A Playground for Invention

Max is an infinitely flexible place to create interactive media software. With in-depth tools for audio, graphics, interaction, and communication, Max is an environment to explore and develop your own ideas.

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Connect Ideas Together to Create

OBJECTS

Each object does something. Max has objects that generate sound waves, represent hardware, or provide a UI for interaction.

PATCHCORDS

Patchcords connect one object to another. This connection lets objects share their output with connected objects.

CONTROL

Connect UI objects like dials and sliders to provide control values or display results. Modulate, map and scale data to get just the right results.

Create Software Built Around You, In the Moment

Drag in your own audio clips and start manipulating them and connecting effects

Map your patcher with MIDI controllers as you go to start playing with your creation while you work

Expanded Ideas

Max patching starts on a blank canvas, free from any structure. This makes it natural to create interconnected processes and discover nonlinear approaches that would be hard to create elsewhere. The Max patcher automatically expands to fit your work as it grows, no matter how much space you take up.

Explore Sound without Limits

Design a custom synthesizer with as many oscillators and effects as you wish.

Manipulate samples in every way, including timestretch and pitch shifting.

Scale up to more layered sounds using MC objects to patch multichannel audio.

Make Sound with a Gesture

In Max, you can build classic synths from scratch or you can go in a totally different direction. Determine how it all maps to the controls. Here are a couple of simple starting points for sound creation in Max.

You can do a lot with just a single oscillator and a filter.

Add some extra modulation and try something a little more wild.

Make Visual Music

Max includes full-featured, expandable video and graphics tools with Jitter. Jitter is optimized for realtime audiovisual work, and is easy to combine with audio, sequencing, and modulation like everything else in Max.

Take Max into the World

Max provides the tools to connect your computer to the external world, or connect many computers together. With support for a constantly expanding list of hardware and communications, Max is ready to talk to everything.

Prototype and Evaluate

Flexible access to hardware makes Max a perfect environment for prototyping. Connect your development board to Max and get instant access to sensors, knobs, and switches. Watch the data stream in as you develop the interaction.

Countless commercial products, art installations, and stage shows have relied on Max to glue together all the parts of their process.

Generate Audio, Video, Code

Use Gen to patch together fine-tuned processes for audio, matrix data, or texture processing. Gen lets you combine procedural commands with visual patching to simplify the creation of custom processes.

Gen objects can also output source code to be used elsewhere if needed.

Extended Max

Max’s built-in Package Manager offers immediate access to over 50 add-ons covering everything from computer vision to support for hardware controllers including the Monome and ROLI Seaboard.

If the feature you want doesn’t exist in Max, chances are someone in the community has created it. And if they haven’t, you can extend Max yourself using C++, NodeJS, Java, or JavaScript.

Try Max for 30 days

During your free trial period, Max is completely unlocked. That means you can open, edit, save, and create using all parts of Max without restriction. Just download Max and create an account to get started.

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Get help when you need it

Max isn’t always easy. In fact, it’s often full of puzzles that are hard to solve alone. Visit our forums to seek out solutions and ask questions or join one of many Max courses and meetups worldwide.

If something isn’t working right or you are having trouble with installation, reach out to our support team.