Problem with detonate in Max 5
I am teaching ear training at a school of music and have been using Max/MSP since version 4 for creating tools for harmonic and melodic dictation. Recently I decided to upgrade to the new Max 5. I was impressed by the new features this new version has to offer and was looking forward to use it.
So I took one of my old projects (one for harmonic dictation) and opened the mxb file in Max 5. At first look, everything was working fine but I made some tests just to be sure. There was no problem at all, so I decided to save my project in the new maxpat format, closed it and tried to open the new file I just saved. After 3 minutes waiting for the “spinning pizza” to disappear (a very long time indeed! It only took about 2 seconds for the old mxb file to open), the file ended up opening itself. There was no error message in the Max window and after a few tests I realized that everything was working OK. I closed the file and opened two other old projects, saved them in the new maxpat format without making any changes and ended up with the exact same problem.
What was going wrong? Why did Max 5 take so much time to open its own maxpat file format while it did not seem to have any problem to read old mxb files? Which part of the project (object, patcher, function, event…) I just saved could be involve?
After a lot of testing and thinking I ended up discovering the culprit: the detonate object and its MIDI file (all of my projects include a detonate object and a MIDI file in which dictations are saved). Once MIDI data is cleared (using the “clear” command) from the detonate object and the changes saved, the maxpat file opens quickly or normally (but without the MIDI part, so the project is unusable). Before having cleared the detonate, I also compared the mxb file (original) and the maxpat file using the “Open as text” option to see if there was any differences between the two files regarding the MIDI data: despite some changes in the first set of global MIDI parameters, all the notes data were exactly the same. Finally I made a last test: I cleared the MIDI file from the detonate, saved the project, reopened the project, reloaded the MIDI file (using the “write” command) and compared again the MIDI data in the mxb and the maxpat files. This time, there was a lot of differences or changes between both files regarding the duration of the MIDI notes as if the data was altered or corrupted during the loading or the saving process.
In conclusion, there seems to be a big problem with the detonate object in the new maxpat file format and I don’t have any idea on how to solve it. All of my projects have always been working great with oldest versions of Max on all platforms (OS9, OSX and Windows XP) and suddenly they do not work anymore. I am having other problems with this new upgrade (neither of the two Mac/PC versions is running on my MacBook Pro, so I had no choice but to install the demo version on my old G4 2x867Mhz; but that is another story…) and I am quite disappointed.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks in advance!
Despite the frequent crashes of Max 5 (with a “Blue screen of Death”) on my MacBook Pro under Vista, I was able to check if this problem occurs with the Windows version of Max and can confirm this is the case. As soon as the mxb file is saved in the maxpat format, it takes also a long time for the new saved file to open (1 minute and a half instead of 3 on my G4; that is better but far too long) even though all is working well.
I would like to add two more things. The first one is that I know that on Mac Max files have no mxb extension but that was a way for me to distinguish between old and new file formats. The second one is that I saved the maxpat file as a standalone application on my G4 and can say that the problem is exactly the same with Max Runtime (a very long time before the app. actually opens).
On 12 juil. 08, at 14:10, Vincent Brauer wrote:
> Despite the frequent crashes of Max 5 (with a “Blue screen of
> Death”) on my MacBook Pro under Vista, I was able to check if
> this problem occurs with the Windows version of Max and can confirm
> this is the case. As soon as the mxb file is saved in the maxpat
> format, it takes also a long time for the new saved file to open (1
> minute and a half instead of 3 on my G4; that is better but far too
> long) even though all is working well.
>
> I would like to add two more things. The first one is that I know
> that on Mac Max files have no mxb extension but that was a way for
> me to distinguish between old and new file formats. The second one
> is that I saved the maxpat file as a standalone application on my G4
> and can say that the problem is exactly the same with Max Runtime (a
> very long time before the app. actually opens).
Could you provide a patch? steps to reproduce, or anything which would
help us to help you. Otherwise we can only speculate.
ej
I have sent you one of the patches I am working on.
Thanks for the quick reply!
Sorry for the mistake.
Here is one of the patches I am working on. As you will see the mxb file opens very quickly while the maxpat file takes a very long time.
Thanks a lot!
Thanks anyway for trying to help me understand what could be the reason of this huge problem I have encountered. I hope we will find a solution soon…
As stated before, there seems to be another issue related to the loading process of a MIDI file into detonate. Some note duration values are altered or modify as you can see in this example:
I have a similar problem with detonate.
If I load a midi sequence in seq everything it's fine, but the same midi file loaded in detonate play very badly, with strange note values. The original midi file has some CCs inside, but I assume these should just be ignored by detonate
The problem is that I really need to load midi file externally created and be able to modify the delta times between events, in order to take in account the physical delays of the external actuators.
regards
motor