What makes them unique is that you can open the hood of these devices and actually edit the functionality or interface to meet your own devious needs. You do not have to be a Max programmer to enjoy Max for Live devices - they are instantiated like any other plugin. This is unfortunate because not experimenting with these incredibly powerful plugins is akin to driving a Ferrari and never leaving first gear. Having taught courses for Ableton Live and music production in general for several years, I am continually surprised by the apparent hesitancy some Ableton users seem to have regarding Max for Live devices. The standalone version of Max is still enjoying robust support, and the integration of Ableton and Max for Live devices is flourishing. I am happy to report that has not been the case.

Being a longtime Max user and based on past experience with mergers in general, I was concerned that Cycling ’74 would take a backseat and stop pushing the envelope as they had successfully done for over 20 years.

Back in 2017, I wrote an article about the merging of Ableton and Cycling ’74, the company behind the graphic object programming language known as Max/MSP and its visual counterpart, Jitter.

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