chorus flanger frequency modulation frequency shifter phasor ice meta verb reflex reverb beat delay grain delay grain stretch reso cord distortion low phi saturator on top of that every sample has some quick effects on it like the things you would typically need compressor drive sample rate reduction bitrate reduction and four different types of filters just for quick effects uh for one sample and you would apply these effects either to the sound to the group or to the master there it's not much of a competition you know i'm saying you can achieve the same results with either one of them the machine has to perform effects that you can apply to a group so for example we can add a filter flanger burst echo reso echo ring stutter tremolo scratcher get the stutter right here [Music] and get some cool effects for each one of the groups here the npc has its own version of that which is called xy effect so you can double tap this to access that and you can apply these effects to the program and it's got a wide selection right here beat repeat low pass filter phaser flanger and it works kind of like a korg chaos pad the mandatory tape style is there [Music] and you can apply these to a program which you apply to a track which you apply to a sequence so there like i said the main difference between the two is the architecture and which one of those two you prefer that is up to you we can go in and talk about all the technical aspects like the inputs and outputs there are tons of videos for that that is not for me these are the points that i think really separate the two from each other but we have one last topic to cover and that is the standalone ability there's a few different reasons why you might want a standalone machine if you're at your computer all the time anyways it doesn't really make sense because it will be powerful enough i mean performance wise none of these are really up to par with what is in a computer ordinator device nowadays so you'll have to live with some limitations and if you're going with the expectation that you want to replace your computer you're going from a daw where you have literally limitless possibilities and you want to go to something like this and expect it to have functionality and performance that is at the same level as a computer we're not in that type of future yet or we might be but it would be even more expensive to get one of these devices your decision is going to depend a lot on what you're trying to do with it i see a lot of people they just want to replace the computer they want to get away from the computer and they want to use these for tracking out and making entire songs recording vocals and everything you can do it on both of them for example the audio eight audio tracks you have in here are the on the npc they're great and they're cool for little sketches and stuff you could even make entire songs on it if you wanted to but it's still it's not even comparable to a computer-ordinated device the machine since they introduced the clips in the song view here you can easily lay out the structure of your entire song by making a few scenes arranging it like this making variations in the patterns and then hopping into clip mode and using one of the groups here to record for example some guitar or some vocals and then being able to flexibly move it left and right across here but it's still it doesn't get close to a computer or the native device i rarely experience any crashes anymore on the machine plus since the latest update well the npc live it does uh just randomly crash on me and restart a couple of times since i got it so i think on stability i think you need to treat these two devices don't don't expect to replace a daw with any one of these two machines treat them like they're supposed to be there there are groove boxes all right even something like the looping capabilities it has some great potential this could be the greatest looper in the whole world i made a couple of videos about that you could either resample internally or or sample from an external source and sync it up [Music] the looper in the machine right here is very flexible because you can have takes either stacked up on the same pads or you can you know make multiple tracks and then easily build up a whole song like that right there then and there or make the patterns from those takes and make variations of them the looper on the npc is a little bit more rudimentary you can record one track you can over dub that track and then you can export it you can reverse it but that's about it as advanced you as you can get and then you can export it to a pad and use it from there so it's not as intuitive at with the building up songs however as a one track one stereo track looper what is the pro of the looper on the mpc live is you can actually hop in and over dub stuff once you have something recorded anywhere this one you'll have to be i'll show it to you we're playing it right [Music] you have to kind of time it right to start at the at the right place recording is working that's right it's working well if i wanted to hop in at any time it's not going to automatically sync it and you know it is so close to being the perfect looper of all like better than the the rc 505s but there are a couple of uh workflow issue males there like you have to always time the when you press and start the recording you can't hop in anywhere and it'll automatically lock into the tempo that you set now hopping back to the stand-alone ability there's a couple of different reasons you might just want to get away from the computer and have another inspiring environment or whatever or you want the portability aspect of it the machine plus as of now i think they kind of missed out on that aspect of it people were just yelling for a stand-alone machine when is a stand-alone machine coming and it'll do it it'll do the trick for if you want to just have it in the studio but as a portable device having a built-in battery and a speaker on top of that like the npc does it really does a lot man it does a heck load of a lot i have this one tethered with one two three four five six seven eight nine nine cables to it it is stationary it's in its place this is my most trusted like this this is my my right hand guy right here unplugging everything plugging in headphones and external battery and it just doesn't happen it doesn't happen it stays there it stays where it is i work on stuff here when i'm in the studio with the machine the npc live it is very friendly to just bring it out bring it out on the couch in the living room in the bed in the toilets and that's little small convenience that i really underestimated before of having a built-in speaker or a built-in battery so you don't have to worry about that that can sometimes be the the tipping point there for the paradox of choice to chime in and say you know what it's a little bit more convenient i'm just gonna work on this when i bring it with me so portability wise the npc live 200 wins the machine it works great as a standalone device but not really as a portable device i mean i just there's there's some decision making factor there that puts puts a stick in the wheel for me plus i feel like i have to be a little bit weary a little bit cautious with it you know i'm saying because of the certain instability factors that don't really matter that much when you're in the studio and working on something and you make sure that you save it but if i'm live i don't want to bring this no i don't want to bring it as it is right now i'm really hoping for a next version of the machine plus that has the built-in speaker and the built-in battery and it's a little bit more stable and has graphical user interfaces that will really make up for that last mile of extreme usability you know what i'm say so for me i'm not going to say which one of these is better i'm not i'm just not going to say that i prefer the machine plus you make your own decision i hope i clarified a thing or two and made it a little bit easier for you if you haven't tried them both i'd really do suggest heavily though that you give them a give them a whirl yourself before you make a decision and that is the last video i will ever make about this hopefully we can let it go now even though it's fun i enjoy having both of them i make some sketches on the npc live too and i will lift them into obliteon lever i'll continue working on them in the machine plus you know say i like to keep a little bit of variation but they are both very expensive machines so if you're on the road a lot and you don't have a computer at hand i would say pick the npc live too if you want something that is both work standalone and is a great hybrid because that is what it really did best in the very beginning that's the only reason why i even switched the machine in the first place is because it was a perfect marriage between computer ordinator device world and a controller with everything so within arm's reach and tactile almost as if you can touch the sound machine does a better job at that thank you to watching big up tom of patrons ring that notification bell if you haven't smash that like it really helps out always remember number one for the love and the fun okay bye

Channel: Blezz Beats

Views: 4,130

Rating: 4.8666668 out of 5

Keywords: beatmaking, music production, maschine mk2, maschine mk3, native instruments, teenage engineering, beats, making beats, hiphop, boombap, trap, tutorial, how to, retro gaming, mcp live, mpc lvie 2, mpc, akai professional, akai pro, machine plus, machine puls, maschine puls, mashine, mashine pluss, mashine plus, maschine +, which is better, which one, mcp, mashine +, machine +

Id: JilwQidsd_A

Length: 60min 58sec (3658 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 18 2021