Multiple MIDI channels on Max for Live? Sys Ex?

[TomSwirly]

Max For Live has been out for over two years now and yet it still doesn't have a complete MIDI implementation.

• You can only receive on channel 1.
• You can only send on channel 1.
• You can't send or receive system exclusives.

Those last two problems in particular have caused me endless trouble over the last two years.

I decided to bail on a sweet project because it was addressing an eight channel device and I simply couldn't handle the endless bugs that appeared with eight separate Max For Live patches all working together.

I'm writing a controller for the new, hot Softstep - which needs system exclusives to initialize it so I've spent all sorts of time working around that.

And tonight I started working with a nice new lighting system - DMXIS from Enttec, which requires three or more channels, one for banks, one for presets, and one or more for MIDI control.

I've been writing computer programs for a living for thirty years, so I hesitate to use the word "bug" - but Max For Live simply doesn't handle the MIDI spec correctly - you can't even write a program that just passes MIDI through correctly!

Is there any chance that the next version of Live will have these three bugs fixed?

[stringtapper]

• These are not bugs but rather features that do not exist (yet)

• The limitations are inherent to Live and have nothing directly to do with M4L

[TomSwirly]

> These are not bugs but rather features that do not exist (yet)

The very first synthesizer I had, a DX-7, would only send on channel 1 (but could receive on any channel, and would pass through all the information that it received...)

But the DX-7 came out thirty years ago - before the MIDI spec was even finalized. I honestly can't think of any other piece of hardware or certainly software in the last couple of decades that didn't have this "feature" of not dropping the channel on the floor.

> The limitations are inherent to Live and have nothing directly to do with M4L

I had already guessed that - after all, Max itself works perfectly well with multiple channels and system exclusives.

So does that mean that these "feature deficiencies" will never be fixed? It really makes Max For Live difficult or impossible to use for controlling most external hardware, because most reasonably sophisticated units requires more than one channel to operate.

For anyone reading this who is encountering the same issue - in 2010, Leigh Hunt created two Max externals which often allow you to get around this issue by allowing you to send and receive MIDI directly from Max For Live, bypassing Ableton entirely.

I myself tried to write such a thing as a Max external in C++, but got something that worked fine in Max but didn't find the MIDI ports in Max For Live - I asked here and was told that it was not possible, but, well, he or she did manage to do it. Ableton might consider looking at what Mr. or Ms. Hunt did, perhaps licensing it and incorporating it in their distribution...

This has been a lifesaver for me in my development for the Softstep (and I wish I had known about it last summer), but it won't help you if your hardware unit appears as a VST plug-in (as is so very common these days).

[broc]

In M4L you can use OSC for communication with the outside world and external Max apps for conversion to/from MIDI.
I guess in the future external devices will be controlled more and more with OSC anyway.

Note also that in M4L there is the [vst~] object for hosting VST/AU plugins with access to multiple MIDI channels.

[stringtapper]

Ableton might consider looking at what Mr. or Ms. Hunt did, perhaps licensing it and incorporating it in their distribution...

Nah. The MIDI features need to be upgraded in Live natively and independent of M4L. Sysex and Multi-channel MIDI should exist in Live without the need for M4L.

[leighhunt]

>
I myself tried to write such a thing as a Max external in C++, but got something that worked fine in Max but didn't find the MIDI ports in Max For Live - I asked here and was told that it was not possible, but, well, he or she did manage to do it. Ableton might consider looking at what Mr. or Ms. Hunt did, perhaps licensing it and incorporating it in their distribution...

Hi Tom,
That'll be Mr, aside from the odd 'moment of mince' lol!
I can't see that Ableton would encounter any difficulties in incorporating sysex and multi channel midi.
I'm no programming expert, I just spent a few nights going through the coreMIDI framework and trial and error to make it work within a max C external.
I can only presume it is a case of how to integrate it into their DAW 'model'.
(though, if Ableton want to pay me to work for them they are quite welcome to contact me, but I don't want to move to Germany!)
Regards,
Leigh