MachFive 3 just for the granular stuff?

[Michael Canavan]

I've been on the fence about Machfive for quite some time, mostly because the only thing it does that truly isn't in my current arsenal is the IRCAM granular stuff.
The rest looks nice, but having an Xpander, plenty of soft synths, Kontakt and all, it's not going to add any major new tools in. I'm not in short supply of granular tools, Metasynth, Live, Reaktor, Granite, and Symptohm all do granular synthesis, but the demo has me drooling.

Mostly it seems that the algorithm is smooth, granted the audio file they chose to use is smooth, but those of you with Machfive 3 should know through playing around how smooth things like the jitter control (unique to IRCAM), make the whole process?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

After seeing Matt at MOTU do the demo at Guitar Center last year and then trying it at home, I was totally sold. I had already bought M5-3 before the demo and went to learn more hands on stuff, but the Granular stuff was too cool and so useful I would have paid twice what I did for M5.

The ability to freeze ANY audio signal and turn it into a perfectly useful patch was just too amazing. I think they used an eternal section of Star Wars, a beautifully orchestrated Williams chord and froze it into an orchestral patch that could be played in ANY range and it sounded just as perfect as if an orchestra was playing.

I don't have the other other granular stuff you mentioned, but that isn't the only thing M5 excels at. The scripting and other processing is remarkable as well. I do need Kontakt 5 as well since i desperately need the 3rd party instruments (like steep pedal guitar and banjo, as well as some synth (Juno 106 AKA YouKnow6) and a quite a few others, but between those two VIs I'm pretty set at this point. Even my Korg Legacy stuff can be sampled into M5 until Korg updates that VI and I have no problems getting what I need in every production. And while i don't do a lot of recording for projects I don't score and design for, I sometimes work as music director for theater and dance programs and when a dancer wants a song slowed down or sped up by as much as 50% or more, the IRCAM stuff is irreplaceable.

IMO.

[Michael Canavan]

Yeah I've been for years under the impression that IRCAM are pretty much the best of show when it comes to this sort of thing. They get funding from selling their technology, the French government and the school.

I'm just pinning I think because the moment I made up my mind to buy a copy used including an iLock 2 all for $200, someone else snatched it up. "He who hesitates" in this case pays an extra $100 for it from Sweetwater or JRR shop.....

[MIDI Life Crisis]

You won't regret it as long as you really need the IRCAM stuff. For simple playback, any VI sampler will do. In some ways I like K5 better, but just for the 3rd party stuff that I can get. For serious sampling and audio manipulation, nothing comes close the M5/3.

IMO.

[Michael Canavan]

"really need" is kinda far from the truth I guess.
I'm one of those weirdo underground music lover types.
= no real income from music to speak of!

However granular twisting is a big deal to me and lately I've been filling that gap with some great tools. Machfive 3 looks to be in it's own class though. I'll report back to this thread when I get M53 up and running. Just bought it on sale for $209+ tax! Now to get an iLock...

[MIDI Life Crisis]

You're gonna love it, Michael. It's a great VI. Some of the instruments take a while to load but they are jam packed full of goodies. Telematic scripting is really fun and the Biospheres bank is also full of great patches.

[Michael Canavan]

Yeah I think I will love it!

Just ordered an iLock.... mixed feelings about dongles, almost lost an Emagic (Pre Apple Logic parent company) XSkey down a rain gutter when it fell off my keychain.

The main thing though is I'm moving away from using NI products. I'm not one to easily forgive a debacle like their ever changing patch names, Kore discontinuation, and general 'Jack of all trades master of none' approach.
I'm pretty comfortable with Kontakt and it has some good libraries third party for sure, but it's never been a sampler I loved using for designing my own patches. Obviously you can do wonders with it , (Hollow Sun to name one outfit doing great things), but it's not a pleasant experience. From what I can tell of the filters and other tools in M53 for building a patch, they're of a quality tone wise I'm more going to enjoy.
Kontakt has some good reverbs, but I've never messed with their filters and thought "wow! I'm impressed!"

[MIDI Life Crisis]

FWIW, I've found M5 to be much easier to program than Kontakt (and forget Aria player). Thanks to KGDrum I just bought a few 3rd party instruments for the K player (two slide guitars, a banjo - all three heavily scripted for realism) and a mandolin. Great fun but a great challenge at times. I needed them for a project but KG also told us about some synth stuff and a few freebees that I'm also using a fair amount in the project (11 short films circa 1920). One (a Hawaiian flavored flick) would be terrible w/o a good slide gtr. M5 didn't have anything close.

[Michael Canavan]

To be fair here, I really do like a lot of NI stuff, I use Absynth all the time, and Kontakt is amazing. My gripe is more due to their ever expanding collection without fixing what they sell now seeming policy. Sometimes it's better to specialize and I feel companies like U-He, UVI (M53 engine makers), Fabfilter etc. are more likely to tackle a bug than to let it go for years on end. Of course bugs are going to happen, it's just a lot more frustrating to deal with them when the developer is constantly introducing new software....

[MIDI Life Crisis]

BTW, if you by chance already have ExtremeFX from Plugsound Pro, you don't need to reinstall that disc from the M5 package or reauthorize it. The PSP stuff (and lots more) just loads into M5.

Also, unless I'm doing something wrong, the plugin for M5 only handles 16 channels. The stand alone handles (I think) 64. When I add channels to the plug it goes from A1 to A16 and then repeats A1-16. The standalone version goes from A1 to A16 and then starts B1-B16, etc.

[kgdrum]

I almost pulled the trigger for the Mach5 cross grade special @ Musicians Friend tonight for $209.
I held off, I'm trying not to buy anything until I see what develops at NAMM.
I also have so much stuff from the Holiday sales I have to use before I can justify buying more,lol

Mach5 will be mine soon though.......

[Michael Canavan]

Re: 16 MIDI channels-
Yeah I think this was a limitation of the plug in that was talked about at KVR when M53 first came out, a developer answered a lot of questions. I'll never go much above 16 channels anyway and if I do the Mac Pro can handle the CPU hit of another instance of M53.

Listened and watched some of those old movies you're scoring, great job btw. Dead on 'vibe' to the music.

[Michael Canavan]

I almost pulled the trigger for the Mach5 cross grade special @ Musicians Friend tonight for $209.
I held off, I'm trying not to buy anything until I see what develops at NAMM.
I also have so much stuff from the Holiday sales I have to use before I can justify buying more,lol

Mach5 will be mine soon though.......

I justify it with this simple thing. Besides upgrades, and eventually getting Altiverb I'm now set for software. I have more tools than I can use, across all the areas I'll use them in musically.
Now it's back to learning and a few amplification issues that can be addressed slowly.

[kgdrum]

FWIW, I've found M5 to be much easier to program than Kontakt (and forget Aria player). Thanks to KGDrum I just bought a few 3rd party instruments for the K player (two slide guitars, a banjo - all three heavily scripted for realism) and a mandolin. Great fun but a great challenge at times. I needed them for a project but KG also told us about some synth stuff and a few freebees that I'm also using a fair amount in the project (11 short films circa 1920). One (a Hawaiian flavored flick) would be terrible w/o a good slide gtr. M5 didn't have anything close.

for me the abundance of 3rd party libraries available in the Kontakt format is what makes Kontakt so useful.
I'd love to see developers start making more 3rd party libraries for Mach Five and I actually think they will but there's already so many cool options in the Kontakt format.
As more users begin to use Mach Five I think developers will start dipping their toes in the M5 water.
If I were more of a programmer,M5 would intrigue me more as it appears to be stronger than K5 in it's synthesizer & sound editing capabilities but my reality is to use K5 primarily for 3rd party sample library playback.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Kontakt is my serrated knife - great for tomatoes. MachFive is my surgeon's knife when I really need precision and advanced operations. Both are valuable and useful and for me at this point, critical.