Wired for sound
It’s been a notable omission since version 1 of the hardware, but finally, NI have taken the obvious step of building an audio interface into Maschine. Not only does this give those working in small home studios – perhaps with Maschine and an audio interface as their only pieces of external hardware – the option to claim back a bit of desk space. More importantly, though, it means live performers now have one less box to lug around.
The interface itself is nothing remarkable, being a simple 2-in/4-out setup capable of recording and playback at up to 24-bit/96kHz quality, and appearing as a regular audio interface in your operating system and applications, including, of course, Maschine 2. The requisite quarter-inch jack sockets are all located on the back panel: Left and Right TRS Line Ins, Left and Right TRS Line Outs, a dynamic Mic In (there’s no phantom power, and this overrides the Left Line In when connected) and a headphone output. Small volume and Gain knobs sit alongside them.
Audio quality is great, and on our test Mac, we got round trip latency as low as 4.24ms at 32 samples, 7.87ms at 128 samples, and 25.3ms at 512 samples. The headphone out goes very loud indeed – good news for on-stage usage scenarios.
As you’d expect, the established 5-pin MIDI In/Out ports and quarterinch Pedal input are still in place, too.