There’s a special going on for a Max crossgrade from M4L. Has anybody crossgraded and been happy they did?
Would jitter be easier to work with in Max standalone?
Thanks
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I did it when live 9 came out. It’s been collecting dust.
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Hey Ryan,
I did – it’s worth it at a discount – if you want to do stuff outside Live.
BUT – i’d probably wait now that they were bought out by Ableton (June of this year) things may be changing, so i’d wait for the dust to settle.
(The buyout is probably for the good – there are a few at Cycling74 that were no fun to deal with – and some excellent people too.)
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Oh cool! I didn’t know they were bought out! When did that happen? I’ll hold off on the purchase then.
Probably for the best, as I have a working version of M4L that I still need to learn so if I were to buy the crossgrade and NOT learn it then I just ambitiously lost my money.
I’ll hold off. Thanks for the info!
June of this year.
The article also has a whole time line of the Ableton and Cycling74 business interactions.
started actually learning max in september via a class at a local community college because i’m lazy and need the push to get going and demystify it etc etc and it’s great. really interesting and fun and you can do some complicated things w/just a few objects. kind of mind boggling really. it does have a way it wants you to do stuff but for someone like me who sucks at math, coding etc i’m having a good time and there’s a million tutorials on line and youtube and the built in help patches and tutorial are excellent.
i use M4L all the time. there’s a ton of great devices for it… many free… many inexpensive. i think max as a whole is something i’ll grow into more over the next year.
but max standalone is really useful… you can do a lot just in it and nothing else. but you have to commit to it.
yes i think jitter would be easier in max standalone… via the package manager there are great free externals for jitter and it’s super easy to get going. cv.jit package is a great bunch of externals.
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The whole thing of a data-flow language takes some getting used to, especially for people like me with years of conventional programming skills. But once you get it it’s super powerful on the right sort of problem.
it’s funny, I picked up pd fairly quickly, but conventional programming really fucks with my head. I’m trying to teach myself javascript but I can’t seem to retain any knowledge 
Back on the max talk though, I’m very tempted to get either Suite or Standard+m4l addon, since they’re discounted at the moment and I have a Live Lite license from some random piece of gear I bought… plus the free upgrade to 10. It’s still a big investment though.
oh… i didn’t finish my thought about all the m4l devices… you can drag and drop them into a max patch and hook them up and make a sort of macro level max modular thing… also, beap… but w/all the amazing 3rd party m4l devices it’s a lot of fun when you don’t feel like messing w/objects.
i like the idea of making things w/o a timeline driven DAW.
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$240 with a Live Suite license - I’m tempted, but I don’t know how much I’ll use it. I’ve been through several M4L tutorials, and it’s been one of those “one day things” that’s never come to pass. Guess I have a couple months to consider.
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Yes! That exactly! Me too brother!
I’m gonna try to learn M4L in the next couple of months and if I stick with it and turn to it more, I’ll probably buy in.
The way I see it, in poker terms, I’m putting in 240 for a chance to win 59 bucks. The smarter decision would be to save the 240 and if I need Max stand-alone later allow myself to lose the 59 I would have previously saved
caveat emptor - I bought into M4L and Max when the version was 5.something… have been upgrading along the way, but I’ve still got nothing to show for it. Max is for students/unemployed people if you ask me… but I’m sure it will be great once I finally have the time when I retire, except then it will have to compete with my miniature painting hobby plans lol
Getting patching with Max is easy… learning how to make optmized and good sounding patches on the other hand… 
YMMV and all that
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I figure I need to learn Max if I want to learn programming. I think it would be useful to have that mindset from making music with Max and then when I try to program for my job it’ll remind me of making music and thus make it more enjoyable.
Next I’ll learn Super Collider to REALLY make work feel reminiscent of music
Max is different from software development, IMO.
It’s more like patching.
You can try it for free for a whole month, iirc : start from here !
If you really want to program music in a software dev manner, Chuck is the way to go 
I mean, the thought process is similar. Being able to map out the output from the input on a micro level.
TBH Learning Advanced Excel and VBA was easier and more enjoyable because, for some odd reason it reminded me of playing an Octatrack 
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I have it as part of ableton suite but never used it once, i even consider downgrading when uppgrading for live 10 as i only use live vanilla have no use for sounds and m4l
I’m concerned about how this will work out too (that’s part of why i told Ryan to wait). On the other hand I have been happy for quite a while with how Ableton has treated me – so i think things will work out.
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