Ableton Forum

6 months on or there abouts on from its release any news of a possible lite version for Max4 live ?
A version at a more realistic price - £ 100 ? Where its just ready made instruments , fx , midi tools without the programming posibilities and you can have a user library like Reaktor
Some of us just want to make music not spends days going through the minute details of programming though Full power to those amongst us that do
Any one know or even agree ?

Hi rompling,

There are no plans for a reduced-feature or "runtime" version of Max for Live for the time being.

Best,

Thanks for the reply dennis - Now we seem to have a stable version of Live 8 I personally think that ableton and cycling 74 " are missing a trick" by not going forward with a "real time " version and therefore a lost revenue stream
Least of all opening up the huge potential of Max4Live for more customers who might eventually buy the full version
My 2 p`s worth

+1

I sat down with the Max 5 demo and while I see the potential, I have too much going on atm to learn it deeply, unfortunately. I'd love to be able to just use M4L devices but no way am I paying $300 just to use them.

$100 for max4Live? it's some really powerful software, Cycling 74 sells max/msp/jitter for ~$700 and you want it at a 'reasonable' price of $100??


if you want more plug-ins to to http://www.dontcrack.com. buying it just for the plug-ins misses the point.

do some research on what max4Live really is, you'd be surprised.

that was pounds btw Tone and that`s from someone who I always read and most of the time respect your posts but just like them to follow the reaktor model when they did if my mind serves me well - reaktor sessions - have researched but at the mo nothing really grapping me in the full version to pay £220 - point being have a "lite" version show off its power and your bound to get end users upgrading to the " pro " version whilst others would be happy with the cough cough $ 200 version

Does NI still sell Reaktor Sessions....

Nope...

hadn't heard of Reaktor Session before.

people have been very outspoken about an easier entry point into max4Live. it's a safe bet that your request has been on the minds of the people at Ableton and Cycling 74. now that 8.1.3 is out I suspect that new development will restart and the Abes can take this suggestion into account, again.

I too would like to see more people using it so we can teach each other new tricks. I've only downloaded one device, published one and don't use the included content, I just like to make things and play with the API. that's my angle in all this.

sorry, I have mad amounts of love for max4Live. I was going to buy max/msp YEARS ago but waited until m4L came out, I waited a LONG time and am quite happy that I finally have the software. so, a 100 pound entry point struck me (pardon my language) offensive to the product. it does seem like you know what's up, respect.

to me this is what makes this forum unique a difference of opinion but ultimatly want the same thing a great end user experience ansd great music to be made not some of the formulistic shit you hear all the time

Thats why I was so excited about max 4 Live but as you and others have deluded to its quite a bit of a learning curve with time needed to learn the language (even though I know they have made it accesible as poss) and having a day job and a demanding girlfriend time is limited and I just wanna make music
And I feel ableton have set a presedent with live lite so max lite seems a logical step and when It happens would love to d/load your patch !!!

I think this is a great Idea. I'd love to get access to folks instruments and then if I really felt the need to upgrade I could. I'd by max runtime in a heart beat.

Tone Deft wrote: now that 8.1.3 is out I suspect that new development will restart

Well, I don't think it's a question of development, it's
a pure marketing / business decision as all that had to
be done would be to "deactivate" the edit button in M4L.

That was what Reaktor Session was about. It was Reaktor,
but you could not open the instruments to see what's
inside and change it. Reaktor Session was not very successful
because a) it was still quite expensive (as far as I remember)
and b) there are lots of plug ins you can use instead of
Reaktor instruments as most Reaktor instruments have no
exclusive functionality.

But M4L has the exclusive functionality to manipulate
Live from inside the software. There is nothing else
you can use to do this so I guess there is much more reason
(and market) for a runtime version of M4L than there was
for Reaktor Session.

And as there is no M4L runtime I see more and more people
using some kind of workaround to manipulate at least some
parts of Live: They access the API using remote scripts.
There are more and more great and very complex scripts
showing up at the moment. And all the people using these
scripts could be potential buyers of a M4L runtime...

Dennis DeSantis wrote:Hi rompling,

There are no plans for a reduced-feature or "runtime" version of Max for Live for the time being.

Best,

Thats a shame.
Let me know if you change your mind/business plan.

We've had this discussion multiple times (although to be fair to the OP not for a while ...)

The consensus is that MANY people would be all over a reduced price run-time/lite version of M4L giving access to tools created by others and library etc. There could even be an upgrade stream to the full product.

I guess the difficulty comes that it's a joint development so Ableton would require Cycling 74 (as the patent holder, developer of Max) to sign off on it.

Tone, the value of the full product could still be maintained for the full functionality, but an edit disabled run time for $99 to $149 would surely sell in bulk and then an upgrade path would provide additional sales.

I agree that my 2cents would also be in favour of the runtime/lite version at reduced price. However, I'm sure Ableton must have at least considered it and for whatever reason aren't running with it. We don't know what other factors made them think like this, but it was probably something relevant, not just a 'FU' to the users.

Guys,
get real.
Especially in terms of price M4L is already 'max lite' , what you're asking for is max lite lite.
Also, cycling74's pluggo suite of instruments & fx was discontinued purely to re-package the best big chunks of it as M4L content.

pluggo was $200.


need I say more ?