Couple M4L questions

[Machinesworking]

This is a simple one. Can M4L receive and send program change messages? As in Live clips with a program change message tell M4L to change presets in something as simple as a volume control with various limits to the high or low end? The clincher here is can it filter out that message? What I'm thinking about is a track with a Live Rack where you want for one song full 0db on up and another where it starts at -3db etc.

Is it possible to use M4L to hold a huge rack of soft synths you want to play live and have M4L respond to program change messages to turn off various VSTs? From a layman's perspective it seems like you would have to use Racks, and M4L somehow inside to do all this. Problem with just using Rack Macro knobs to do this is when you get above two instruments the power on/off states must be addressed in sequence, IE you have to have a set Set, if you jump to a song out of sequence certain on/off states might not behave the way you want them to. If you use the Rack slider you get no CPU saving when not using a plug in, and my current Kore 'rack' is about 18+ instruments and FX.

One of the huge advantages of Kore IMO is/was that you can save plug in hardware control states and switch to new plug in states via program change messages. Is it possible in M4L to use it to reassign MIDI mapping to other VSTs?

[hoffman2k]

This is a simple one. Can M4L receive and send program change messages? As in Live clips with a program change message tell M4L to change presets in something as simple as a volume control with various limits to the high or low end? The clincher here is can it filter out that message? What I'm thinking about is a track with a Live Rack where you want for one song full 0db on up and another where it starts at -3db etc.

Yes and it can be filtered.

Is it possible to use M4L to hold a huge rack of soft synths you want to play live and have M4L respond to program change messages to turn off various VSTs? From a layman's perspective it seems like you would have to use Racks, and M4L somehow inside to do all this. Problem with just using Rack Macro knobs to do this is when you get above two instruments the power on/off states must be addressed in sequence, IE you have to have a set Set, if you jump to a song out of sequence certain on/off states might not behave the way you want them to. If you use the Rack slider you get no CPU saving when not using a plug in, and my current Kore 'rack' is about 18+ instruments and FX.

This is possible too.

One of the huge advantages of Kore IMO is/was that you can save plug in hardware control states and switch to new plug in states via program change messages. Is it possible in M4L to use it to reassign MIDI mapping to other VSTs?

Only the parameters that can be accessed with the API, so with VST's you can only change 128 parameters at the most. Unless you load the VST inside MFL, but thats a whole different thing and I'm not sure people use it to load 20 VST's in a single device.

You can't technically reassign MIDI Mapping, but you can reassign API mapping.
For example, I have a device called Sixteen Macros that has 16 Dials you can MIDI Learn. These 16 Dials can control pretty much every device parameter and the mixer.

[Machinesworking]

Thanks so much for the reply hoffman!
I'm in the process of examining what I can do to replace Kore (recently discontinued) in a year or so when some update or another to OSX or Live etc. cripples it.
NI are going to make it Lion compliant and 64 bit compatible, but at some point it's going to stop playing nice with Live, and I use Kore for live performances. So it looks I'll have roughly the amount of time to develop some M4L tools to replace Kore with. I guess one advantage is that M4L is probably less of a CPU hit than Kore, plus Pluggo is going to die maybe even with Lion here and definitely I would bet it's not so great with 64 bit OSX. One good thing about it is that it's possible to use Kore hardware as a generic MIDI device with endless encoders, so the 8 knobs plus buttons and 2in, 4 audio outs on the hardware are useful with M4L and Live.

Anyway I hope to get a system for live performance out of max4live that makes me not mis Kore, and doesn't kill my tiny brain trying to implement.

[hoffman2k]

Thanks so much for the reply hoffman!
I'm in the process of examining what I can do to replace Kore (recently discontinued) in a year or so when some update or another to OSX or Live etc. cripples it.
NI are going to make it Lion compliant and 64 bit compatible, but at some point it's going to stop playing nice with Live, and I use Kore for live performances. So it looks I'll have roughly the amount of time to develop some M4L tools to replace Kore with. I guess one advantage is that M4L is probably less of a CPU hit than Kore, plus Pluggo is going to die maybe even with Lion here and definitely I would bet it's not so great with 64 bit OSX. One good thing about it is that it's possible to use Kore hardware as a generic MIDI device with endless encoders, so the 8 knobs plus buttons and 2in, 4 audio outs on the hardware are useful with M4L and Live.

Anyway I hope to get a system for live performance out of max4live that makes me not mis Kore, and doesn't kill my tiny brain trying to implement.

If you haven't already, check out my MFL pack. I think it covers most of your needs and the Kore controller would work great with my devices.

http://www.thecovertoperators.org/Live- ... collection

And don't forget you can try a 30-day trial.

Cheers,

- Bjorn

[eshaa83]

I know the fool proof way around this is to program each of my controllers to send on a different MIDI channel in the first place so no messages ever interfere, but I hate digging through six different manuals and figuring all that out. It would be way cooler if there were someway with M4L to gather all the MIDI messages into Max before they were sent to Live (so for instance I could have a gate object at the top of the patch and when it was closed and I went to MIDI map mode, nothing would get mapped). Does that make sense, or sound at all possible to anyone who's familiar with MIDI flow between Max and Live?

[broc]

One of the huge advantages of Kore IMO is/was that you can save plug in hardware control states and switch to new plug in states via program change messages. Is it possible in M4L to use it to reassign MIDI mapping to other VSTs?

Only the parameters that can be accessed with the API, so with VST's you can only change 128 parameters at the most. Unless you load the VST inside MFL, but thats a whole different thing and I'm not sure people use it to load 20 VST's in a single device.

I'm actually using multiple VST's in a single M4L device providing complete control of the VST's (load/unload, presets, parameters etc).
So in theory it seems possible to build an M4L device with the functionality of Kore, and even more control features.
Note that within M4L devices you have the full power of Max, in particular multi-channel midi and audio.

Hopefully in future versions of M4L, multi-channel in/out will also be supported.

[Machinesworking]

Note that within M4L devices you have the full power of Max, in particular multi-channel midi and audio.

Hopefully in future versions of M4L, multi-channel in/out will also be supported.

Are you saying that a single track with M4L 'hosting' plug ins can only send out a stereo signal from that track?

@hoffman I'll check it out later this summer when I get M4L, going to be a matter of saving the $ for it etc.
Hopefully I can in a year or so learn Max enough to set up my own, customized Racks for this though. The biggest advantage to M4L to me is that I can tailor it to my needs.

[broc]

Note that within M4L devices you have the full power of Max, in particular multi-channel midi and audio.

Hopefully in future versions of M4L, multi-channel in/out will also be supported.

Are you saying that a single track with M4L 'hosting' plug ins can only send out a stereo signal from that track?

Yes, it's a current limitation unfortunately.

[Machinesworking]

well it's not a deal killer that it cannot send out more than a stereo signal as I'm using it for live instruments.
more of a drag in terms of composing but I bet that comes in 9 or 10, (I'm betting most upgrades are going to be tied in with new versions of Live)..

[madlab]

If you use the Rack slider you get no CPU saving when not using a plug in, and my current Kore 'rack' is about 18+ instruments and FX.

There's a M4L device called 'spuer mute' (or something of th kind) designed to do that and save your cpu power. check it out on maxforlive.com.