Max

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(Redirected from Max/MSP)

For other uses, see Max (disambiguation).

Max is a graphical development environment for music and multimedia developed and maintained by San Francisco-based software company Cycling'74. It has been used for over fifteen years by composers, performers, software designers, researchers and artists interested in creating interactive software.

The Max program itself is highly modular, with most routines existing in the form of shared libraries. An API allows third-party development of new routines (called "external objects"). As a result, Max has a large userbase of programmers not affiliated with Cycling'74 who enhance the software with commercial and non-commercial extensions to the program. Because of its extensible design and graphical interface (which in a novel way represents the program structure and the GUI as presented to the user simultaneously), Max is widely regarded as the lingua franca for developing interactive music performance software.

1 History
2 Max Mathews
3 Notable artists
4 References
5 External links

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History

Max was originally written by Miller Puckette as the Patcher editor for the Macintosh at IRCAM in the mid-1980s to give composers access to an authoring system for interactive computer music. It was first used in a piano and computer piece called Pluton, synchronizing the computer to the piano and controlling a Sogitec 4X, which performed the audio processing.<ref name="pluton">Explanatory notes: Pluton</ref>

In 1989, IRCAM developed and maintained a concurrent version of Max ported to the IRCAM Signal Processing Workstation for the NeXT (and later SGI and Linux), called Max/FTS (FTS standing for "Faster Than Sound", and being analogous to a forerunner to MSP enhanced by a hardware DSP board on the computer).<ref name="ircam history">A brief history of MAX (with a block diagram of variant history)</ref><ref name=cycling '74 history">Max/MSP History and Background — Where did MaxMSP come from?</ref>

It was then licensed to Opcode Systems, which released a commercial version of the program in 1990 called Max/Opcode (developed and extended by David Zicarelli). The current commercial version of Max has been distributed by Zicarelli's company, Cycling'74 (founded in 1997<ref>Cycling'74 About Us</ref>), since 1999.

Puckette released an entirely re-designed Free Software program in 1996 called Pd (short for "Pure Data"), which has a number of fundamental differences from the IRCAM original, and remains an attractive substitute for those who don't want to spend hundreds of dollars on Max/MSP.

Max has a number of extensions and incarnations; most notably, a set of audio extensions to the software appeared in 1997, ported from Pure Data. Called MSP, this "add-on" package for Max allowed for the manipulation of digital audio signals in real-time, allowing users to create their own synthesizers and effects processors (Max had previously been designed to interface with hardware synthesizers, samplers, etc. as a "control" language using MIDI or some other protocol).

In 1998, a direct descendant of Max/FTS was developed in Java (jMax) and released as open-source.

A second major package for Max/MSP called Jitter was released in 2003, adding real-time video, 3-D, and matrix processing capability to the software.

In addition, a number of sibling and Max-like programs exist.

Native Instruments markets a similar software called Reaktor. Reaktor is generally considered easier to use and learn than Max, albeit less powerful.

Apple has a very similar program called Quartz Composer focused on graphical compositions.

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Max Mathews

Max is named for Max Mathews, and can be considered a son of MUSIC, though its graphical nature disguises that fact. Additionally, the real-time image processing capability of Max also makes it the first MUSIC-N program capable of doing things other than music.

A large number of people use Max, even if they aren't aware of it. Max documents (called patchers) can be bundled into standalone applications and distributed free or sold commercially. In addition, Max can be used to author audio plugin software for major audio production systems.

With the increased integration of laptop computers into live music performance (in electronic music and elsewhere), Max/MSP and Max/Jitter have received quite a bit of attention as the development environment of choice for those serious about laptop music / laptop video performance.

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