The Maschine software is becoming more and more DAW-like. Will it continue in this direction, or are there some fundamental aspects that will always make it different from a normal DAW? What's changed under the hood in Maschine 2.0?
"Maschine's unique and highly integrated hardware/software concept has a different focus from a DAW but at the same time serves as a highly workflow-orientated production environment for various music styles. In addition to a whole bunch of exciting new features in the Maschine 2.0 software, the completely new and rewritten audio engine now provides a lot of more efficiency and flexibility."
Traktor DJ for iPhone/iPad has been a critical triumph. Do you have any plans to do more in terms of serious iOS apps? How about Android development?
"Apart from Traktor DJ, our iMaschine beatmaking app for on-the-go groove creation is still a great success, and we are always looking at how we can improve the status quo of mobile music applications, both for iOS and other mobile environments. While we've been considering building apps for other mobile platforms as well, there are still some technical obstructions when it comes to Android devices. Low latency audio poses a constraint and the fragmented landscape of many different hardware models is another challenge. At the moment, the unified iOS framework with its powerful Core Audio engine built into iOS provides the best possible conditions for ultra-low latency playback while also supporting professional class-compliant hardware audio interfaces and controllers, such as the Traktor Audio 6 and 10 or the Traktor Kontrol Z1."
Kontakt has essentially spawned its own sub-market of Kontakt patches/instruments. Are there plans to unify this market, eg, a 'Kontakt Store' where users can browse third-party packs?
"Kontakt has not only become the absolute industry standard software sampler but it has also paved the way for a powerful content platform in itself. Besides our own stream of Kontakt products, we will of course keep on supporting a whole set of third-party companies and developers by distributing their products through our NI Online Shop. Apart from Kontakt, we will also further focus on the development and distribution of cutting-edge Expansions for Maschine, reflecting contemporary music styles to define the future of sound."
When Pro-53 and B4 were discontinued, we were told that NI was moving away from vintage emulations to concentrate on "new" creations. Of course, now we have the likes of Monark and the Solid Mix Series, etc. What brought about the return to this direction?
"With Monark we saw the opportunity to considerably raise the bar with regards to the sonic quality of analogue modeling. This emulation recreates every single aspect of the complex interaction of analogue circuits by utilising further-improved cutting-edge DSP technology byour in-house developers."
