Quick Sound Browsing in Maschine (for Mac Users)

I have been a Mac user, OK fine – fanatic and pusher, for most of my life. After working with Apple for years, I have amassed a wealth of knowledge and helpful tips that save me a lot of time and frustration, not to mention grey hairs. So one of the first things I normally do when I get a new program that contains a lot of sounds is to find where they were installed and make sure I can access them through a shortcut within the software itself. Usually, on a Mac, you can. And this is how you can do it with Maschine!

Go ahead and launch Maschine, either in standalone mode or in a host DAW. Now the first thing you would normally do is begin looking for some sounds, right? Let’s do that. I’m going to look through some Sweeps & Swells FX this time. So first I navigate to the Samples tab in the Maschine browser, which is found in the left-hand sidebar in the upper right-hand corner. You can see it in the image below.

Now, I want to make sure that I hear them all from the beginning of the list, so I don’t cheat myself out of hearing the perfect sound for my project. So I select the first sound and right-click it. This gives me a small pop up window. So far all of this can be done on a PC as well. Click on the Open Containing Folder option. This launches your Finder application and reveals the actual .wav files that are shown in Maschine’s browser.

Of course, it’s always nice to know where these sounds live because you can also use them as standalone audio file that can be dropped into any project and processed to fit your work. But this is a lesson in quick sound browsing in Maschine, using the fastest method possible.

All you need to do now is simply make sure the first sound is selected and then press your spacebar. You can also activate the Quick Look feature on your Mac through menu options and/or a shortcut button at the top of your Finder window. I find that just using the Spacebar is easiest, and fastest.

As your sound plays, you can quickly jump to the next one, or previous one, by using the arrow keys on your computer’s keyboard. There is no load time, so there is no waiting You don’t even have to let one sound finish before you start the next one! By far the fastest way to browse sounds for Maschine on your Mac. If you are a PC user and have a similar way to quickly browse sounds in Maschine, please let us know by leaving a comment below! Less time spent searching through audio clips means more time you can spend designing new sounds in Massive with your Maschine.

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Cheers,
OhmLab