Learn How to Build Your Own Max for Live Devices
1–10 of 24 posts
Re: Learn How to Build Your Own Max for Live Devices
#2Max and Max for Live are both great, though I do wish for something more like a normal programming API. I own Max and have loved to use it but dealing with the fact that it's a visual language can be very painful. I know a lot of people who just moved away from Max to JUCE, which is a C++ framework for writing VSTs, AUs, etc. The problem is that in that case you lose a lot of the power of Max for Live, since Ableton Live only exposes its deep internal API through Max for Live. It's a huge shame there isn't a C or C++ API for Ableton Live.
I don't really use Max that much anymore, since ultimately the benefit is that it's supposed to be easier to use than C++, but I find that really hard to believe in my experience. Another supposed benefit was supposed to be that Max came with a bunch of UI and DSP stuff built in, but they seem to have now neglected that aspect of the software and instead creating new projects like gen~ and RNBO (I'm not sure what the point of RNBO is). The thing is, JUCE gives us all the stuff that it was cool that Max came with 2 decades ago, plus more, while being less buggy and able to create production quality plugins.
I think the ultimate staying power of Max is simply due to it having aesthetic weight in the artistic community. It's still the "cool option" for the interactive art exhibition crowd. Other than that, the only thing really keeping it alive is Ableton...
Max is still a great piece of software, but these days, just learn to code.
Re: Learn How to Build Your Own Max for Live Devices
#3Max and Max for Live are both great, though I do wish for something more like a normal programming API. I own Max and have loved to use it but dealing with the fact that it's a visual language can be very painful. I know a lot of people who just moved away from Max to JUCE, which is a C++ framework for writing VSTs, AUs, etc. The problem is that in that case you lose a lot of the power of Max for Live, since Ableton…
Is it great? I've never liked it. It has downsides of assembly programming, like unnamed (but persistent) values stored in temporary "register" slot output pins, some additional own-goal downsides like "significant whitespace" of the positioning of wires and port output ordering, and all of the downsides of an oldschool scripting language like TCL, with terrible performance characteristics, buggy implementation, an editor that crashes pretty regularly in normal use, and incomplete documentation.
In the long history of Max, I can only think of a couple of things I've liked that were made with it, and they were both for Max for Live. I think the fact that they were made with Max was just incidental — it's the easiest way to add MIDI effects to Live.
(For anyone who answers with "but you can just write JavaScript now to do everything in it" — running MIDI events through its JS nodes defers the events to the non-timing-critical thread, ruining the timing of the MIDI events.)
Re: Learn How to Build Your Own Max for Live Devices
#4Max and Max for Live are both great, though I do wish for something more like a normal programming API. I own Max and have loved to use it but dealing with the fact that it's a visual language can be very painful. I know a lot of people who just moved away from Max to JUCE, which is a C++ framework for writing VSTs, AUs, etc. The problem is that in that case you lose a lot of the power of Max for Live, since Ableton…
Is it great? I've never liked it. It has downsides of assembly programming, like unnamed (but persistent) values stored in temporary "register" slot output pins, some additional own-goal downsides like "significant whitespace" of the positioning of wires and port output ordering, and all of the downsides of an oldschool scripting language like TCL, with terrible performance characteristics, buggy implementation, an e…
I addressed all those points in my post, some implicitly and some explicitly, did you read the whole thing? I really don't think it was too long for you to read...
Re: Learn How to Build Your Own Max for Live Devices
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it great? I've never liked it. It has downsides of assembly programming, like unnamed (but persistent) values stored in temporary "register" slot output pins, some additional own-goal downsides like "significant whitespace" of the positioning of wires and port output ordering, and all of the downsides of an oldschool scripting language like TCL, with terrible performance characteristics, buggy implementation, an e…
I addressed all those points in my post, some implicitly and some explicitly, did you read the whole thing? I really don't think it was too long for you to read...
Which post? Is the original articles yours? It doesn't mention anything I complained about. I don't see anything about the crashes, the bad performance, the bugs, the incomplete documentation, the design problems with the significant whitespace and unnamed values stored on output ports. I'm confused by what you've said.
Edit: I think you just meant your comment. I don't really see those things mentioned there, either.
Re: Learn How to Build Your Own Max for Live Devices
#6Earlier quoted context omitted.
I addressed all those points in my post, some implicitly and some explicitly, did you read the whole thing? I really don't think it was too long for you to read...
Which post? Is the original articles yours? It doesn't mention anything I complained about. I don't see anything about the crashes, the bad performance, the bugs, the incomplete documentation, the design problems with the significant whitespace and unnamed values stored on output ports. I'm confused by what you've said. Edit: I think you just meant your comment. I don't really see those things mentioned there, either…
My post implicitly addresses those things, hence my comparison to C++ and my complaints about it. It seems like you only read "Max and Max for Live are great" and got upset. Please read my posts more charitably in the future. It's fine for you to add extra information, but you must do so in the context of agreeing with me, not disagreeing. It is rude to be like "how is what you said true? I'm going to repeat what you said back at you"
Re: Learn How to Build Your Own Max for Live Devices
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which post? Is the original articles yours? It doesn't mention anything I complained about. I don't see anything about the crashes, the bad performance, the bugs, the incomplete documentation, the design problems with the significant whitespace and unnamed values stored on output ports. I'm confused by what you've said. Edit: I think you just meant your comment. I don't really see those things mentioned there, either…
My post implicitly addresses those things, hence my comparison to C++ and my complaints about it. It seems like you only read "Max and Max for Live are great" and got upset. Please read my posts more charitably in the future. It's fine for you to add extra information, but you must do so in the context of agreeing with me, not disagreeing. It is rude to be like "how is what you said true? I'm going to repeat what you…
What? I never disagreed with you, except for your opening statement of "Max and Max for Live are great," which you provide no further reasoning for in your comment. And I agree with most of the rest of your comment.
Re: Learn How to Build Your Own Max for Live Devices
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
My post implicitly addresses those things, hence my comparison to C++ and my complaints about it. It seems like you only read "Max and Max for Live are great" and got upset. Please read my posts more charitably in the future. It's fine for you to add extra information, but you must do so in the context of agreeing with me, not disagreeing. It is rude to be like "how is what you said true? I'm going to repeat what you…
What? I never disagreed with you, except for your opening statement of "Max and Max for Live are great," which you provide no further reasoning for in your comment. And I agree with most of the rest of your comment.
If you start your comment with a disagreement then why would I read the rest of your comment as an agreement if you did not state so?
Re: Learn How to Build Your Own Max for Live Devices
#9I'm familiar with node based development environments in other domains (VFX) and when done well (eg. Houdini) they can be much more efficient than solving creative problems with Python or C++. So I expected to like Max, but in practice found it pretty unintuitive. Complex devices I've written end up doing as much as possible in JS, but the bridges to Ableton are pretty rickety and while you usually can find a solution eventually, it's not a fun process. I prefer Reaktor, but that has it's own set of issues and isn't really evolving at any pace.
In the end I shifted to doing as much as possible in Eurorack which feels a much more creatively enabling and stable platform, relegating Ableton/Max to covering what's left.
Re: Learn How to Build Your Own Max for Live Devices
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
What? I never disagreed with you, except for your opening statement of "Max and Max for Live are great," which you provide no further reasoning for in your comment. And I agree with most of the rest of your comment.
If you start your comment with a disagreement then why would I read the rest of your comment as an agreement if you did not state so?
If you can realize that your opening statement was a 'backhanded-compliment' towards MAX, you would see that you both functionally said the same thing.
"It's great, but..." and "Is it great?" both convey the message that MAX gets a lot of praise/recognition that maybe isn't deserved or warranted, at least anymore. They're much more in agreement than disagreement when taken full context.