Re: MaxMSP looping -

[Stefan Tiedje <Stefan-Tiedje@addcom.de>]

Jeff Kaiser wrote:
> I've never done it, but I've seen people do real amazing synced up
> stuff with midi and acoustic instruments. There are also other ways
> to sync inside max besides midi. some very cool stuff. So the answer
> seems to be yes, but I've never messed with it....I hope stefan will
> chime in here tonight.

Here I am, luckily keeping track of my lists, seem I have to skip the
others, skip the Jitter part of the Maxlist, hopfully don't skip
patching... ;-)

In general the two views at Max are both important. Its a tool like
Reaktor or Live or Mobius if you have a readymade patch for this kind of
stuff: there is Radial from Cycling, or lloopp from Klaus Filip...

But its also a programming language in its basic sense, that means you
can do anything with it. This will allow you to adjust existing patches
to your needs, as has been pointed out. Yes you do need to learn, if you
want to do it yourself, but simple things are simple. Moving a knob from
left to right on the user interface could anybody do immediatly without
the need of understanding the inerds (though this is helpfull...).

The power is in the fact, that you can precisely concentrate on what you
want to know and control and you can leave the rest to more knowledgable
people, and there are a lot, the community is great and the best
resource. Its likely you do not read so many technical questions
regarding Max on the loopers-delight list because the Max community will 
most likely cover anything you need.

Just by reading this list, I imagine that the Live, Logic, DP, stompbox
lists are only partially helpfull regarding our looping topic....

>> On a similar note, what do you see for performance and latency of
>> the apps you write. Any success with low latency and performance
>> when using the max vst wrappers?

I just have a client in the studio who wants to incorporate as many 
VST's as possible and was wondering why I don't have a big collection of 
them. Well I made a patch to quickly switch VST's on the fly, and it 
works out quite nice...
I just downloaded a bunch of the free available plugs for OS X (I am 
glad I don't have a PC elsewise I might have waisted even more time...)
Funnily I am not that much interested in using all these plugs myself, 
though some of them are great, they are much more an inspiration to do 
it myself in the way I would want to do it. In Max I'd have much more 
control.

Personally I never have problems with latency, but that might be an 
aesthetical option as well. To get the timing right is definitely 
possible in an Max/MSP environment, to get it very tight, might need 
some specific ways to control it, if you do it in the audio domain, it 
will even satisfy techno nerds who are able to hear microsecond jitter. 
(I am not...;-) But this might be expensive in terms of processing 
power. To optimize a patch certainly needs more skills than just puting 
the functionality together.

I'll be happy to get anybody going with Max, but be aware its really 
addicting...

Stefan

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         Stefan Tiedje
         Klanggestalter
     Electronic Composition
               &
         Improvisation

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