Does Mira replace Lemur for you?
Hi,
Ive been considering both Lemur and Mira for sometime, as a way of using my iPad (v1) to help control and feedback info for my music 'environment', which consists of a number of devices with Ableton Live in the centre.
I like the idea of Mira, but from a number of posts here it sounds like it might be a less mature than Lemur - and given there is a 50% sale on Lemur at the moment, is much more expensive.
(also Lemur has LiveControl2 so an out of the box Live interface)
So have people here replaced Lemur with Mira, use both… or have the intention to move to Mira but still rely on Lemur?
I guess my options are:
a) Mira
b) Mira + Lemur (live control 2, and some interfacing work)
c) Mira + Touchable 2 (for live interface)
I would like to believe in Mira, as I know Max, and don't really want to start learning Lemur, and also in the long run I cannot have 2 apps running on my iPad, so Id like the control of Live to be also done in Mira… but there doesn't seem to be much available for Mira at the moment… fair assessment? or am i missing something?
thoughts?
Of you just want to control mfl devices in Live, Mira can make sense, Although for now the compatible objects are still limited. But if you want to assign some parameters in Live, Mira would be of no use. Of course you could assign the controls through the live API but that doesn't make sense. My advice would be to go to Lemur (I own both...).
Thanks
Im not just wanting to control Live I also want some Max integration for other devices.
But from your response (and others posts here), it seems like getting Lemur for out of the box Live control is a good idea, and then as I build up my Max performance environment I can then choose to either to use the Max/Lemur extension or look again at Mira and see if it has what I need for a Max/Mira solution.
Pity I had hoped I could go straight to Mira, but looks like Id have to write a lot of Max code, to get some Live integration happening.
It depends a lot on your code style, really. I have colleagues that use Mira as a wysiwyg type of thing to simply represent the patch.
I use lemur instead, and I've been using hardware lemurs for a very long time now.
The code *is* a lot more mature, but the upside of having dedicated touch-interface designs means that I can do stuff like separate the lighting of a pad from touch, and get a great deal of control of how the object responds.
It is, however, painfully convoluted, in my humble opinion. Using mira with the standard objects in max is sooo streamlined.
Now, if you're getting either system to "control everything in Live", then you should go with LiveControl on the Lemur. No question.
I find the most satisfying approach is to build really tight control of a small thing. Like, a single effect unit. If you do that, then you're going to have a ton of fun, and it'll be much easier with Mira, as far as I know.
Im a traditional programmer by trade, so Im used to , and prefer, to code the UI separate to the logic of the system. As you say, because I want to dedicated view to control specific elements, not just allow everything to be touched.
I can understand what you say about Mira being streamlined, as you obviously can code it all in one place.
But is the interaction between Lemur and Max really 'painfully' convoluted… how do you mean?
So far Mira is great for tinkering and ad-hoc solutions. But if I want a reliable Interface to use in a live-performance, my go-to tool is still Lemur. It's stable as can be and offers a lot of options, though I still have a hard time getting into the programming possibilities of it, which is it's main strength as opposed to touchosc and mira.
Also Lemur allows me to control multiple clients from one interface with ease.
>I can understand what you say about Mira being streamlined, as you obviously can code it all in one place.
Actually, with mira there *is* no code, neccesarily. It's just your max UI.
>But is the interaction between Lemur and Max really ‘painfully’ convoluted… how do you mean?
have you read the Lemur manual yet? Some of the actions, like displaying colours on Pads is hairy to deal with.
>Also Lemur allows me to control multiple clients from one interface with ease.
... that part is perhaps even easier with Mira, though.
Well Ive taken the plunge with Lemur, and it does look good and it gives me LiveControl so thats useful for the short term
I think in the long run, I will use a combination of Lemur and Mira.
Lemur is looking better at the moment, for more complex/slick ui, where I willing to put the extra effort in - as the scripting I can see is going to be hard work. I can see what you mean wetterberg, about it being a little convoluted.
Do you use OSC for all you comms between Max and Lemur? (using something like oscroute?)
Mira, i'll use for getting stuff together quickly and easily.
the balance may change as Mira hopefully improves and gets a few more ui components.
... I will probably wait before buying until I have a project that 100% needs it.
thanks for sharing your thoughts guys
I only use OSC now. I don't use oscroute, since I'm trying to stay as vanilla as possible with max.
So yeah, I use simple [route /Pads/x]-style things for the least demanding stuff, and I may introduce [regexp / " "] for other stuff.
But it's important to stress that vanilla max is plenty capable of handling OSC.
I had (and still have) such high hopes for Mira, but sadly it just isn't nearly ready for prime time. I find it crashes quite often in M4L. The lemur, while more cumbersome, is rock solid and quite powerful with the scripting options.
seems pretty conclusive, we all have hopes for mira, but not quite there yet - understandable for a new product…
I will keep an eye on it, probably will buy when next major version is released (or if they make a tempting offer no doubt)
>Also Lemur allows me to control multiple clients from one interface with ease.… that part is perhaps even easier with Mira, though.
With Lemur I can easily manage multiple Computers, and software, without piping everything trough something else. For example, I use Lemur to control one system running Max, while controlling Ableton on another one. Both are independent - if there are issues with one computer, the other one still receives commands. And doing that is quite easy to implement.
…although this option is not really something I realistically expect from mira at this point.