Max is a graphical environment for music, audio, and multimedia. In use for over twenty years by performers, composers, artists, scientists, teachers, and students, Max is the way to make your computer do things that reflect your individual ideas and dreams.
OBJECTS
Each object does something. Max has objects that generate sound waves, represent hardware, or provide a UI for interaction.
PATCHCORDS
Patchcords connect one object to another. This connection lets objects share their output with connected objects.
CONTROL
Connect UI objects like dials and sliders to provide control values or display results. Modulate, map and scale data to get just the right results.
Create Software Built Around You, In the Moment
• Drag in your own audio clips and start manipulating them and connecting effects
• Map your patcher with MIDI controllers as you go to start playing with your creation while you work
Expanded Ideas
Max patching starts on a blank canvas, free of any structure. This makes it natural to build and explore unique ideas that would be too complex to make elsewhere. The Max patcher automatically expands to fit your work as it grows, no matter how much space you take up.
Explore Sound without Limits
• Design a custom synthesizer with as many oscillators and effects as you wish.
• Manipulate samples in every way, including timestretch and pitch shifting.
• Build up more layered sounds using MC objects to patch multichannel audio.
Make Sound with a Gesture
In Max, you can build classic synths from scratch or get lost hacking together unusual sounds. Try the XY controls below to hear some sounds you could create with Max.
• You can do a lot with just a single oscillator and a filter.
• Add some extra modulation and try something a little more wild.
Make Visual Music
Max includes full-featured, expandable video and graphics tools with Jitter. Jitter is optimized for realtime audiovisual work, and is easy to combine with audio, sequencing, and modulation like everything else in Max.
Take Max into the World
Max patching starts on a blank canvas, free of any structure. This makes it natural to build and explore unique ideas that would be too complex to make elsewhere. The Max patcher automatically expands to fit your work as it grows, no matter how much space you take up.
Prototype and Evaluate
Flexible access to hardware makes Max a perfect environment for prototyping. Connect your development board to Max and get instant access to sensors, knobs, and switches. Watch the data stream in as you develop the interaction. Countless commercial products, art installations, and stage shows have relied on Max to glue together all the parts of their process.
Generate Audio, Video, Code
Use Gen to patch together fine-tuned processes for audio, matrix data, or texture processing. Gen lets you combine procedural commands with visual patching to simplify the creation of custom processes. Gen objects can also output source code to be used elsewhere if needed.
Extended Max
Max’s built-in Package Manager offers immediate access to over 50 add-ons covering everything from computer vision to support for hardware controllers including Novation, Monome and ROLI controllers. If the feature you want doesn’t exist in Max, chances are someone in the community has created it. And if they haven’t, you can extend Max yourself using C++, NodeJS, Java, or javascript.
→ Introducing RNBO
RNBO is a new patching environment built to export software with the sound of Max.
Create web experiences, hardware music devices, audio plugins, and new Max objects all from the same patch. And when that’s not enough, RNBO generates source code that you can use however you want.
This Was Made in RNBO
The example below was patched in RNBO and exported to Web Audio. RNBO Web Export also provides easy access to your patcher’s interactive elements and seamlessly integrates with your HTML/javascript code to add rich sonic experiences.
One Patch, Many Targets
A single RNBO patch can export compiled code that runs in several defined target contexts, and source code you can integrate into any C++ or Web Audio project.
• Build guitar pedals, Eurorack modules and much more with Raspberry Pi export
• Run your patch in any DAW as a VST3 or AudioUnit Plugin
• Compile your own self-contained, shareable Max object
• Increase performance and loading times of your Max for Live devices
• Embed your RNBO sound engine into a website using Web Export
Hear the Code While You Patch
The sound you hear while patching in RNBO is generated and compiled code that updates as you make changes. This running code is identical to the code you export, so your work will sound the same no matter which target you choose.
You’ll Feel Right at Home
Although built on new technology, RNBO offers an instantly recognizable patching environment with many familiar objects and practices from Max. If you’ve used Max before, you’ll be up and running in no time.
Inspired by What You Love in Max
• Full Gen integration, with the addition of event support and interactive UI objects
• Every RNBO object has its own help file, just like in Max
• Events and signals can be mixed in the patcher, just like in Max
• Use param, inport, and outport objects to define the controls for your RNBO export
• Mix patching and text-based programming directly in RNBO
• Easily make your patches, subpatches, and abstractions polyphonic with the polyphony attribute
→ What’s new in Max 9?
Introducing a new version of Max that is more direct, more transparent, and full of inspiring new features that will spark your curiosity. Max 9 brings a new collection of audio objects based on Ableton’s ABL library, the biggest Jitter update in years, interface improvements, reinvented coding workflows – and much more.
→ The ABL Objects
Ableton Sound for Max
We’re excited to offer a suite of Max objects created with Ableton’s ABL library for DSP. These objects offer a patchable interface to the internal workings of some of Ableton Live Suite’s most popular devices. Whether you’re looking to explore some wild distortion effects (abl.device.roar~) or dreamy reverbs (abl.dsp.shimmer~), the ABL library has got you covered.
Patching with Code
Patching in Max is even more powerful when you integrate text-based code. Max 9 presents a new vision of code integration with patching – including a fully reinvented, fast and modern javascript V8 engine. Even if you’ve never tried integrating javascript and Max, you’ll definitely want to check out what is possible.
Codebox Everywhere
Stay in the flow with codebox, which enables direct text-based coding alongside visual patching. Codebox variants provide support for JS (v8), Gen (gen, gen~, jit.gl.pix, jit.gen), and Node for Max, as well as dictionary and coll editing and OSC display.
New V8 Objects for JS
To access the new performance and compatibility features of javascript V8 in Max, we’ve introduced the v8, v8ui, and v8.codebox objects. With these new objects, you can make use of more modern (ES6+) language features like arrow functions and typed arrays, and in many cases enjoy a big speed improvement over the standard js object.
Introducing Jitter Geometry
In Max 9, we’re going beyond the Jitter Matrix with a new way to represent 3D geometry data and several new realtime geometry objects to manipulate and fine-tune your 3D graphics in Jitter.
Enhanced Visuals with Jitter FX
The new jit.fx library of image effect objects makes creating interactive visual effects in Jitter more streamlined than ever. Enjoy a full range of realtime, shader-based processes with an easy-to-use Max interface.
Included Effects:
✓ Color adjustments and corrections
✓ Stylized image manipulations
✓ Distortions and Blurs
✓ Blending and Compositing
✓ Time delay and temporal displacement
→ New in Jitter
In addition to the exciting new jit.geom objects and jit.fx, Max 9 brings exciting new additions that enrich Jitter in both practical and inspiring ways.
• In-Window UI Objects
Use jit.ui objects to build kiosk experiences or interact with your patch without leaving fullscreen mode.
• 3D Widgets
Directly edit your 3D scenes in Jitter with updated, in-window UI widgets.
• Scene Rendering
Max 9 introduces ReSTIR-based global illumination, order-independent transparency, depth-sorting, and new scene FX passes to add texture and grain.
• Jitter in Production
Switch Jitter into post-production and animation mode with new “fixed_delta” attribute for jit.world, jit.mo, and all animation-driven objects in Jitter. New objects jit.bang and jit.frame also help in syncronizing your processes with rendering.
→ Remote Control
Parameter Connect
Easily connect UI objects in Max to supported object attributes without any patchcords. This feature is currently supported by all ABL, jit.fx, and Gen objects, as well as jit.gl.slab. javascript V8 object support can be enabled by using the new JS attribute API.
OSC Integration
A new global preference allows you to set application-wide OSC address and port settings, and all parameter-enabled objects in your patch are automatically available to OSC messages. The param.osc and osc.codebox objects let you inspect OSC state and communications.
→ Improving Your Patching Life
Thoughtful improvements to the Max environment that will enhance the way you patch, play, and explore.
• List View
Explore the objects in your patch with a list-based interface. Rapidly filter, search, and edit objects, and watch the numbers change.
• Syntax Coloring
Inspired by our favorite code editors, Max syntax coloring makes it much more comfortable to read Max patches.
• Global Record Button
Max moments are often fleeting, but now you can capture any audio from Max, in the moment, with the new Global Record Button in the Max Toolbar.
• Preset Mixing
Connect a nodes object to preset to easily create an interface that lets you mix and interpolate presets across a 2D space.
Command Your Patcher with REPL
The familiar Max Window has a new input field that turns it into a command-line interface to your patch. This input allows you to send text messages to named objects in your patch, send messages to the application itself, execute javascript, or query the documentation.
New Tools for Learning
New Max 9 features for self-learners, teachers, and students alike
Illustration Mode
Visualize your patch running in slow motion to gain insight into how it’s actually working. Illustration Mode is useful for both learning and debugging.
Examples and Tutorials Online
Visit our new online documentation and learning site to find updated Max Tutorials, Documentation, and Examples.
→ Even More Improvements
Max 9 also brings many smaller features and improvements that will likely have a big impact on your daily patching life.
✓ Object Macros enable the use of js/v8, jit.gl.slab, and other generic objects with specific source code files as named objects
✓ New loudness~ object based on EBU R 128
✓ Visual updates to waveform~ and function
✓ New hid object supports more robust interactions with HID hardware than hi
✓ Improved media and file browsing in left toolbar
✓ Access jit.gl.slab params as object attributes.
✓ Clue display on bottom toolbar provides links to relevant documentation
✓ CPU/FPS display on right toolbar
✓ Multichannel meters on toolbar volume control.
✓ Reorganized and easier to navigate Preferences window
✓ Patching Margin provides extra space while editing at the edges of a patcher window
✓ Capture your content with a new patcher window aspect ratio feature
Compatibility: macOS 11.0 or later • Apple Silicon or Intel Core processor
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