I've often felt as though the way to make a DAW that competes with Ableton today would be to build the entire UI around composable scripted modules.

Far too much of Ableton's secret sauce is hidden away behind Max for Live and top-tier pricing only features. This is a great step in the right direction.

▲

jmole 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There is zero "secret sauce" in max for live.

Ableton and Max are totally separate codebases, and "Max for Live" is just a ~VST interface between them.

I do agree that "scriptable Ableton" would be far better for production and sound design than Max, because they make all the hard parts easy: MIDI, sequencing, mixing, etc.

In Max, you have to build everything from scratch, every time.

▲

peteforde 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I think we're talking past each other.

I don't own Max for Live. If I want to use it, I either need to upgrade to Ableton Suite for $500 or I need to upgrade to Standard and buy Max for Live separately (also $500).

There's a huge ecosystem of tools that are implemented as Max for Live packages which I cannot access because I haven't paid the toll.

I see that even this new Extensions SDK is only available to people who have paid for the full Suite edition.

I'd describe that as a market opportunity.

▲

SoleilAbsolu 5 hours ago | parent [-]

FWIW you should be "able to" get 2ndhand Ableton Suite licenses for significantly less...IIRC I paid ~$350 a few years ago.

▲

peteforde 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Please say more

	▲	0x1ceb00da 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah. How does ableton handle the transfer? Do you mail them the transfer request, they generate a new key and mail it to the new owner?

▲

coldtea 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Far too much of Ableton's secret sauce is hidden away behind Max for Live

The other way around. Ableton exposes some internal modules to Max for Live as Max for Live modules.

What Ableton gets from Max for Live is not internals, but basically a few Ableton-only Max-built plugins, that could as well use VST underneath.

▲

peteforde 6 hours ago | parent [-]

I answered this in a different branch of the thread, but you're kind of missing my point. I don't own Max for Live, so the large ecosystem of useful tools that I'd enjoy trying out is unavailable to me.

It's not about special powers, just being forced to pay the gatekeeper to the otherwise free/OSS ecosystem.

	▲	Slow_Hand 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Max/MSP has always been a paid tool. There was never a situation when you were going to be able to participate without paying. This sounds a little like you're complaining that you cannot watch all of the free Youtube content because you don't want to pay for the device that will display it.

▲

honkycat 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

You're describing reaper. Super great for scripting

▲

dumbdumb125 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

i could see this being something that AI takes a bite out of in the coming years

i've been making my own vst instruments and effects with faust, and codex knocks it out of the park; it's basically a trivial task

the only problem is that i have to use software that's external to DAWs. it's only a matter of time before this is first class in DAWs