M4L Stability

[eyeknow]

Again, even if you send a crash report with a ticket, you get the cold shoulder. I'm still pissed that they tried to tell me it's not using asio4all

[S4racen]

Is there any official info on this? Are they working to resolve these issues?

That you would have to ask the creators of the externals and or devices, i only ever use stock max objects and no externals for this very issue...

Cheers
D

[twitterytom]

i'm really frustraded with max4live's stability and general bugs for a long time. i've had these problems on live 8, 32 bit, live 9, 32 and 64 bits always updating to the latest versions.

- when moving devices around or duplicating tracks with max4live devices i get random crashes or lose mappings
- sometimes a max4live device remains mapped (i.e. the target parameter is grayed out) but the device doesn't change the parameter value anymore
- each max4live device in a chain adds a significant latency to the whole project. i started putting devices that don't do anything to audio (like lfo's, macro mapping devices etc on separate tracks in a audio effect rack each in its own chain for this reason. so i don't have multiple devices in a row
- recording midi after a simple device that transforms midi notes adds a small latency and the notes aren't on the grid anymore
- max4live devices lose their parameter settings randomly. sometimes deleting the device and pressing undo makes them jump back to their correct state
- when live crashes for some reason it is often not able to recreate the set from the undo history unless i disable max before

i realise that some devices i may be using have bugs and it isn't all the fault of ableton+max but considering the quantity of these problems and the relative simplicity of the devices i'm using i think there must be a more general stability problem with the platform. it seems to me like max4live was bolted on to ableton live in a hacky way and is very far from stable.

it's so frustrating because there is no other solution for my setup. i like keeping my set open and not rendering stuff out to audio. i like having lfos constantly modulating my different synthesizer's parameters. if all of this zould work well and stable it would be an absolute dream but since i've been spending so much time trying to debug max4live problems i'm looking everywhere for alternatives. even waiting for the next bitwig release and redoing all my problems on a completely new platform seems more desirable than wasting all this time on a buggy product and having no way to fix the problems.

[tecolo]

Is there any official info on this? Are they working to resolve these issues?

That you would have to ask the creators of the externals and or devices, i only ever use stock max objects and no externals for this very issue...

Cheers
D

Wait... Maybe i am not understanding something but aren't creators of 3rd party max devices using elements inside of Max platform itself - therefore they are using elements which where created by Max creators - meaning if something is not stable it should be investigated by Max developers no?

[dataf1ow]

Absolutely not. That's not the right way to look at it.

Max objects were created by talented developers, and are perfectly stable in and of themselves (for the most part). When you start connecting all of these (relatively) low level objects together to manipulate digital audio, and in some cases Live itself, the burden of instability definitely falls on the ones connecting the objects (the developers of the Devices, not of Max). Saying it's Cyling74's responsibility for third party devices being unstable, is like blaming the creator of C++ for buggy software.

That being said, if you are using stock max4live devices, those should generally be more stable. And it may be an OS thing as well. I have had great luck on OSX 10.9 recently going pretty hard with M4L stuff, perhaps the windows implementation is a little less stable.

[Rosko]

Im using x86 version of live & m4l although im on windows7 64.

[musikmachine]

Eek, i was considering J74 progressive as well.

Convolution reverb crashes almost instantly when i load it and adjust parameters but have had a few random devices crash so avoid using them but PB Riser just crashed Live instantly which seemed stable when i initially tried it.

I've got in the habit of saving my proj every time i load a max device but i was thinking it was an issue on my side or certain devices coded by less experienced devs or bugs and convrev was an exception, didn't realise it was widespread.

Has anyone been in touch with Cycling? Sounds like someone somewhere needs to get together and at least try and address the instability if so many are experiencing issues.

[tecolo]

Absolutely not. That's not the right way to look at it.

Max objects were created by talented developers, and are perfectly stable in and of themselves (for the most part). When you start connecting all of these (relatively) low level objects together to manipulate digital audio, and in some cases Live itself, the burden of instability definitely falls on the ones connecting the objects (the developers of the Devices, not of Max). Saying it's Cyling74's responsibility for third party devices being unstable, is like blaming the creator of C++ for buggy software.

That being said, if you are using stock max4live devices, those should generally be more stable. And it may be an OS thing as well. I have had great luck on OSX 10.9 recently going pretty hard with M4L stuff, perhaps the windows implementation is a little less stable.

Ok i understand but i am getting stability problems with devices which comes with Ableton itself. Are these considered as being Max inbuilt operators/elements? Example - i just had crash with ableton latest Step Sequencer. That black and blueish latest cool step sequencer. I loaded it and it crashed whole application. And now i tried to load it 20 times (literally) and it did not crashed it.

Any explanation? It is hardly OS thing. I have quite a lot 3rd party effects, whole Komplete range of effects, UAD plugins and some hardware. None of these plugins crash my Ableton on loading, yet with Max for Live i get strange and weird crashes which are hard to isolate. In practice i am getting Step Sequencer crash once in a week and i can't predict when...Same with every other max device..I can't blame anyone else then Max since it's crashing randomly only with Max devices..

So?

[dataf1ow]

Doesn't happen on my system like that at all.

So?

[Rosko]

Doesn't happen on my system like that at all.

So?

so it could be an os issue. Do you use many devices made 3rd party? Anyone with osx having these issues at all or just windows?

[dataf1ow]

Right that's what I was getting at. M4L is generally stable as an ox on my system (OSX). So it may indeed be a windows thing.

[musikmachine]

I have had that occur a few times like with PB Riser today but i'm gonna send the crash report and add that i have had a few M4L crashes and ask Ableton if they can tell me what the cause was.

[dataf1ow]

If you know anything about reading the log file that Live puts out when it crashes, you may be able to see where/when the crash occurred.

[eyeknow]

Eek, i was considering J74 progressive as well.

Convolution reverb crashes almost instantly when i load it and adjust parameters but have had a few random devices crash so avoid using them but PB Riser just crashed Live instantly which seemed stable when i initially tried it.

I've got in the habit of saving my proj every time i load a max device but i was thinking it was an issue on my side or certain devices coded by less experienced devs or bugs and convrev was an exception, didn't realise it was widespread.

Has anyone been in touch with Cycling? Sounds like someone somewhere needs to get together and at least try and address the instability if so many are experiencing issues.

Well, it certainly isn't something live is going to deal with. They told me it's not using asio4all, and that because I use a non native script for the impulse I'm sol.

If everyone wrote in and complained about the convo verb issues, they'd be more likely to fix it. I guess I'll try cycling also (shrug)

[eyeknow]

I have had that occur a few times like with PB Riser today but i'm gonna send the crash report and add that i have had a few M4L crashes and ask Ableton if they can tell me what the cause was.

Good luck

What they'll ask you to do: Ditch all of your templates, uninstall the max packs, redownload essentials and guess what? You'll get the same crash. Then, as mentioned, you'll get a bunch of canned answers.

If for any reason I'm wrong, let me know but that is how it went for me.