Is it possible to integrate Pd with Ableton Live in a way similar to Max4Live, as a Live/Pd user (newbie really) this will be a very important issue in my work. As far as i know, Max4live includes many instruments that can be opened up in a Max canvas (similar to Pd) environment for editing, as well as allowing additional access to the inner workings of Live, http://www.ableton.com/maxforlive. I just wanted to verify if there is (or going to be) any movement to allow for such integration. i am already aware of Jack for sending audio directly from pd to live and vice versa(not sure about midi capabilities), but i'm refering to truly open possibilities that this type of integration will allow.

Thanks,
Jeff

ASFAIK, the best way to do what you want to do is with Jack, so keep it up. As far as open-ness goes, I find it a tad ironic that your model for open-ness would be two $350+ apps.

won't happen, i can't see ableton going through the trouble of integrating an opensource app that won't make them any additional money (not to mention the potential issues embedding an opensource app in a proprietary one).

there was PDvst a few years ago but it hasn't been updated in forever, and i can't even get it working with my current version of live. but even that just let you run an instance of pd like an effect insert.

i'm not looking forward to converting a handful of my patches to max but i'm gonna have to for max4live.

what i'm curious about is why nobody's made an ableton-esque app for linux yet. all the linux audio developers should team up and make an opensource multiplatform abletonkiller and give us our Pd access in it

I've been told that Live started out as a Max patch. So maybe you could just make it in Pd .

@nestor said:

ASFAIK, the best way to do what you want to do is with Jack, so keep it up.

True - once you have it setup right. Its totally cool. But when you bounce down stuf from Pd tho, i find it better to record Pd side. I've notice that when recording in Live, if theres a heavy processor part the latency increases - Pd's logical time and Live's logical time are NOT synced. Therefore parts of the recording get delayed by a few ms, bit annoying. So I have a handy multi track recorder for that (i can upload if any one finds it useful) and I just drag the resulting wavs into Live.

I do wish there was Jack transport/midi support in Live tho.

At the end of the day, its all about convenience. I don't see what you can do with max4live that you can't with Pd, Jack and Live. Its just not as integrated. Before someone says sample accuracy, yeah yeah yeah....but did we even worry about it when we all had hardware samplers and synths? Did that stop some of the best electronic tunes being produced?

When you really think about it (and start to really pick it apart) what are you going to be able to do extra specially in this new arrangement. Like slvmchn says you'll have to remake every patch hah hah ha!

(i'm just fed up with shelling out for proprietry software - can you tell?!)

S

From what I can tell, the big difference is that Max4Live allows Max to communicate directly with Live's API. I'm a bit fuzzy on what that really means, but I think it allows you to manipulate Live in ways that MIDI messages won't allow, or that other software just simply won't let you do. Luke Dubois of Cycling74 jokingly said Ableton may actually regret letting them do that.

I find Jack under Linux an almost incredible thing - it allows to patch MIDI and audio and consequently you can have complete setups of audio and control signal flows that go to and from anywhere. As an OS X user I regret that Jack only routes audio, I found IAC to be funny at times - for instance, with Logic 9 it would tend to loop MIDI events back to Logic and there is no real way that one can control how MIDI flows between apps.
I mean to say, running Linux with Jack opens a lot of possibilities. Perhaps with Ardour 3 live music with Pd under Linux will get wings.

Jurgen

@Maelstorm said:

From what I can tell, the big difference is that Max4Live allows Max to communicate directly with Live's API. I'm a bit fuzzy on what that really means, but I think it allows you to manipulate Live in ways that MIDI messages won't allow, or that other software just simply won't let you do. Luke Dubois of Cycling74 jokingly said Ableton may actually regret letting them do that.

Basically you'll have direct access to things like session clips and all the power that they possess (self contained clip automation etc). So i guess being able to sequence them is handy. Sometime you have to resort to hacky workarounds when launching clips in live situations.......

So i digress......Bit of a philosophical question here. Do you think there will be over-complex/engineered music as a result of things like this? Theres already enough derivative music out there. I mean, the range and depth of tools available available to us now, compared to when i started this whole thing 17 odd years ago, is just insane. Sometimes the blessing is in the limitations - Atari ste and an Akai s950. Imagine using that again, knowing what you know. It could be challenging, but very fun!

Of course there will be, but there's also plenty of it already. But really, it's only over-complex if the complexity doesn't actually add to its musicality. Wagner's music is incredibly complex, but musically it works incredibly well. And he didn't have Pd! While I am one of those "it's all music" types, I do think there are plenty who are more interested in the process than the music itself. But as long as people remember that, in the end, it's meant to be musical, it'll all be good.

I'd like to think, actually, that this would help to bridge the gap between to extremes (or relative extremes). You have Max users on one side, who like they're crazy randomness, and Live users on the other, who tend to be loop-a-holics. I know quite a few Live users who think they are the shit because they know how to do all this cool stuff with it. But you stick them in front of an empty Max or Pd canvas, and their boners die off pretty quick. Same can be said (though probably to a lesser extent) with Max users. Hopefully it will encourage both camps to venture out of their respective boxes.

there has been pdvst doing somewhat exactly what now comes as a oh so great innovation for ages of using pd patches as vst plugins in theoretically any vst host.

as far as i know, the external for that was win only (wäääh) and last time i checked, it didn't work on live8 anymore (wäääääääääääh!) but on live7.

http://crca.ucsd.edu/~jsarlo/pdvst/

i am working on a bridge to use both pd simply running side by side communicating via midi and jack but i have difficulty with latencies on both.

I did use time by time pdvst within energyXT 1, was pretty nice, but the way pdvst work is not ideal.

It would be as good than max4live if it let user store the patch state,structure,and data right inside your main host project.

What would mimic the max4live way (if i have well understood how it works), would be having only 1 pdvst vst plugin that would be able to store the patch as a preset, instead of creating an instance of pdvst for each patch you make, modify.

Not sure if the specification of vst let you store a big amount of data...

If only i had better coding abilities, i would give it a try, right now the pdvst project looks pretty dead (not new work on it since 2004).

THis is how Plogue Bidule works, and Reaktor. For sure it works well, although reaktor does crash a lot in my experience. With Max4Live is guess the patch IS ableton.

But for sure, if Pd could be implemented like this some how well, i think it could be good . Hans mentioned that he had been working the Coreaudio AU plugin interface to get audio working on the iphone. I wonder if this has revealed anything interesting for running Pd within a plugin in a host

Mammoth task it would be tho!

When I first got into Pd, it was because I couldn't fugure out how to do a few really simple things with live... and I didn't like the emulator-y feel of it, limiting control and such. I soon realized that anything you could do with live, you could do in Pd (+more) and have complete control.