Max (software)
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| Developer(s) | Cycling '74 |
|---|---|
| Stable release |
7.3.1 / September 15, 2016
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| Written in | C, C++ (on JUCE platform) |
| Operating system | Microsoft Windows, macOS |
| Type | Music and multimedia development |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | cycling74 |
Max is a visual programming language for music and multimedia developed and maintained by San Francisco-based software company Cycling '74. During its history, it has been used by composers, performers, software designers, researchers, and artists to create recordings, performances, and installations.
The Max program is modular. Most routines exist as shared libraries. An application programming interface (API) allows third-party development of new routines (named external objects). Thus, Max has a large user base of programmers unaffiliated with Cycling '74 who enhance the software with commercial and non-commercial extensions to the program. Because of its extensible design and graphical user interface (GUI), which represents the program structure and the user interface as presented to the user simultaneously, Max has been described as the lingua franca for developing interactive music performance software.
Miller Puckette originally wrote Max at Paris' IRCAM in the mid-1980s, as the Patcher editor for the Macintosh to provide composers with an authoring system for interactive computer music. It was first used by Philippe Manoury in 1988 to write a piano and computer piece named Pluton, which synchronized a computer to a piano and controlled a Sogitec 4X for audio processing.
In 1989, IRCAM developed and maintained a concurrent version of Max ported to the IRCAM Signal Processing Workstation (ISPW) for the NeXT, and later Silicon Graphics (SGI) and Linux, named Max Faster Than Sound (Max/FTS), and being analogous to a forerunner to MSP enhanced by a hardware digital signal processor (DSP) board on the computer.
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