Max 6.1 Released
Today we're excited to release Max 6.1. You can download it from https://cycling74.com/downloads/ to check out these new features:
64bit application:
+ Use more than 4GB RAM
+ Use high precision 64bit numbers in Max messages
+ Load 64bit Audio Unit and VST plugins
Live 9 support:
+ New devices
+ New Live API features
+ Performance and stability improvements
New Gen Features:
+ Integrated operator reference
+ New operators and expression features
+ (Beta) Export Gen code to C++ (gen~) or GLSL (jit.gl.pix)
Performance Improvements:
+ Faster application launch
+ Faster patcher load time
+ General optimizations
Complete Max 6.1.0 release notes are available at http://cycling74.s3.amazonaws.com/support/version_6_1_0.html, and more discussion about what these features represent follows.
64bit:
64bit application support is a big deal, and given how long Max has been under development in a 32bit world, it was no easy feat. Thank you all for your patience as we've worked to make this happen. 64bit applications allow users to take advantage of a much larger memory space and hence more than the ~4GB of RAM we are limited to under 32bit. We've also been able to make infrastructural changes to support 64bit numbers when passed via Max messages for higher precision calculations. These two things are features you have been requesting in Max for years, and finally those features are here.
However, we'd like to balance expectations here. Since this is our first 64bit release, we will not have all of the features of the 32bit version, especially regarding Jitter and QuickTime support. QuickTime is simply not available on Windows under 64bit, where we will rely on DirectShow for movie playback (to playback QuickTime files you will need a third party plugin for DirectShow). Apple's QTKit API on Macintosh 64bit has fewer features than the 32bit version of QuickTime, and requires a dramatic rewrite of our code base. We've only implemented the most basic of functionality for movie playback at this time on both platforms. We will be continuing to work on Jitter video playback and other QT features in the 64bit version, but many features are not present and may not make it to the 64bit version ever.
Max and MSP should have nearly all the same features, except where it relies on QuickTime (e.g. PICT files are not currently supported under 64bit and instead we recommend converting to PNG or JPG). However, 3rd party developers will need to port their objects to 64bit for them to be able to run inside the 64bit version of Max. There is no loading of 32bit externals in 64bit version of Max.
We will be providing an SDK for 3rd party developers in the coming days, but it will likely take some time before any particular 3rd party external will be available to use. We would recommend that if you do want to use the 64bit version and you have 3rd party dependencies that you see if you can remove these dependencies by using core objects or abstractions to replace these dependencies, until your favorite 3rd party object is available.
On Macintosh, the application comes as a single FAT bundle, by default set to run in 32bit mode. To run in 64bit mode, select the application and "Get Info" from the finder. In the "General" tab there should be a check box which says "Open in 32-bit mode". You can turn this off to run in 64bit. If you want to keep separate 32bit and 64bit versions, you can duplicate your max folder, select one of the applications and set it to run in 64bit as described. Externals are also FAT bundles--i.e. contain both 32 and 64bit code.
On Windows, there are separate 32bit and 64bit installers and applications, and externals are in separate .mxe (32bit) and .mxe64 files.
Live 9:
Max for Live users will need to use Live 9 in conjunction with Max 6.1. Live 9 will be released on March 5th, and as you may have heard, Max for Live is now included in the Live Suite bundle. The factory content will look a little different than in previous versions and you will need to download and install the appropriate live packs for the content which previously was installed by default. In addition to the exciting features of Live 9, there are some great new devices in Max for Live, especially the drum synths and convolution reverb, but I will recommend you go to the Ableton.com website for more information regarding Live 9 and Max for Live.
New Gen features:
Gen has some significant additions and improvements in this release. Gen now has an integrated operator reference in the side bar to make learning and discovery easier than in previous releases. The operator set has grown, and the GenExpr language now supports recursive functions (for CPU, not GPU targets), calling gen patchers as functions, and defining functions with named parameters. But most exciting in this release is that we have a beta version of code export. This means that you can take your gen~ patchers and export them to C++ code and your jit.gl.pix objects and export them to GLSL code. This feature only has limited support in our initial Max 6.1 release, but over the coming months, we will be working to improve the generated code, template examples, and documentation to make this feature useful for those of you who have been waiting for this capability. Note that the code export feature will assume that you are familiar with C++ and working with a development IDE like XCode or Visual Studio. We will be adding more code export examples and documentation in the WIKI at https://cycling74.com/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Gen_Code_Export
Awesome job, guys. Thank you.
Ditto! Thanks, folks!
Bravo! BRAVO!!
Awesome!
A naive question since I don't know much about 32/64bit stuff. Will 'old' externals not work with 6.1 until they are updated?
They will work in the 32 bit version of Max 6.1, but they will require updating to work in the 64 bit version of 6.1
-A
I've not downloaded/installed it yet, but does that mean there are two runnable versions of 6.1?
@Rodrigo: Please read the initial announcement, as the answers for all of your questions (at least, so far) are included there:
We will be providing an SDK for 3rd party developers in the coming days, but it will likely take some time before any particular 3rd party external will be available to use. We would recommend that if you do want to use the 64bit version and you have 3rd party dependencies that you see if you can remove these dependencies by using core objects or abstractions to replace these dependencies, until your favorite 3rd party object is available.
On Macintosh, the application comes as a single FAT bundle, by default set to run in 32bit mode. To run in 64bit mode, select the application and "Get Info" from the finder. In the "General" tab there should be a check box which says "Open in 32-bit mode". You can turn this off to run in 64bit. If you want to keep separate 32bit and 64bit versions, you can duplicate your max folder, select one of the applications and set it to run in 64bit as described. Externals are also FAT bundles--i.e. contain both 32 and 64bit code.
On Windows, there are separate 32bit and 64bit installers and applications, and externals are in separate .mxe (32bit) and .mxe64 files.
Hope that helps,
Ádám
thanx guys,
"On Windows, there are separate 32bit and 64bit installers and applications, and externals are in separate .mxe (32bit) and .mxe64 files. "
does it mean i can install both x32 and x64 in separate folders and they will work perfectly separated if i start one of them?
@Siska
Thanks. I skimmed the (long) release notes. I'll update to 6.1 now and cross my fingers waiting for 64bit externals, just like everyone else.
Hey, super update and all (gen code export waw), but i need a naive clarification : does a 64 bit app mean that it will run faster on a 64 bit os ? Does it have anything to do regarding multicore processing ?
@wichug 64 bit app means that it can use more memory (theoretically up to 16 exabytes). So you'll be able to use huge buffer~/delay lines, larger matrices, bigger patches...
See the Joshua's blog post for more infos.
Faster application launch!!! Yay!
jit.qt.movie bug ?
"jit.qt.movie bug ?"
OSX 10.8.2
Max 6.1 - 64b
thank's for Max 6.1 !
is there a way to have the 6.1 overriding the 6.0.8 app, without creating a new folder ? i would like to avoid having to reinstall a lot of externals, and run the max 6.1 in 32bit for now. Would it do the trick to replace the max.app in the 6.0.8 folder with the max.app in the 6.1 folder ?
@francois: As mentioned in the announcement, jit.qt.movie and other Jitter QT features are severely limited at this time. For example there is not loadram or unloadram message support in 64bit, yet. If you are a Jitter user, you will likely want to remain using the 32bit version for quite some time. We're working on it, but getting just to this point for 64bit support was a huge effort.
@ vichug: I don't recommend doing this, but instead investigate the new "Packages" feature (see the readme in the Max/packages folder or the vignette in the Max documentation). However, on Macintosh, you might be able to simply rename the folder to Max 6.1 before installing. On windows, it's more complicated but creating a folder directory with the same name as the Max 6.1 hierarchy, copying the contents of your 6.0.8 folder there, and then installing. Really though, packages, while still a manual process, are designed to make managing 3rd party externals easier. We hope to improve on this to make it even simper in the future.
@FineCutBodies Yes on Windows you can install 32bit and 64bit versions of Max 6.1 and they won't interfere with each other.
thanx Josh!
@Josh Thanks, so it seems package folders will make 3rd parties libraries installation significantly easier in the future ? In the meanwhile, their installation was done 'ye olde way', so it's sparse in all of Max 6 subdirectories so i'm hesitating over waiting for 'clean' versions of those libraries, or installing those the new way myself, or overriding the app, or renaming folder Max 6.1 and reinstalling (wouldn't this, though, override 3rd parties in cycling '74/ and patches/ and java-doc/ and such ?)
Great work Cycling!
Just want to let you know that on my Macbook Pro (running OSX 10.8.2), after installing Max 6.1, I can't get .maxpat files to open with 6.0.8 by default. Tried changing this the usual way via Get Info. No luck.
Anyone else seeing this behavior? Not critical, just a little inconvenient.
Reading the packages readme (and I can't seem to find the vignette) but does this new packages structure work outside of the max search patch?
ie can I have a folder on my desktop, with my main patch in it, with a /packages folder inside that. Can Max 6.1 recognize it?
@Rodrigo it seems i can neither find the packages vignette
Hi,
Folders don't seem to work anymore in the extras folder (or the packages folder if you have an extras folder inside your structure). That use to work with Max 6.08 and previous versions.
best,
Nicolas
@rodrigo It won't work on the Desktop, but you can use ~/Documents/Max/Packages. Looks like the vignette didn't make it into the release. We'll fix that.
@nnimar thanks for the extras folder report
@jkc What about what I wrote? I rebooted, and still experiencing the same problem. If I remember correctly, you had a similar problem when Max6.0.x first came out.
@zachary Sorry, that's really an Apple support issue. Here's one thread I found with suggestions:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2719216?start=0&tstart=0
I'm really interested by packing AU from Code Export and I discovered the wiki at this moment.
Is there a guideline to integrate some UI made ... with Max ?
@julien You are on your own with anything more than the raw C++ code. We're not planning on any UI builder anytime soon. Code export really is for people who want to integrate code in their projects, not a ready bake system for creating plugins for people who are not programmers (though some of the examples may be easy enough for people without much coding experience to do this in a limited sense).
You may want to look into something like JUCE, if you want a great cross-platform library to create your GUI from. We can't recommend it enough.
(@Julien and also some thing looking like a max-for-.au compiler is part of Jamoma library, iirc)
that works fine for me :) just wanted to ask.
ok about Juce
I still didn't check the examples
Just a quick note: we have found an issue with some third party libraries (FTM, tap.tools, and some others). We will be addressing this problem in a forthcoming update. If you see a crash log with "notify_free" at the top, this is the issue and it will be fixed in the 6.1.1 release.
Thanks for your patience.
Your link did the trick, Joshua. Thanks. I was too lazy to try this... Here's the relevant info, when "get info" won't stick:
right click file, select open with "other .." from the menu.
browse to the program you want to BE the default, select it,
and then click the box "always open with".
Then click "open".
Viola, when your file opens, all other files, with the same extension, change to the app you want to be default.
Bummer about the /Documents thing. It would make soooooo much easier for sharing (complex) patches if Max would just burrow even one level into a prescribed folder (/packages).
It'd rather have everything in one folder, all messy, and know it will work, than tell people it has to be installed, and run, from a very specific place on their computer.
Rodrigo, it sounds like you need Projects. Check out the vignette "About Projects" for an overview.
Best, Jeremy
Ooh, lots more documentation. That wasn't there last time I looked.
I tried it before and it didn't work right, (files not getting added correctly), and there was little documentation to follow.
i like a lot the projects - except when you can't (?) set more than one main patcher to build a collective/application
I tried it months ago, and even with that ticked a bunch if the dependencies didn't want to resolve. They showed up yellow or red if I remember right.
Also couldn't figure out how to make it simple for a user to run so they can open the patch, and not see the project window or anythng like that.
Again, just to make things as simple for people to download/use as possible.
Is there a guideline for packaging standalone with 64bit version ?
@julien what do you mean?
On mac you can build a fat version which will run both 32bits or 64 bits depending on the window information.
On windows you will need to build with the 64 bits version.
Note that on mac you can alter the default architecture by changing the LSArchitecturePriority the Info.plist inside the application Bundle.
Hi Emmanuel, that answers.
I just meant : how can I be sure my standalone will be launched in the correct mode on the computer of a friend for instance ?
I have to package my standalone for my project 1111 (http://julienbayle.net/project-1111) for Leicester because I cannot be there.
I'll send a standalone for this purpose.
@vichug: re "i like a lot the projects - except when you can't (?) set more than one main patcher to build a collective/application", Thanks, I never noticed this problem before. That will be fixed in a forthcoming release.
Thanks, Jeremy
@Julien: "Check the project inspector and test the "Keep Project Folder Organized" option
That cheats myself at the beginning.."
Not really sure what you're trying to say here. Are you simply pointing out that there is no reference entry for those preferences (thanks, will be addressed)? Or is there some other problem I'm not aware of?
Thanks, Jeremy
I have no problem with that, myself.
Windows7 64 bit, Max6.1(x64), sfrecord~ issues (file created, content not pushed in, file probably not closed), huge wait once sfrecord~ given a 0.
its possible that [mxj] is also not supported as [mxj~] which is listed ?
also ,ive noticed some memory leaks in JS which is not happening in 6.0.8
KrisW, adrian_moore, can you use our bug reporting form and get in touch with Support? Neither are known issues at the moment. Be sure to include as much information as possible, as well as some steps to repro and a patch.
Thanks so much!
-Ben
sure ! a "big sorry" for the mess
no Mac OS 7 support?
Hi Helmuth,
What computers are you running? Is the hardware on these machines 64-bit compatible?
-Ben
Hi Ben, :
powerbook has 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (2009), IMAC has 3.06 GHz Intel Core i3 (2010), both are 64 bit (after checking apple.support page)
powerbook is still on X.5.8, IMAC is on 10.6.8
Helmuth
@Helmuth
It seems from you screenshot that you are trying to find the "Open in 32-bit mode" option by getting the "Get Info" on the Max 6.1 folder and not the application itself. So to see the 32-bit mode option you need to select the Max application inside this Max 6.1 folder and Get Info and you should see the option now.
Hope this helps
@GuiB
Thanks, that solved it.
Best,
Helmuth
Hi,
Please some advise.. I am hesitating to install update as I work with jit.qt.movie in all my patches.. however am working also with model( very nicely) and might like to use matrix output as well.. can this be done in the 32 bit update version on mac.. or should I wait ( continue with6.0.8) until quicktime issues are more resolved..
thanks so much,
Astraphl
quicktime works fine in the 32 bit version of 6.1
you should update.
Thanks so much..Rob ..will do.. just got a little nervous with all the caveats..
Sorry if i wrong.
As i understand FTM problem is not fixed?
Here is what i've god when i'm trying to load any object from FTM.ftm.editor: unable to load object bundle executable
2014-03-23 17:48:01.485 Max[1366:d07] Error loading /Applications/Max 6.1/packages/FTM.2.6.0.BETA /externals/ftm.editor.mxo/Contents/MacOS/ftm.editor: dlopen(/Applications/Max 6.1/packages/FTM.2.6.0.BETA /externals/ftm.editor.mxo/Contents/MacOS/ftm.edito
r, 262): no suitable image found. Did find:
/Applications/Max 6.1/packages/FTM.2.6.0.BETA /externals/ftm.editor.mxo/Contents/MacOS/ftm.editor: mach-o, but wrong architecture
if sorry and bla, bla
then thanks
else
berp