Maschine Mikro M k3

It’s been seven years since Maschine Mikro –
the smallest member of NI’s family of
controllers for their Maschine 2 DAW – last saw
an update. The intervening years have not only
seen the arrival of the roomy Maschine Studio
(10/10,
198) but also the making of a number
of major improvements to the ‘core’ Maschine in
its Mk3 iteration, which scored 9/10 in
249.
Maschine Mikro Mk3 arrives alongside the
ASeries keyboard range (10/10,
263), aiming
to present the same afordable entry point into
the world of Maschine as those cheaper
alternatives to the SSeries ’boards do the
Komplete Kontrol platform.
So, Maschine Mikro Mk3 is a 4x4 pad
controller for NI’s very capable but decidedly
‘diferent’ Maschine 2 DAW (included – VST/AU/
AAX/standalone). It can also be used as a
general-purpose MIDI controller with any other
DAW or application, but its raison d’etre is to
provide hands-on governance of every aspect of
Maschine 2 – browsing sounds and plugins,
performance and recording, processing,
arranging and mixing. The sleek, angular
320x177x45mm, 1.12kg hardware looks like it’s
been cut directly out of Maschine Mk3, and
boasts the same sturdy build quality, bright LED-
backlit buttons, supremely responsive LED-
backlit pads (not as bright, alas), and
Native Instruments
Maschine Mikro
Mk3
£199
Hot on the heels of the ASeries keyboard comes the cheapest, dinkiest
hardware controller for NI’s groove-focused DAW to date…
“This yields a hefty
drop in price, but
pays for it with a fairly
radical change in
conceptual direction”
performance-enhancing ribbon controller.
Around the back are a USB 2 port, handling both
power and data, and a Kensington Security Slot.
Missing in action
What Maschine Mikro Mk3 doesn’t have,
obviously, are Maschine Mk3 and Studio’s
beautiful full-colour dual displays – genuinely
enabling the software to be negotiated without
looking away from the hardware – and the eight
buttons and eight touch-sensitive rotary
encoders that come with them. In fact, while
Maschine Mikro Mk2 at least had a smaller
display with just three Function buttons, Mk3
ditches all of it in favour of the same tiny OLED
readout found on the ASeries keyboards, used
to show text-only information – browser results,
plugin parameter names and values, Group and
pad names, etc. This yields a hefty drop in price
of which we very much approve, but pays for it
with a fairly radical change in conceptual
88 / COMPUTER MUSIC / January 2019
> reviews / native instruments maschine mikro mk3
CMU264.rev_mikromk3.indd 88 13/11/2018 17:13