Jason Charney

I'm doing a project where I want to run Max standalone outside of Live, sending messages to receive objects in M4L devices within a Live session. This works in Live 9 since it also uses Max 7 as the M4L device editor, but I assume since Live 10 uses its special build of Max 8 for editing, this workflow is broken. Is there a workaround to get standalone Max 7 talking to Max for Live within Live 10/set Max 7 as the editor rather than the Max 8 included with Live 10? I'd rather not put this whole Max project into Max for Live devices...

I'm doing a project where I want to run Max standalone outside of Live, sending messages to receive objects in M4L devices within a Live ses

max-7-max-for-live-live-10

This is an interesting point I'm curious about as well. It applies similarly to any prospective Standalones you might want to build with Max, but have deep interaction with Live all the same.

I'm curious if the Ableton/Cycling will determine a clear way of communicating the variety of "modes" with which Max and Ableton can interact with one another without losing the depth of the Max 4 Live interface.

While in the initial Live 10 (w Max 8) release, it makes sense that Live fully consumes Max where Max is generally being used to design components that exist entirely within Live, the same is not true in a truly wide variety of other scenarios, such as when Jitter is used for graphics, Live and Max's usages are "side-by-side", or even possibly scenarios where Live is existing within a larger system and Max is helping orchestrate that communication between Live and the outside world (DMX, LED clothing, etc.)

Hopefully we will get an answer from Cycling as to what the direction is going to be, aside from Live 10 cannibalizing Max 8

I'm curious if the Ableton/Cycling will determine a clear way of communicating the variety of "modes" with which Max and Ableton can interact with one another without losing the depth of the Max 4 Live interface. 

While in the initial Live 10 (w Max 8) release, it makes sense that Live fully consumes Max where Max is generally being used to design components that exist entirely within Live, the same is not true in a truly wide variety of other scenarios, such as when Jitter is used for graphics, Live and Max's usages are "side-by-side", or even possibly scenarios where Live is existing within a larger system and Max is helping orchestrate that communication between Live and the outside world (DMX, LED clothing, etc.)

Hopefully we will get an answer from Cycling as to what the direction is going to be, aside from Live 10 cannibalizing Max 8


Right! Either configuring so that ANY Max apps communicate with the same sends/receives, or even an external which can be placed in external Max projects to allow cross-app communication (modeled like Live.API or even [mira]). I mean, I would even be happy to pick the path of the Max Editor app like in previous Live releases...especially since Max 8 adds no functionality yet.

I guess I can just make a separate MIDI or OSC router for now...

Right! Either configuring so that ANY Max apps communicate with the same sends/receives, or even an external which can be placed in external Max projects to allow cross-app communication (modeled like Live.API or even [mira]).  I mean, I would even be happy  to pick the path of the Max Editor app like in previous Live releases...especially since Max 8 adds no functionality yet.

I've just come across another similar issue (seemingly, not verified just yet), where for example, the virtual audio bus JACK cannot connect to Max 8 internally because of the architecture for how Max 8 is embedded within Live 10.

To balance out perspectives, I think it would be extremely challenging for the Ableton/Cycling devs to manage this elegantly. What is interesting is that Max is being consumed by Ableton in a way that mirrors the acquisition itself. It is not clear if Ableton wants to support solutions where the two softwares stand side by side equally, and I think they'd be the ones calling the shots here on in.

I've just come across another similar issue (seemingly, not verified just yet), where for example, the virtual audio bus JACK cannot connect to Max 8 internally because of the architecture for how Max 8 is embedded within Live 10. 

there is ableton link, which is an ableton protocol for communicating between Live and other things (far beyond max), there is a set of externals in the max 7 package manager. So you could maybe do what you want using Link, but never tried it myself so idk how far it goes in terms of things that can communicate.

@kcoul - Yeah, good points. I'm hoping this is just a weird interregnum between the release of Live 10 and standalone Max 8 in September and full functionality/communication with standalone will be restored (a$$uming upgrade to Max 8). I don't know what kind of under-the-hood changes to the Max engine were made that might make Max 7 incompatible living inside Live 10, so I'm assuming good faith in their reasoning for this setup. Still seems like C74 has autonomy, but compromises had to be made for a future smooth transition because the development/release cycles don't line up (hoping so anyway!)

Max 7 + Max for Live + Live 10