Mach Five Lesson

[thracks]

I've been trying to finally get to know mach five as a sampler now for a couple of days. I haven't really spent that much time with it since I bought it a couple of months ago. I kept having a hellish time importing samples. After I did a drag and drop of several samples, Mach Five would just choke. Sliders stopped responding, graphics weirdness etc. I did the usual repair permissions, check for updates and so on. Nothing changed. It kept going into a coma after creating a new preset and dragging samples in.

Long story short, I'm using column view in OSX to navigate to the samples to import. I'd do a select all and then drag them into Mach Five. In the background the samples would stay selected in the finder. After going back to the finder and de-selecting the samples, Mach Five worked like a charm. Weird. Or is it?

[James Steele]

I'm not sure this is of any use or hasn't been covered before, but make sure you don't try to name any samples with a "/" character that MachFive has to load. I did this when loading samples from my Alesis D4 and it would generate errors until I figured this out, since the slash is used to denote directories in the OS.

<small>[ October 19, 2004, 09:39 PM: Message edited by: James Steele ]</small>

[thracks]

Yeah, I learned that one too some time ago. Just curious, when you say you were loading samples from your D4, how so? I've got a DM5 and I wouldn't even know where to begin transferring samples. Or were you just recording audio files then importing them?

And to clarify, Mach Five has a hissy fit if I have samples in a finder window selected. My problem was totally solved by either closing the finder window or de-selecting the files in the finder window.

[James Steele]

Originally posted by thracks:
Or were you just recording audio files then importing them?

Yeah, that's what I did. I had to recording them into DP via analog, and then load transfer the sample into MachFive. It sounded okay as I recall (my studio is still not put back together since I moved into a new place) but I remember the kick drum sample seemed to lose some bottom end.

I also have the DM5. I like both of those boxes and the idea was to sample everything I liked about them so that I could have sequences that I created play all "inside the box" as it were without external modules. I was not very happy with most of the drum sounds that shipped with MachFive as they weren't "rock n roll" enough for me.

[Unburst]

I found MachFiove to be weird after dragging samples in.
I was dragging four or five velocity switched samples into it and it did what you said, it froze up and wouldn't switch to grid view etc.
It did let me save though so I quit DP and rebooted and it was fine.
The next I tried it did the same but after a while it came back and worked fine.

[bckdm]

Originally posted by James Steele:

Originally posted by thracks:
Or were you just recording audio files then importing them?

Yeah, that's what I did. I had to recording them into DP via analog, and then load transfer the sample into MachFive.

Yes, that's a good and simple idea. Tx for the trick (I also own a DM5), and yes indeed, the M5 and Soundbanks samples are not enough rock for me as well.
A note of hope though: r'n'b and other hip hop boring soup have not erased everything else: last month, a very reputed and neutral weekly culture magazine in France voted London Calling as being the greatest rock album ever (which I agree on)

[Flare]

In case anyone hasn't been clued in:
Machfive is has a healthy collection of bugs.

It's a great sampler; truly awesome for sound design and even compostion. However, on MANY, many fronts, MOTU has seemingly dropped the "Beta Test" concept. I mean, the simplest of actions have caused issues ranging from hangs to quits, to screen geeks across a WIDE range of systems (G4/G5 rigs).

Their tech support admits to a number of said bugs, and don't have a clue as to when they're going to actually fix/address the issues. Disappointing. If I were a MOTU tech support specialist, I'd make it my mission to find out when users can expect fixes and tweaks to the engine. I'm sure, some will say M5 works great for them...however, these are people who are lightweight hobbyists who don't have the first clue in regards to extensive sample importation and manipulation. I guarantee that if you put me in front of ANY M5 version, on any system, free of 3rd party plugs (BS anyway, who's going to forego waves etc), I'll have it buckled inside of 3 minutes. It's depressing. Who the heck is testing the software???

Hello... McFly????!!! Think, Marty, THINK!!!

Until MOTU gets it together, I will continue to call it like I see it... If I seem out of line, I will counter by expressing the fact that everything stated is directly consistent with my experiences and findings out about MOTU.

In sum, DP 4.5 and M5 have significant bugs at this point. They are not the type of bugs that destroy your ability to be productive; rather, they make the process frustrating at times.

I love the platform, but they need some SERIOUS management reformation at MOTU...or at the very least, they should fire ALL their Beta testers, cause they are NOT doing their job. People need to send a message to them.

Hey MOTU, I know you read this board. Why don't you explain to me the situation??

/end rant...

So far as a work around for sample importation, I've found that importing the samples into the soundbytes window, and them pulling them into M5 seems to work. I have no clue why this method has more effective results than a direct drag and drop, but it does.

[revi]

Well, I don't feel alone now.

The drag-and-drop sample load process finally got me to go and get that OS X update to Kontakt. I was really digging the overall feel of MachFive (I admit I've been lagging on getting up to speed on it, just learning controls and messing with the default library).

As an old Unity user, and a recent convert to OS X DP, I had, and still have, great hopes for MachFive. It seemed like it would be quite sporty and integrated with DP, but the bugs (buttons staying depressed...heh, they weren't alone either...saves not seeming to go through, etc.) finally got me to get that Kontakt upgrade.

Kontakt, like all N-I products (IMHO) sounds great but is a processor hog.

Hopefully MachFive 1.5 or 2 will come out soon.

Really makes me wonder why BitHeadz totally screwed up Unity when they went to version 3/Unity Session. Unity 2 was, while certainly not perfect, one super-easy soft-sampler to use.

[revi]

Man, do I hate admitting this...after purchasing the download update to OS X of Kontakt (and I'm also _not_ wild about N-I's online store), I've just gotten way more done in the last 15 minutes than I had in the previous hour with MachFive.

MotU, I've been, and continue to be a loyal user, but please get MachFive up to speed.

Granted, I'm not doing a load of sound-design, but just getting the samples in the thing and running is all I needed to do to get started.