Can Max do anything that Max4live can do?

[LithiuMind]

Are there things that Max4live can do which Max cannot do on its own? Specifically regarding accessing API object stuff, making the red box, etc.

Cheers

[trevox]

You cannot use the live objects to communicate with Live's api unless they are present in a M4L device. So in that sense, you cannot use Max alone to do this. I am not quite sure what you mean by "making the red box" though...

[LithiuMind]

Great, thank you very much guys! I guess my questions actually boiled down to: Can Max talk to live's Object Model? And the answer appears to be no.


I have Max4live and the full version of Max 5. I am trying to build a single patch which will allow me to translate the MIDI messages coming from a midi controller in ways more advanced than Ableton is capable of (custom fader curves, split controls, randomization etc). I'm just finding it a little bit confusing to work on this kind of thing in Max4Live, because I am not sure of how to make it so that MIDI comes to the Max4live patch FIRST, so it can get translated, and then get passed from max4live to Live itself. I definitely want to have some type of application sitting in between my controller and Ableton, but it seems that by using max4live, midi has to pass into ableton, then to m4l, then back to ableton. Too complicated!

I'm going to try to build my midi translator in Max, and perhaps hack together a custom remote script to get my redbox support. (PS. By redbox I mean the wonderful little red box that allows Launchpad and APC devices to give LED grid feedback of clip slot states.)

[toscanini]

It is a good idea to use M4L for MIDI access instead of Live's native possibilities. Live's exclusive use if you assign via the usual ctrl_M way, for instance, is very annoying. Besides, there are many toggle vs. gate mode issues and to my experience these settings are never 100% stable, ever with the use of [defer] and other related objects.

[LithiuMind]

Hmm... but how would you put max4live before Ableton in the MIDI signal path? When I've created a m4l patch with a simple Notein object, I haven't been able to get the patch to receive signal from my controller without enabling the controller's Track/Remote ins and outs in Ableton's preferences.

[toscanini]

Yeah I suppose you are right about the routing thing; that cannot really be avoided. What I was meaning is you can access the API with your MIDI stream fully under your control. And if a M4L device is talking to one on another track, you can do that with send-receive, and maybe save a bit on arming and purpose-routing every track.

In your case I'd probably consider to build a Max MIDI sender thingy. Once I tried with Max Runtime but it was a drag because in presence of Runtime my M4L patches would open un-editable aswell.