Native Instruments recently updated its Maschine software to include full integration with Sounds.com accounts. I spent a few hours toying with it, and I’ve never been more inspired to start new music projects.
Sounds.com is among the largest royalty-free curated sound and sample collections in the world. It’s a veritable cornucopia for producers, featuring over one million high-quality sounds that can be used to create music in every genre. But, until now, you had to download individual samples to a folder on your computer, and then manually import them into Maschine.
Now, with the update, you don’t have to go through all the rigmarole anymore. You simply log in to Sounds.com, find the sounds you want, add them to a ‘collection,’ and then select the option to download the collection to your Native Instruments software. It’s simple:
I can spend hours at a time scrolling through samples on Sounds.com – it’s like the modern equivalent of digging through crates of vinyl. Sometimes I’ll just look for sounds I like without any agenda. If I happen to find some loops or samples that I’m feeling, I can now add them to specific ‘collections’ (folders, basically) then download them straight to Maschine where they’ll be waiting for me next time I fire it up. Alternately, if I’m working on a project, and I can’t find a specific sound I like in my local library of add-ons and downloaded sounds, I can browse Sounds.com for what I need and then send it straight to my DAW.
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In practice this works quite well. My workflow involves Native Instruments’ Maschine Mikro and Komplete Kontrol A25 midi controllers. I prefer to use the sound browser on my hardware because I like the tactile feel of “dialing-in” my sounds. With the 2.8 update, once I’ve sent my Sounds.com collections to Maschine, I can browse my local and downloaded samples in exactly the same way. It’s magical.
It takes a few seconds for downloads to populate, but you don’t have to refresh, import, or do anything to get the integration to work. I dig that. The less brain power I’m forced to dedicate to getting the noises I hear from the internet to my music project, the better.
Sounds.com’s library and Native Instruments’ software and hardware are a tough music-creation-ecosystem to beat. Everything in the Berlin-based company’s portfolio meshes together perfectly like Lego building blocks.
The Maschine 2.8 update is free and can be downloaded via Native Instruments’ Native Access software manager.
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