Bill 2

I want to do some stuff with a friend whose Windows laptop is "64bit bit i3 processor with 4gb ram". He won't be editing anything, just using the MIDI-only Max 8.3.3 patches I send him using the demo version of Max 8 (as recommended in the FAQ).

Does anyone know if that'll work? Or does Max 8 need more power to even start up, even before trying to load a patch?

He has a very low download limit at the moment and doesn't want to waste it on a 624Mb download that won't work. Thanks in advance!

I want to do some stuff with a friend whose Windows laptop is "64bit bit i3 processor with 4gb ram". 

can-a-midi-only-max-8-patch-run-in-an-underspecced-windows-machine

should be no problem at all to run max and midi on even much older machine.

But sometimes people have their windows laptops so bloated with stuff that it can't

even run text editor with acceptable speed.

Also, since max 5, you can use 99 % of max patches in max versions 5,6,7,8

without much changes except visual (due to gui handling) without restrictions.

Means if you share patch made with max 8.3.3 , someone can run it on max 5 32 bit, if max objects are not max 8 only.

P.S. i would recommend max 6 runtime as it is really small download.

Just take care to use midi objects that work same way in max 6 as in your Max version.

should be no problem at all to run max and midi on even much older machine.
But sometimes people have their windows laptops so bloated with stuff that it can't
even run text editor with acceptable speed.
Also, since max 5, you can use  99 %  of max patches in max versions 5,6,7,8
without much changes except visual (due to gui handling) without restrictions.
Means if you share patch made with max 8.3.3 , someone can run it on max 5 32 bit, if max objects are not max 8 only.
P.S. i would recommend max 6 runtime as it is really small download.
Just take care to use midi objects that work same way in max 6 as in your Max version.


It took a while to get around to this, and it turns out that he's using Windows 10 (but advertised as "having Windows 11 features"). More importantly, Max 6 crashes the machine in a way that requires reinstallation of whole lot of stuff. Max 8 needs a better CPU, and so it looks like he'll need Max 7.

But with Max Runtime no longer happening in Max 7 I can't see how to get patches to him. On Mac they could just be zipped, emailed and used, no saving required. But patches are platform-specific, aren't they? So zipped and emailed patches wouldn't work. And Copy Compressed files emailed to him won't be saveable after 30 days.

patches are cross platform and in max 7 or earlier he can use the seperate free runtime.

Then why is the usually-recommended method for sharing to use Copy Compressed -> New From Clipboard, I wonder? Can't wait to try it now. Cheers!

compressed patch can only be pasted into edit enabled max,

ALL max versions have runtime versions, even that for some reason,

On windows, you can see them plain, but on mac,

unzip runtime.zip fie in resourcs folder and then you can use runtime binary instead of max, by placing it into contents/macOS folder

that is what gets done when standalone gets built....

compressed patch can only be pasted into edit enabled max,
not runtime.
ALL max versions have runtime versions, even that for some reason,
they get hidden on mac ??
On windows, you can see them plain, but on mac,
unzip runtime.zip fie in resourcs folder and then you can use runtime binary instead of max, by placing it into contents/macOS folder

that is what gets done when standalone gets built....



Thanks Source Audio. I have no idea how you find out this stuff, but it could be really handy to know one day. My friend and I now have it working and he's digging into the details of his pads so I can set up a template. All's good! :-)

Can a Midi-only Max 8 patch run in an underspecced Windows machine?