Fors Opal users thread

Ess · 2025-03-16T11:13:17.248Z

Gotcha! Yeah sorry for the annoyance– I try my best to make our devices fully compatible with the bundled version of Max down to Live 10, so this is why I haven’t prioritized making it Max 9 compatible yet since it’s still in a beta phase. Right now it’s unclear whether these issues stem from something on my end or if it’s a bug in Max.

Enchse · 2025-03-16T15:26:45.289Z

Yes it is absolutely understandable! I shouldn’t have jumped so impulsively into Max 9’s boat (I’m always too hungry for news and I pay the consequences). I hope you can easily discover the bug before the official release of Live 12.2. Have a nice evening!

chapelierfou · 2025-03-28T16:01:42.381Z

I guess anyone having issues can always download Max 8 and use it instead of the bundled version.

benway · 2025-03-28T17:09:43.788Z

If you run 12.1.10 (i.e. the release version of Live) it still uses Max 8 as its bundled version so Opal runs as normal. Can parallel install with the beta.

Ess · 2025-04-02T09:28:21.306Z

FYI have been talking to Cycling74 about these issues and it will be fixed in 9.0.6.

krfantasy · 2025-04-02T17:15:14.626Z

I just fed Opal’s Max console logs and the release notes for Max 9.0.5 to ChatGPT and tracked down the issue.

Max 9.0.5 release notes mention:

dict: setparse parses arrays and strings correctly

Searching for setparse found the line

setparse(XYZ, "")

in multiple JS files. The change to setparse in 9.0.5 made the parsing stricter, so setparse no longer accepts empty string. Replacing the empty string in setparse,

setparse(XYZ, "{}")

with an empty Dict object “{}” in all JS files fixed the problem, the sequencer in Opal works again!

Ess · 2025-04-02T18:59:59.821Z

Haha, I’m surprised ChatGPT knows anything about Max, let alone this insight. Used to be terrible at it.

But yeah, that’s the gist of it– but in any case 9.0.6 will be backwards compatible so an update to Opal will not be necessary. (The strictness was introduced because setparse had some issues that were addressed, which effectively “broke” Opal)

chapelierfou · 2025-04-09T14:00:30.768Z

New beta today :

Updated Max 9.0.6 to d455507:

dict.deserialize: fixed no output on invalid data regression
JS Dict.setparse(): fixed empty string as empty object regressions
live.push: attributes/attrui fixes when used outside of Live
MFL: disable global zoom
pattrstorage: fixed crash after purge when restoring slots
pattrstorage: fixed saving vst~ settings when store is called
thispoly~: mute resets busy (fixes adsr~ usage)
v8: fixed Live observer issues after new v8 instance

Seelachsfilet1337 · 2025-05-01T07:46:27.777Z

Hey, does anyone else experience the issue with Opal Ctl not saving locks / settings / anything when saving and closing a project?
Is that a known issue? I read in this thread that currently there are some max4live related issues, could that be a reason and if so, is there a fix coming in the foreseeable future?
It’s a shame cause recently I built some cool randomizer synths with Opal Ctl, it’s pretty powerful. But in the current state you have to bounce if you wanna keep the sequence.

Another unrelated question, does Opal not randomize pitch ? When hitting the random button I noticed that a #C just changes the octave, becoming a #c-3 or something, but it doesn’t change to a different note. Am I overseeing something?

Greetings , Markus

Ess · 2025-05-01T09:35:40.079Z

Did you email us about this? Sorry I’ve been a bit slow, we had this Intonal festival in Malmö all of last week where Felisha and other friends were playing so that took up a lot of time – and then we got hit with some sort of cold after, haha…

In any case, will look into this today. I’ll email you back to troubleshoot/pin down the issue.

FWIW doesn’t seem to happen on my end, and haven’t gotten other emails about it so could be a Max version/setup issue but will try to figure out what could be going on.

Seelachsfilet1337 · 2025-05-01T10:32:14.234Z

Hello, yes, I emailed Fors about it 2 days ago.
And you have replied today and tried to fix it with me, thanks. Like I said, I noticed I have opal and it’s single devices all over Ableton places. In several different locations I have multiple copies of it for some reason. First I will do a clean removal and install again. Thanks

marcomueller · 2025-05-14T18:29:13.162Z

Hi!
I’m afraid the release version of Max 9.0.6. bundled in the latest Ableton Beta 12.2.b17 breaks both Opal and Dyad
Strange, because the Beta of 9.0.6. worked great…

Thoow · 2025-05-18T17:48:40.909Z

Can confirm, especially Dyad is broken. Works fine on the stable version of Ableton 12, but no longer on 12.2b17 with the update to Max 9.0.6.

Peter118 · 2025-05-18T19:38:03.543Z

@Ess Is this a problem in the Ableton Beta or does Opal and Dyad need a update?

marcomueller · 2025-05-18T20:29:16.087Z

The Max developers confirmed the bug and are working on a fix, says on the Cycling74 forum.
Hopefully they fix it before the Ableton 12.2 release.

Kammo · 2025-05-19T10:49:38.952Z

If this bug goes live with 12.2 release I won’t update immediately.

mcetilia · 2025-05-19T11:49:17.516Z

For what it’s worth, I was able to get Opal working in 12.2.b17 by installing Max 9.0.4 (but strangely not 9.0.5) and making it the Max Application in Settings > File & Folder. Not an ideal solution but at least it gets the job done and you can always switch back over to 9.0.6 in projects where you aren’t using Opal…

Ess · 2025-05-19T12:15:34.808Z

This is a bug in Max 9.0.6, the plugsync~ object is broken which handles all the transpose/sync stuff for Dyad, Opal etc… A very unfortunate bug that somehow made it through to the public release. I saw that Cycling74 is working on a hotfix that’s supposed to be released asap.

Ess · 2025-05-20T19:03:10.525Z

FYI Max 9.0.7 is now available and fixes the transport issues.

Kammo · 2025-05-20T19:49:33.515Z

Will Ableton 12.2 come with bundled version 9.0.7 or do I need to download the latest standalone Max version from Cycling74?