Ableton Forum

I mean in terms of sound quality and flexibility, what's the low down? Comparable to Reaktor? I did a quick google search hoping to find some sound examples or something but came up empty.

cheerio and Merry Christmas! (Out Christmas... which is NAMM)

glitchrock-buddha wrote:I mean in terms of sound quality and flexibility, what's the low down? Comparable to Reaktor? I did a quick google search hoping to find some sound examples or something but came up empty.

cheerio and Merry Christmas! (Out Christmas... which is NAMM)

There as good as you can program...... So if Richard Devine is a Moog, I'm like a Casio V tone

Marx wrote:

glitchrock-buddha wrote:I mean in terms of sound quality and flexibility, what's the low down? Comparable to Reaktor? I did a quick google search hoping to find some sound examples or something but came up empty.

cheerio and Merry Christmas! (Out Christmas... which is NAMM)

There as good as you can program...... So if Richard Devine is a Moog, I'm like a Casio V tone

Well the oscillators and filters and such must have a certain sound quality no? I mean it's not that low level of a programming language is it?

listen to autechre's album confield. I don't know what sounds are max and which aren't but I have read that that whole album was heavily based on max patches they'd been screwing with.

Honestly I haven't seen too many Max based synths, Reactor has a much larger library for sure. I wouldn't get Max with VA's in mind, more like for audio destruction.

I'm not sure how this will be for Max For Live, but in regular Max (I still use 4.5) e.g. playing a sample requires a certain amount of objects patched together. How you use these is entirely up to yourself. If you've loaded a buffer~ with a sample, this buffer~ can be read using several techniques such as play~, groove~, wave~ etc. Each way has it's own concept behind it. So making e.g. a simple drum sampler (like say Impulse) can turn out to be harder than it first seemed as you have to make small decisions all the time, but they all affect the overall work flow of your patch.

Another thing I'm very interested in learning more about is the event handling in MFL. When you send certain data to certain objects can affect the overall working of your patch very strongly. But all this depends on how much of traditional MAX is in MFL and how much of the event handling is comparable.

I have a few patches I am very interested to see how much of them will be portable into the Live environment.

glitchrock-buddha wrote:I mean in terms of sound quality and flexibility, what's the low down? Comparable to Reaktor? I did a quick google search hoping to find some sound examples or something but came up empty.

cheerio and Merry Christmas! (Out Christmas... which is NAMM)

yeah, theres not too much out there in the way of synths and premade instruments for Max. One of the differences between Max and Reaktor is that you can add external objects like oscilators, filters, random number generators...So a big part of the Max community is people coding objects in C - maxobjects.com, whereas with Reaktor there is no way to add external objects, so a big part of the community is involved in making craxy contraptions with the built in objects ala the Reaktor user lib.

anyway, how good is a max synth? well, if you can code it you can make it in max. say you have a great filter design written in C. just make an external and patch it in your max synth. theres also objects that let you add programming language code ( python, Javascript, java, ruby to name a few )right in the max patch as well.
Lastly ill say that i find the built in Reaktor objects to sound better htan the max stuff most of the time. but theres tons of ways to add depth and whatnot to max stuff as well... anyway, youll see soon...

I really think Ableton, again, are making music history. If you look back, music has always been driven by inventions: Taking marching drums and putting them together as a drumkit, the electric guitar, the MiniMoog, the Sampler, and now, Max not as an offline process to build effects but integrated into the music making process. Wow! Wow! wow!

mike@TrackTeam Audio wrote:say you have a great filter design written in C. just make an external and patch it in your max synth. theres also objects that let you add programming language code ( python, Javascript, java, ruby to name a few )right in the max patch as well.

Let's see if those two features of MAX are ported into MFL. I have my doubts about it.

SimonPHC wrote:

mike@TrackTeam Audio wrote:say you have a great filter design written in C. just make an external and patch it in your max synth. theres also objects that let you add programming language code ( python, Javascript, java, ruby to name a few )right in the max patch as well.

Let's see if those two features of MAX are ported into MFL. I have my doubts about it.

Of course they are. M4L is Max. For Live.

jb

jeremydb wrote:

SimonPHC wrote:

mike@TrackTeam Audio wrote:say you have a great filter design written in C. just make an external and patch it in your max synth. theres also objects that let you add programming language code ( python, Javascript, java, ruby to name a few )right in the max patch as well.

Let's see if those two features of MAX are ported into MFL. I have my doubts about it.

Of course they are. M4L is Max. For Live.

jb

Yeah from what jeremy has said it seems all discussion of "how much Max is in MFL" is moot. It IS Max, just not standalone.

stringtapper wrote:

jeremydb wrote:

SimonPHC wrote: Let's see if those two features of MAX are ported into MFL. I have my doubts about it.

Of course they are. M4L is Max. For Live.

jb

Yeah from what jeremy has said it seems all discussion of "how much Max is in MFL" is moot. It IS Max, just not standalone.

Yes, but will it support 3rd party objects and libraries? I hope so, because some of my favorite objects aren't native to max/msp

rokhausen wrote:

stringtapper wrote:

jeremydb wrote: Of course they are. M4L is Max. For Live.

jb

Yeah from what jeremy has said it seems all discussion of "how much Max is in MFL" is moot. It IS Max, just not standalone.

Yes, but will it support 3rd party objects and libraries? I hope so, because some of my favorite objects aren't native to max/msp

Yes. Jeremy from C74 has explained it that MFL is basically a full install of Max and all it's libraries but without the standalone function. It's only editable from within Live. other than that, it's Max.

mike@TrackTeam Audio wrote:

glitchrock-buddha wrote:I mean in terms of sound quality and flexibility, what's the low down? Comparable to Reaktor? I did a quick google search hoping to find some sound examples or something but came up empty.

cheerio and Merry Christmas! (Out Christmas... which is NAMM)

yeah, theres not too much out there in the way of synths and premade instruments for Max. One of the differences between Max and Reaktor is that you can add external objects like oscilators, filters, random number generators...So a big part of the Max community is people coding objects in C - maxobjects.com, whereas with Reaktor there is no way to add external objects, so a big part of the community is involved in making craxy contraptions with the built in objects ala the Reaktor user lib.

anyway, how good is a max synth? well, if you can code it you can make it in max. say you have a great filter design written in C. just make an external and patch it in your max synth. theres also objects that let you add programming language code ( python, Javascript, java, ruby to name a few )right in the max patch as well.
Lastly ill say that i find the built in Reaktor objects to sound better htan the max stuff most of the time. but theres tons of ways to add depth and whatnot to max stuff as well... anyway, youll see soon...

Great explanation of the reasons.

I find it funny that the DAW people gravitate towards most for ease of use and simplicity has teemed up with arguably the most complex software out there for audio and MIDI work. This is what I assumed Emagic would have done with Logic had Apple not bought them. The Environment is Max like.

Oh and if you want to know firsthand "how good Max's synths" are (whatever that means), download the Max 5 demo, go to Extras->ExamplesOverview, then click on the pane that says "X.FM~".

Then take the patch out of presentation mode...