Cycling ‘74 have updated Max 5’s pricing and streamlined a bit in the new release. (That means Max for MIDI and basic data crunching, MSP for audio, synthesis, and signal processing, and Jitter for video, 3D, and advanced data processing.) Since this impacts a number of our readers, it’s worth going over this.

Updated: The story now reflects a clarification from Cycling ‘74 over which Jitter objects work in Max/MSP.

What’s this new Max about, and why was it such a big deal at the AES trade show? To really understand, let’s turn to gaming for a moment. When Nintendo described their vision for the Wii, they talked about appealing to three groups of customers:

• The “hard-core” gamer; that is, their existing audience, of course
• “Lapsed” gamers: people who had done some gaming at some point but lost interest
• Entirely new gamers, across a variety of demographics

History will have to be the judge of Nintendo’s slim white box and controller-wagging interface, but I heard some similar development goals at the AES audio show this weekend. Nowhere was this more apparent than Cycling ’74’s upcoming Max 5. Substitute the word “patcher” for the word “gamer”, and you’ve got a snapshot of the new Max.

After all, whether you’ve touched Max before or not, you’ve likely got some needs in at least one of these categories. Beginners are easily intimidated by the “visual programming” metaphors of a blank-slate, modular tool like Max. Many others get through a couple of patches, often in a school course, but wind up having difficulty getting beyond that first work later on. And even advanced users (maybe especially advanced users) are always looking for ways of working faster.

The build I saw of Max wasn’t entirely complete, but I will say it’s tremendously promising. I talked to many for whom the chance to see Max 5 was the highlight of the entire AES show. It’s a tool you really need to see in action, so be sure to check out Cycling’s just-posted videos of the program:

A First Look at Max 5 [Cycling '74]

This is not the all-words, no-pictures manifesto we saw recently: now you actually get to see the tool in action. Highlights:

Love it or hate it, there simply is no graphical development environment for musical and multimedia anywhere near as deep as Max. Max remains the most powerful “blank slate”, custom creative software around, and it’s allowed two decades of artists to create their own tools without coding.

Today, David Zicarelli, the Big Kahuna at Cycling ‘74 and a driving force behind Max as we now know it, talked publicly for the first time about Max 5. This version looks like the biggest ground-up overhaul of Max, MSP, and Jitter since their creation. It’s a huge article, well worth reading, but here are some highlights. (I get to sit down with C74 Director of Engineering Darwin Grosse next week at AES; not sure how much of that meeting I’ll be able to share right away but will definitely find out.)

The capsule summary (as I understand it)

Max 5 is a complete overhaul that’s all about making patching more pleasurable, with an entirely new, 21st-Century user interface and code base. It’s not about adding a zillion new objects. The idea is to be easier to learn for beginners, and more fun to use for experts. (Interestingly, this is similar to the more modest but philosophically parallel reworking of Logic Studio, another app born in the late 80s.)

It’s not just skin deep, because doing things like building workable UIs for performance and debugging promises to be easier.

Keep in mind, this is all basically hearsay on Max 5 because I haven’t seen it yet; I’m just condensing what I can based on my knowledge of Max and David’s introduction. But I don’t want to make you wait for details, since I know we have plenty of die-hard Max users collected here (and the odd Cycling ‘74 employee, so I hope I’m not too far off.) That said, here’s an overview of what to look for from the new version, with more details to follow:

Here’s a blast from the past — an algorithmic compositional blast from the past, that is. M is a unique piece of software for “interactive composition.” With patterns, cycles, and conducting options, you can create algorithmically-generated music, adjusting various parameters for sophisticated results rather than sequencing directly. It’s a totally different approach to working, something that’s easier to experience than to describe. M launched way back in 1987 and eventually support Atari, Amiga, Mac, and Windows; it was a big hit in the years afterward. The creators were David Zicarelli (now with Cycling ‘74, and a sort of father to Cycling’s Max/MSP), John Offenhartz, Antony Widoff, and Joel Chadabe. (Check out the whole history.) I saw it for the first time at a summer program at Oberlin and loved it immediately. Now, with a computer stacked full of soft synths and the recurring desire to get out of my head, compositionally, I think I actually have more use for it in 2007.

It’s not very often that vintage software gets update
d with current tech while retaining its original interface, but that’s exactly what Cycling ‘74 has done with M 2.7. Intel compatibility means it can run on your brand-new Mac Pro, but the angular throwback interface will make it look like a Mac II. (Got a good System 7 skin, anyone?) But the real story here is Core MIDI support. It allows you to plug M into your existing soft synths. Imagine M plus Logic’s Sculpture, or combined with a monster Max/MSP patch.

M 2.7 @ Cycling ‘74

It’s great to see someone recognize that it’s not only about the upgrade that’s just around the corner. Virtual Console games are selling by the millions on Nintendo’s Wii. Hopefully creative technology, even in limited form, could be next. I’ll be testing M soon; I’ll let you know how it goes.

PC users/Atari lovers: See details in comments on the freeware Atari version. But what’s this about an emulator? Time to scour eBay for an Atari ST, I think.

And you thought all Max/MSP/Jitter could do was make sound and visuals. Stephen Lumenta writes in to let us know he’s created a Max patch for searching various DRM-free music stores:

i just saw the drm/other music thread. maybe i have too much time on my hand but i built a little max standalone app that will search drm-free stores (juno, bleep, 3beatdigital, emusic, othermusic). maybe useful, maybe just for fun.

Mostly interesting as a demonstration of some of Max’s more unorthodox capabilities, but fun nonetheless. You can download a free version for Mac standalone (Universal Binary), or a patch source that will work on either platform, from his Max page:

sbl - Max/MSP Code

There wasn’t a Windows standalone version, so I built one myself (no guarantees about whether this works or not):

DRM-Free for Windows (standalone)

While you’re at Stephen’s site, check out his Pluggo SBL Vintage Collection, a nice set of glitchy plug-ins, one of which earns extra points for having a face in its UI. More self-effacing description: “Some plug-ins to get that vintage glitchy sound people tend to be after. Drop them on your tracks and expect instant generic gratification. But don’t be fooled that anyone cares about your dsp efforts.”

Mac Universal Binary + Windows XP versions, free, and another demonstration of what’s possible building plug-ins with Max/MSP. Here they are, pictured in Ableton Live. Boy, there’s a lot of overlap of interest between Ableton lovers and Cycling ‘74 gurus. If only those two companies would work together on something — oh, yeah. They are.

Previously:
Berrtil, Free Circuit-Bent Modeling Plug-in. Plug-in Smash. Sound Crush.
As Other Music, Others Embrace Downloads, is Big, DRM-Laden Online Music Out?
Where Do You Get Your DRM-Free Music?

“Collaboration” I think is the key word in the upcoming, unknown Ableton-Cycling ‘74 product. It’s difficult to avoid confusion when talking about a product you can’t talk about, but Cycling ‘74 founder David Zicarelli does that today. The highlight for me is this passage on the next version of Max/MSP/Jitter, which is independent from the Ableton announcement (i.e., don’t expect Max 5 to be a Live plug-in or anything like that):

… the thing we are making with Ableton is not going to replace Max/MSP/Jitter. In fact, we are hard at work on a new version of Max (version 5) that will be most significant and dramatic transformation of the software in its twenty-year history. As I said in the Ableton story, we have been strongly influenced by Ableton’s attention to detail in the Live user experience, and I think you will see that influence reflected in Max 5. But, just to make sure you understand, Max 5 is not the project we are doing with Ableton.

Not a whole lot of additional information on the Cycling ‘74 - Ableton deal, but he does say it will allow C74 to “include a new group of people who can benefit from what Max has to offer” and “give our old friends access to some powerful new tools and approaches.” He’s actually saying a whole lot there, but I’ll leave you to decode it.

Our Collaboration with Ableton

Hey, I have to relish this; it’s not every day the developers of two of the most important products in my artistic life start working together. Sometimes I actually see more of Max/MSP and Live than I do, like, other human beings. Okay, that’s a little scary. But some people can only say that about Microsoft Office.

Ableton has an interesting teaser up on its website today:

A new strategic partnership between Ableton and Cycling ‘74 promises exciting developments on the horizon for digital media creators, producers, and performers. Ableton CEO and cofounder Gerhard Behles and Cycling ‘74 CEO David Zicarelli are pleased to announce this unique alliance between the two dynamic and innovative audio/video software companies.

Cycling ‘74 just updated darn near everything they make:

1. New Universal Binaries: Mode, Hipno, and UpMix are all Intel-native. But the big news is that Pluggo, the long-beloved C74 plug-in library, is available — meaning you should also be able to turn your Max compositions into Intel-native plug-ins.
2. Max/MSP 4.6.2 / Jitter 1.6.2: Max 4.6/Jitter 1.6 had already brought Intel Mac support, so other than some bugfixes for Mac users, the big news here is for the Windows side: the new features in Max 4.6 and (most significantly) Jitter 1.6 are now available to Windows users. I’m hoping this also means native uyvy video support, but I’ll save that discussion for Create Digital Motion.

If you’re on an old version of 4.5.x, it’s well worth upgrading. Cycling has put in some subtle but significant improvements over the last few “point” releases, and they’re free for anyone who owns Jitter 1.5 / Max 4.5. Cycling also wins points for providing Intel Native support absolutely free of charge; this is one of the only major application developers I can think of that did that with a flagship application.

I’m currently teaching MSP at Brooklyn College, and we get into the first meat of synthesis this week. I have to say, while I admire Pd, I’m happy to have Max so that we can take advantage of a friendlier interface and far more detailed documentation. The two products, however, commercial and open source, continue to benefit from the other’s existence, and I’m even seeing more people running both on the same machine. Mostly I need people to start trailing me with an espresso machine so I can keep up with all the software I’m using.