PlanetZ forums - scopeusers.com

Does anyone in here use Max 6? I noticed a lot of the young composers use this because it's what they teach in college.

It might also have a lot to do with the fact that Max for Live is integrated into Ableton Live. And then of course because it's a truly powerful tool.

I havn't really used MAX myself, I use a few patches that other people have developed in Live 9 though. But I have worked a lot with Pure data, which is a very similar concept to Max, although not integrated into any DAWs. Both MAX and Pure Data are really interesting tools if you are into creating your own weird audio tools, but the learning curve is a bit steep.

The contemporary composer doesn't just use max because it's being taught at college, it's being taught at college because it is so open in architecture, which comes at a price: as thomas said, it's a steep learning curve. The most appealing thing about max is its interfacing to just about anything, which makes it great for installations, multimedia projects,...

The thing with max is, you got to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. Just tinkering about won't get you anywhere. Choose a goal (sequencer, video mangler, multifx,...) and try to realize that goal.

I've seen many performances of contemporary music involving max in the theatre i work... Max does seem to have a temper sometimes (meaning you have to debug your creation thoroughly) which can be quite embarassing on stage.

Bands like autechre have introduced max more to the bigger audience, and max4live has taken it to the masses, but very few actually build their own. just as with modular on scope, i adapt proven concepts to taste. If i were younger and had more time...

I've extensively used max/msp quite some years ago.. wow, 12 years ago to be exact. Like Petal says, PD is very similar and it's free, so worth taking it out for a spin if you're interested. They're both by the same guy, Miller Puckette, who was supposed to come check out my installation 12 years ago but unfortunately couldn't make it.

Learning curve is very steep.. it's basically a programming language, but just represented visually. Depending on what sort of program you want to create, it makes more sense to me to just write code, rather than break it out in a visual diagram.. (esp for loops and conditionals) But for signal processing, it's a good metaphor. It takes a huge amount of effort to get anything done. I mean, imagine coding a vsti from scratch. That takes planning, serious implementation time, and a good amount of time debugging and making sure it doesn't crash. To spend that much effort on 1 thing, you'd also make sure nothing like it exists on earth, before you start.

These tools are great where a 100% custom solution is of importance, and you have tons and tons of time to implement. (like 3-6 months) It's definitely not for the faint of heart. If you know how to code (in some OOP language), then a lot of the metaphors are easy to understand.

Comparatively though, I'd say if what you want to do is already covered with Reaktor, or SCOPE Mod, then that's a much quicker way to get things done. Even tools like Synthedit, which can be pretty low level, operates at a slightly higher level than max/msp.

As borg already stated, I think interfacing with many different kinds of signals is where max/msp shines. It's really just a signal processor in the most literal sense, so as long as you have a means to digitize an input, you can process it in max. So it's great for controlling light, linking it to audio, linking it to 3d visuals, read in some positional data from sensors, do some color detection on video, combine all the signals and feed it into a robot and control it. It's much closer to building electronics rather than anything strictly for audio or music.

Thanks. It seems like MAX/MSP would not be for me.

iirc PD is the direct ancestor of Scope (or the thing which actually iniated the Scope developement...)

cheers, Tom

OK - that is interesting. Tom, do you have any more details on that story?

Was it PD or Realtime CSound? I know I mentioned the CSound DSP card somewhere on these forums before and was given more information, but it's been so long...

I don't think Synthedit synths work very well in Cubase anymore unless they have updated the VSTi of it.

petal wrote:OK - that is interesting. Tom, do you have any more details on that story?

same as Valis... been a long time...
but I once tried to dig into it's roots and it seemed fairly obvious - LabView could provide some orientation, too
mid 80s to early 90s it (with the Mac offering an 'affordable' machine) graphic approaches were all over IT place
funny sidenote:
I just found that one of the earliest Mac databases (Helix) recently has been revitalized under OSX
of course it featured a graphic approch to programming logic

at least imho it seemed quite natural to melt some of that stuff together to target DSP programming

cheers, Tom

Just wanted to add my thoughts on this one, as I picked up Max/MSP a year or two ago and it's probably just moved on a long way since you tried it, Ken.

The documentation is amongst the best I've seen for any programming language/audio system, including worked tutorials that actually run in Max as part of the help files, plus more complex open examples showing deeper aspects.

There are three different ways to incorporate more traditional coding in to Max too: Javascript, Java and C (in ascending order of difficulty). I ended up using Java for some stuff and it was very easy to get going (with a programming background).

For me, being inexperienced in the audio programming side of things, the thing I really appreciated was the way it encourages good thinking about signal flow and what is sensible to do. I felt that it was a great route in to more low-level audio coding and very quick for prototyping ideas.