MachFive and beyond

michael77 · Post by **michael77** » Mon Aug 01, 2022 4:53 pm

So I guess MachFive 3 is done and not moving forward.... what to do? The folks at MOTU told me to check out Falcon 2 from UVI..... questions.... Will it read my old MachFive presets and .iso files?

Also there is an app called cisdem unarchiver which claims to be able to extract AKAI.iso files... has anyone been successful at this? I have an old Mac Pro with 10.15 on it... maybe it will work.

any advice would be welcome

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Mon Aug 01, 2022 5:14 pm

michael77 wrote: ↑Mon Aug 01, 2022 4:53 pm So I guess MachFive 3 is done and not moving forward.... what to do? The folks at MOTU told me to check out Falcon 2 from UVI..... questions.... Will it read my old MachFive presets and .iso files?

Also there is an app called cisdem unarchiver which claims to be able to extract AKAI.iso files... has anyone been successful at this? I have an old Mac Pro with 10.15 on it... maybe it will work.

any advice would be welcome

Some others may be able to give better advice than I, but from my own experience Falcon seems to be able to open anything that opened in MachFive. (EDIT: My apologies. I wasn’t thinking about libraries for other samplers! Sorry! Falcon doesn’t have the translation capabilities.) I know it has no problem opening the old MachFive .ufs volumes and opening anything in it.

I also know Falcon will open the volumes for older specialized VIs like Electric Keys, Ethno, Symphonic Instruments, but those libraries require an iLok authorization to be accessible and I remember hearing some talk that if you're using an M1 Mac, you may have to run DP in Rosetta 2 in order for them to be usable. Some sort of issue where MOTU would have to work something out with PACE, etc. and it's unlikely to happen. Don't quote me. I'm hoping more knowledgable people will chime in.

Also, if you contact UVI and explain to them that you have official MachFive refugee status, they will often take pity on you and give you a discounted crossgrade price. It also happens to be on sale right now, too I think with their Summer Sale for $261

https://www.uvi.net/product-overview

Nonetheless, the crossgrade pricing might even be better, so I'd email their support and ask about it before buying.

michael77 · Post by **michael77** » Mon Aug 01, 2022 5:18 pm

thanks James, already have emails in. Hoping for the best.

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Mon Aug 01, 2022 7:02 pm

Type MachFive in the search fields and read all the recent threads. Your questions have been asked and answered and asked and argued and resolved and asked and…

Seriously, it will save you a lot of time.

monkey man · Post by **monkey man** » Mon Aug 01, 2022 11:20 pm

James Steele wrote: ↑Mon Aug 01, 2022 5:14 pm... but from my own experience Falcon seems to be able to open anything that opened in MachFive.

AFAIK this isn't the case Brother James. AKAI and EMU spring to mind 'cause I used to read my old CD's from the '90s.

I doubt the old Digidesign format (forgotten the sampler name) would work either.

I think it used to read EXS-24, NI Battery, NI Kontakt, SoundFont & VSampler as well, amongst others. Of these, Kontakt is the only one I know Falcon reads.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Mon Aug 01, 2022 11:41 pm

monkey man wrote:
James Steele wrote: ↑Mon Aug 01, 2022 5:14 pm... but from my own experience Falcon seems to be able to open anything that opened in MachFive.
AFAIK this isn't the case Brother James. AKAI and EMU spring to mind 'cause I used to read my old CD's from the '90s.

I doubt the old Digidesign format (forgotten the sampler name) would work either.

I think it used to read EXS-24, NI Battery, NI Kontakt, SoundFont & VSampler as well, amongst others. Of these, Kontakt is the only one I know Falcon reads.

I was posting in a hurry so I should have been more careful with what I said.

I wasn’t even thinking about the translation capabilities. Just that Falcon could open any instruments that were *meant for* MachFive. To quote the great Steve Martin, “Excuuuuuse meereeee!”

monkey man · Post by **monkey man** » Mon Aug 01, 2022 11:57 pm

Ahh... "anything written for M5" as opposed to "anything that opened in M5".

Gotcha bro'. Agreed, with the iLok / Rosetta caveats of course.

michael77 · Post by **michael77** » Tue Aug 02, 2022 7:40 am

OK,so UVI has approved a cross grade price.... very nice. However, I won't be able to open the AKAI.iso files. I have tried Cisdem Unarchiver on a 10.15 Mac Pro but no luck..... Does anyone out there know how to open these .iso files?

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Tue Aug 02, 2022 7:45 am

michael77 wrote:OK,so UVI has approved a cross grade price.... very nice. However, I won't be able to open the AKAI.iso files. I have tried Cisdem Unarchiver on a 10.15 Mac Pro but no luck..... Does anyone out there know how to open these .iso files?

There’s something called Translator by Chicken Systems that might be able to do it.

https://www.chickensys.com/products2/translator/

By the way, as Monkey Man pointed out. Falcon doesn’t have the translation capabilities that Mach Five has. I wasn’t thinking about reading other sampler formats. My apologies.

bayswater · Post by **bayswater** » Tue Aug 02, 2022 8:21 am

It’s been a long time since I moved from Mach5 to Falcon, but I seem to recall that at least some of those libraries Falcon couldn’t open directly could be opened by Mach5, saved as Mach5 files, then opened in Falcon. There were some other circuitous routes using one or more of the above mentioned translators where something could be saved as perhaps a .exs or NI file, then imported into Mach5, saved as Mach5, etc. There was also a few simpler sample sets I translated with SampleMaker which later became part of Mainstage or Logic. Anyway, I didn’t lose anything in the move.

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Tue Aug 02, 2022 11:47 am

michael77 wrote: ↑Mon Aug 01, 2022 4:53 pm
Also there is an app called cisdem unarchiver which claims to be able to extract AKAI.iso files... has anyone been successful at this? I have an old Mac Pro with 10.15 on it... maybe it will work.
…

If the app is 32 bit, that cannot work over Catalina. OS 10.14 Mojave, maybe. The older the MacOS, the better your chances. Certainly worth rigging up an external boot drive for that old MP and using it to translate everything in preparation for the move to Falcon 2. If you’re not set up for that yet, it’s quite inexpensive to do so.

michael77 · Post by **michael77** » Tue Aug 02, 2022 12:04 pm

Yes, Cisdem did not work.... so here's the final outcome. Bought Translator 7 ( from chicken systems) for 80 bucks. That translated all of the akai and emu .iso disk images just fine into MachFive/Falcon presets.... woo hoo. Bought Falcon 2 for
179.00 and because of download issues they gave it to me for 100 bucks... big win!!

Opening up Falcon soon to see if this all works.... thanks everyone for their help.

monkey man · Post by **monkey man** » Tue Aug 02, 2022 4:45 pm

Great to hear!

Good luck Michael.

YouTube · Post by **James Steele** » Tue Aug 02, 2022 5:53 pm

michael77 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 02, 2022 12:04 pm Yes, Cisdem did not work.... so here's the final outcome. Bought Translator 7 ( from chicken systems) for 80 bucks. That translated all of the akai and emu .iso disk images just fine into MachFive/Falcon presets.... woo hoo. Bought Falcon 2 for
179.00 and because of download issues they gave it to me for 100 bucks... big win!!

Opening up Falcon soon to see if this all works.... thanks everyone for their help.

That's a good outcome. I'm happy to hear Translator worked out. I remember using a very early version many, many years ago and it might have only run on Windows initially. I'm always a bit skeptical about how well those work. You're "loaded for bear" now. I really like Falcon. Honestly, I like it better than Kontakt in many ways, but Kontakt seems to have become the most popular platform for third party library developers.

Michael Canavan · Post by **Michael Canavan** » Tue Aug 02, 2022 6:02 pm

James Steele wrote: ↑Tue Aug 02, 2022 5:53 pm
michael77 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 02, 2022 12:04 pm Yes, Cisdem did not work.... so here's the final outcome. Bought Translator 7 ( from chicken systems) for 80 bucks. That translated all of the akai and emu .iso disk images just fine into MachFive/Falcon presets.... woo hoo. Bought Falcon 2 for
179.00 and because of download issues they gave it to me for 100 bucks... big win!!

Opening up Falcon soon to see if this all works.... thanks everyone for their help.
That's a good outcome. I'm happy to hear Translator worked out. I remember using a very early version many, many years ago and it might have only run on Windows initially. I'm always a bit skeptical about how well those work. You're "loaded for bear" now. I really like Falcon. Honestly, I like it better than Kontakt in many ways, but Kontakt seems to have become the most popular platform for third party library developers.

M53's translation tech was licensed from Chicken Systems, someone from UVI mentioned it as one of the reasons why Falcon doesn't have that tech. One advantage of Kontakt is it's multithreaded, although how well that works depends on the DAWs implementation of plug in hosting etc.

Personally I find using Falcon as a workstation much more pleasant, Kontakt can seem cumbersome at times setting up multi outs etc.

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