Max 8 now available!

Equipment
#1

Hi everyone, Max 8 has been released: https://cycling74.com/shop

I’ve been on the beta team for this. Two features have massively improved my personal workflow:

  1. The multi-channel “mc” objects can transmit up to 1024 simultaneous channels of audio data. Additionally, there are messages that can send useful parameter spreads to the individual channels (i.e. “harmonic” to assign one frequency message as a harmonic series to a multi-channel oscillator).

  2. Mapping! You can now turn on mapping mode, click an object, and attach a control to it (MIDI or QWERTY) without extra patching.

There’s a lot more, but those are my two favorites.

New features: https://cycling74.com/products/max-features

21 Likes
#2

dang it, I wish there was some crossgrade upgrade that people with 7 & Live 10 could leverage… right now I’ve spent too much on underused software this year…

1 Like
#3
1 Like
#4

oooooOOO. I love this. does anybody have info on whether this functionality transfers over to standalone apps? I just finished up my first and was going to distribute but would crack it back open if this requires tweaks to make available.

(edit edit: this does transfer! big ups to Ben Bracken from the C74 forums – the mappings object!)

5 Likes
#5

Anybody know if the version of Max 8 in Max for Live is now magically the release version?

1 Like
#6

Looking forward to the performance upgrades (I’m a nerd like that).

4 Likes
#8

Not yet. That will be in an Ableton update soon, I think.

2 Likes
#9

I’m very fond of Max and still use it on and off but I must admit my current move to smaller boxes (Norns, Organelle, PiSound) has driven me back to old open source staples like PureData and Supercollider.

Can’t help feeling that a freely available linux run time - even if you had to edit on the laptop would drive usage of Max…

10 Likes
#10

Ah, it’s as I feared.
The computers I use are old and only just meet the minimum hardware specs but there’s no way they are going to be upgraded from 10.6.8 that they are both on now, so no Max 8 for me for quite a while.
Some of the new features like mapping look really useful but Max 7 easily does everything I ask of it so no need to buy a newer computer yet. Which is good as I have no money!

1 Like
#11

THIS could be very good. I’ve been dreaming about multichannel CV stuff for a while but max hasn’t been able to support it.

2 Likes
#12

Looks like some useful additions. Excited to try it out.

#13

Wow this all looks so … user friendly :slight_smile:

1 Like
#14

First patch to try mc out :slight_smile: very nice to use

9 Likes
#15

gonna be downloading this soon and kind of very excited. these are all fairly small improvements but honestly i feel like they’re pretty huge in terms of pushing max into something that can be used as a “composition interface” in addition to just a “coding interface”. like just enough for me to feel like i can finally ditch Ableton and still stay in creative mode. excited to explore.

2 Likes
#16

i am new to max, does this mean it is capable of sending out cv, via a suitable soundcard, to control / modulate eurorack ?

#17

yea, definitely, with a DC-coupled interface like the es-8 (this isn’t new to max 8 though). BEAP is like a modular system in max built (by @stretta ) around this principle.

2 Likes
#18

Nice! Try out the “harmonic $1” message. That could replace all of the mult and pack objects. There’s also “subharmonic $1” and a bunch more.

4 Likes
#19

now the only thing we still need is a null value…

3 Likes
#20

Thanks! Will have to play with these :pray:

1 Like
#21

just to circle back to my own question, I was able to make Max 8 my editor for M4L devices within Live relatively painlessly (Cycling '74’s FAQ page tells you how), which is more than enough for me at the moment!

5 Likes