twisted6s
I use Maschine 2.4 as a vst in Sonar. Sonar is the midi sequencer, Maschine is acting as a multitimbral synth. I'm able to use the Maschine drum pad or my midi keyboard to trigger drums and/or synths in Maschine and record the midi in Sonar.

Can you tell me how you've set this up? I can't seem to get my Maschine set up. That way at all. I've poured over the manual, googled it and I'm just figuring it out. The pads aren't sending MIDI. I get no indication that Sonar is receiving MIDI notes from the pads.

Hopefully, you or someone else here can guide me.

Thanks.

When you're using the Mikro to run the VST Maschine inside SONAR, the controller works pretty much like it does in standalone except SONAR controls transport, tempo. This doesn't appear to involve MIDI (the MIDI Input/Output activity indicator shows nothing). If you want to use the controller as a MIDI instrument you need to press Shift-F1

If you want to use Maschine 2 with the controller to browse sounds etc but record linearly in Sonar, there are a few things you need to do.

First, just because it makes things a bit more intuitive, add an instance of Maschine to your project using a separate audio and midi track, so NOT the "simple instrument track". So choose midi source and first synth audio output.

Now use your controller or the plugin window to browse and load a kit, just so it's easy to see/hear if it's working.

Now, on the top half of the plugin window, it shows "new project" and under that the name of your kit, right click the kit name and choose Group Midi Batch Setup/Sounds to Midi Notes.

Now, under there, make sure "group" is selected and select the dial icon that will let you setup input and output modes. Under "input", set midi as "active" and channel to 1 (or to whatever channel you want to use for this group, you can set other channels for other groups). Make sure "thru" is off. Now, if you have a keyboard hooked up, you can already use the keyboard to trigger Maschine sounds and record in Sonar that way. But we want to use the Maschine controller so bear with me.

First, still in the group midi input parameters, set the root note to C3.

Now select all your pads (click the first one in the plugin, scroll down and shift-click the last one) and switch to the "sound" parameters, again choosing the dial to setup input and output parameters. In the input section, midi source should be "default", channel 1 and Thru off. In the output section, destination should be Host and channel 1.

On your Sonar midi track, make sure it is set to output to Maschine and channel 1 (you may need to change the view from custom to all to specify channels). In the input section you can choose either Maschine or all/omni if you want to also use a keyboard or external controller. Now you can arm the midi track and record the way you're used to in Sonar, utilizing the Maschine controller and e.g. its Note Repeat function.

I use Maschine all the time inside Sonar. It's really easy to setup:
 
1) Insert Maschine to Sonar and make sure "Enable MIDI output is enabled
 

 
2) Check Maschine plugin and enable MIDI out to host
 

 
And you're setup!
 
Just make sure to use the Maschine plugin as the input for your MIDI tracks. Some times I have the physical Maschine itself selected and takes me a moment to understand I have the wrong device for input.
 
 

Thanks for posting these Sonar / Maschine tips guys - 
I just took the Maschine plunge myself over the holidays, so this is going to be VERY helpful!! 

JoeHans, while this will record pad hits into Sonar, they won't play back correctly without the steps I outlined above. 

I have no problems with playback so not sure what do you mean by that. Of course the method doesn't utilize the sound browsing features in Maschine but still lets me use note repeat, scales etc and is really dead simple to setup. I like to keep all the MIDI and VSTs inside Sonar so that doesn't bother me so much. I'll need to look into your method in case I could improve my way of using Maschine with Sonar.

If I set it up the way you do, on playback all notes trigger the same pad/sound. At a bare minimum you would have to configure the group to map pads to midi notes I think. And how do you mean it doesn't use the sound browsing features? Are you switching Maschine to midi control mode?

Sanderxpander
If you want to use Maschine 2 with the controller to browse sounds etc but record linearly in Sonar, there are a few things you need to do.

First, just because it makes things a bit more intuitive, add an instance of Maschine to your project using a separate audio and midi track, so NOT the "simple instrument track". So choose midi source and first synth audio output.

Now use your controller or the plugin window to browse and load a kit, just so it's easy to see/hear if it's working.

Now, on the top half of the plugin window, it shows "new project" and under that the name of your kit, right click the kit name and choose Group Midi Batch Setup/Sounds to Midi Notes.

Now, under there, make sure "group" is selected and select the dial icon that will let you setup input and output modes. Under "input", set midi as "active" and channel to 1 (or to whatever channel you want to use for this group, you can set other channels for other groups). Make sure "thru" is off. Now, if you have a keyboard hooked up, you can already use the keyboard to trigger Maschine sounds and record in Sonar that way. But we want to use the Maschine controller so bear with me.

First, still in the group midi input parameters, set the root note to C3.

Now select all your pads (click the first one in the plugin, scroll down and shift-click the last one) and switch to the "sound" parameters, again choosing the dial to setup input and output parameters. In the input section, midi source should be "default", channel 1 and Thru off. In the output section, destination should be Host and channel 1.

On your Sonar midi track, make sure it is set to output to Maschine and channel 1 (you may need to change the view from custom to all to specify channels). In the input section you can choose either Maschine or all/omni if you want to also use a keyboard or external controller. Now you can arm the midi track and record the way you're used to in Sonar, utilizing the Maschine controller and e.g. its Note Repeat function.

This did the trick for me, thanks! I actually think I had it right last night. But, the indicator meter on the MIDI track doesn't light up. So, unless you're actually recording, you don't know if Sonar is receiving MIDI from the Maschine or not. I never tried to record anything last night because the MIDI signals weren't showing up on the meter. Doh! I should have tried to record something. It never occurred to me that the notes could have been transmitting but just not registering on the MIDI track's meter in Sonar.
 
Why do you guys think NI made this simple function so cumbersome on Maschine? This is basic stuff here. Or, am I missing something?

Sanderxpander
If I set it up the way you do, on playback all notes trigger the same pad/sound. At a bare minimum you would have to configure the group to map pads to midi notes I think. And how do you mean it doesn't use the sound browsing features? Are you switching Maschine to midi control mode?

I don't use the midi control mode at all. I usually work with keyboard mode so no need for mapping things in that case. This way Maschine works like a keyboard and lets me play scales, arpeggios etc with the pads. If I use the browsing features all the plug-ins are loaded into Maschine software instead of Sonar. One way to use it of course would be to setup multi outs and route everything from Maschine groups to different channels in Sonar. This way it wouldn't matter even all the VSTs are in Maschine software.