Hello,
It’s been a bumpy road for me trying to figure out a way to integrate Maschine into my workflow with Renoise, but now that I’ve got it all set up and working, I thought I should take the time to share with all of you the TemplateSong.xrns that I’ve created which serves as the default template for me whenever I start a new project in Renoise. I will briefly go over how I have this template configured with reference images so you don’t get confused.
First of all, I created 16 blank tracks and grouped them into a single group track named Maschine. I loaded an instance of the Maschine VST onto the group track.
Under the plugin tab, I’ve configured all 16 audio busses coming from Maschine onto the 16 separate tracks I’ve grouped under the Maschine group track.
Make sure to mute the audio coming from “Group” inside of the Maschine VST itself as shown in the following image. This is something you will have to do yourself, as Renoise cannot configure the Maschine VST automatically. If you do not mute the group channel inside the Maschine VST as shown, audio from the whole group within the VST will be sent to the Maschine group track (Track 17) inside of Renoise, and then be sent to the master channel in Renoise, duplicating the audio coming from the 16 individual tracks I have set up.
The final step you must take to properly configure your Maschine VST is to assign each individual sound to it’s own Ext Out, starting with Ext 1, and then Ext 2, and so forth, as shown here. Ext 1 corresponds to Track 1 inside of Renoise, Ext 2 corresponds to Track 2, etc.
Also, if you assign a new sound to a sound bank inside of Maschine, it may overwrite your routing configuration, and you will have to reassign that sound bank to the proper Ext channel again.
As a final note, I find that the most productive and smooth workflow when working with Maschine inside of Renoise is to first get all my sounds, loops, and patterns arranged how I want them to be inside of Maschine 2 running stand alone. I use the Maschine software by itself to work out the composition of my drum section, getting a “rough sketch” created and saved inside Maschine, without worrying about FX or anything like that yet, properly configured to send audio to the right Ext channels for every sound, with each of my groups audio muted, so the whole project is ready to go inside of Renoise. Then, when I load up Renoise, all I have to do is double-click on Maschine, select my saved Maschine project, and all the audio from my drums gets sent to separate tracks in Renoise and I can either render samples, apply FX, or do whatever I want with it in the sound design phase of my workflow.
While ideally, it would be nice to be able to send midi note data from inside Maschine into Renoise, I find that currently this is quite a hassle to get to work, and in the end, detracts from my productivity. While Renoise is arguably one of the best sequencers and pattern editors in the DAW world, until we see internal midi routing from the dev team, if you own a Maschine I recommend you simply work with the midi note data stored within the Maschine program for editing your drum patterns and sequencing your drum sections for now, and use Renoise to apply FX chains externally, automate changes, and harness all the creative freedom you have to manipulate audio within Renoise.
