« Great controller for maschine »

I used to do a lot of freelance beatwork for a few rappers areound Atlanta. Some live and some in the studio. I ended up using maschine a lot for those projects. I found it excelled at sampling and beatmaking in general. I elected to use the Maschine controller with it. I only used it with Maschine. Typically my setup was Maschine running on a laptop with the controller plugged in via usb. In this environment it works wonderfully. In man ways the controller is set up to be a reflection of the software environment on a hardware level. All the most important functions like triggers and manipulation parameters can be controlled from the device. The sixteen pads are very comfortable and sensitive. Looking at them you might not expect much but they are actually quite well made and react great. My favorite feature by far is the transport controls. In a live setting I can't afford to go into the program and make major adjustments between songs and the transport control lets me do this quickly and easily. The encoders also are a nice touch although I rarely need them.

The real strength of this controller is being able to have a visual connection between the software and the buttons you see. In a live situation this allows very fast use and a quick route to get things done. I would say that if you use maschine often at all, you MUST get the controller. I couldn't imagine using maschine without it, especially live. I would be lost. The value is pretty could. Like I said, if you are a maschine user, it's a must buy. The quality is good. Never gave me any trouble. I took it probably 20 or so shows. Recommended if you need triggers and pads especially. Just don't try to use it for what it's not. I can't see this being super useful outside of maschine. At that point its a decent beat pad and that's all.