Rotary club
Maschine Mikro Mk3’s push button rotary encoder isn’t of the ‘4D’ kind found on Maschine Mk3, so there’s no up/down/left/right ‘joystick’ functionality. That’s fine – it keeps the cost down – but we’re very surprised the horizontal axis hasn’t been replicated in the left/right buttons for stepping through browser categories and mixer channels, both of which, consequently, have to be done onscreen using the mouse. Weird.
The other buttons to the right of the encoder switch it between control of Volume, Swing, Tempo and the parameters in Maschine’s Control Area – plugins, Macros, mixer levels and pan, etc. Select a parameter to assign it or step through adjacent parameters with the left/right buttons. The Sampling button, which puts the Maschine Mk3 into full-on sampling, audio editing and slicing mode, merely sets the encoder push button to starting and stopping recording. Ironically, its location, above the left/right navigation buttons, would be perfect for an up/down pair…
Being detented, the rotary itself is great for easily stepping through presets, etc, but although the Shift button sets it to finer resolution, we’re undecided as to whether or not we’d prefer a smooth action, as would better suit most plugin controls.