Cycling 74 » Topic: Why should educational institutions spend money on Max when Pure Data is free?

Why should educational institutions spend money on Max when Pure Data is free?

Letraset Catalogue — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:10:22 +0000

I’m trying to set up a 3 day interactive video workshop for an undergraduate Interaction Design Program in the UK. I was planning to use Max/Jitter for this but it turns out the college doesn’t own Max. They have instead suggested I use Pure Data – which is free of course. With no experience of PD I spent a couple of days trying to recreate a recent Max patch with it. At first PD seems very similar (all be it with a slightly eastern european cold war era feel) but over time I just couldn’t get a sufficient grip of it – productivity remained slow and I found it to be way less stable than Max with countless crashes from trying to edit while the patch was running.

Unlike Pure Data, I feel Max is more likely to inspire Interaction Design students, particularly those from less technical backgrounds. I’d really like to get the College to invest in Max but need some compelling arguments as to why it’s worth spending money on.

Obviously, money spent on Max tuition using the 30 day trial could be effectively wasted after the trial software has expired.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thanks.

Re: Why should educational institutions spend money on Max when Pure Data is free?

Jean-Francois Charles — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:46:01 +0000

You’re right to address the Max vs PD question in an educational context. I think indeed that teaching interactive music, video-audio interaction, spectral sound processing (especially using [pfft~] is really easier and faster with Max. The quality of the documentation and support are crucial factors why one pays for software where a free equivalent exists. The choices of peer institutions may be a factory, but here, it’s not an argument, since wonderful universities use Max & PD.
With Max, students coming from an “art” background (more than a “science” one) will learn more in the same amount of time that what they would learn with PD.

Re: Why should educational institutions spend money on Max when Pure Data is free?

Anthony Palomba — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 13:52:39 +0000

Not sure if I agree that Max is for “Interaction Design students”.
My background is music and computer science. Max allows to be as technical
as I want. With Maxs SDK, I can even code my own externals from scratch, you don’t get anymore technical than that.

If Max were not a commercially funded product with a development budget,
it would never be what it is now. It would be some open source pet
project with developers who work on it as time may permit. Depending on people to find time to work on open source projects is risky, especially when you art depends on it.

Investing in a platform that will be maintained and has a technology
road map is very important. It also means there are funds to develop
educational and documentation material. I have found Max’s documentation to be unequaled, which has allowed me to learn much faster. It also
allows for the development of some amazing things like Max4Live.

In the end it is about making it easier to use technology to create art.
Pd has got a long way before it will ever catch up with Max.

Re: Why should educational institutions spend money on Max when Pure Data is free?

stefantiedje — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:01:01 +0000

The main argument will always be your own story, which does tell already a lot. It depends as well on how teaching is done. If the students have to work on their own computers, its different than if there are computers of the facility they can work with.
For beginning patching I believe that Pd could serve as well, but I would not do it, I’d rather tell the students, do it here on the computers in class, and if you want to fiddle around with Pd at home its fine. In the beginning, you could easily set up tasks which could be done either in Pd or Max. The difference isn’t that big. As soon you touch more complicated ground like poly~, pfft~, bpatchers and such, they would be lost with Pd compared to Max/MSP.
I can’t really judge though, as my experience with Pd is limited for the same reasons you explained with your own story. I also guess that teaching DAWs is mostly done with commercial ProTools or Logic systems and not with Ardour. In the long run it will be cheaper for the facility to teach the same knowledge with commercial support, it will need less time of the costly instructors…
For the students its a bit different, as they need to know, before they put in their own investment, if this way of working is for them or not. That’s why I would allow Pd in the beginning. But I think that the price for a student version of Max/MSP is attractive, if they know that they will go that route. There is also the 9 month limited edition which is somehow in between the 30day trial and the full version…

Since many years I feel attracted to open source, but I never bothered to get deeper into Pd. Maybe I need to get stuck for some weeks equipped with only a Netbook and Linux on it, but then I’d probably still would install an OS 9 emulator and play Max (4) instead of Pd…;-)

Stefan