Multi-channel Audio as Creative Space: Inside Max 8’s MC
Many of you will be familiar with Max for Live, the range of devices and instruments that let you customize and extend Ableton Live’s capabilities. Some of you also know and use Max, the interactive programming environment that Max for Live is built on. Recently, Cycling ´74, the company that develops Max, released the newest version, Max 8. Among the new features in this update is something with the rather unassuming name of MC. What’s behind these two letters however is a completely new way of working with multichannel audio that promises to transform how you imagine sound design, effects processing and mixing. Or, as Cycling ´74 put it, MC might be “the closest thing to a mind-expanding drug Max has ever had.”
A pretty bold statement, given Max’s history of mind-expanding innovation in the realm of audio, and reason enough to check out the presentation below. Filmed at Loop 2018, the video features Cycling ’74’s CEO and founder David Zicarelli and Content Specialist Tom Hall introducing Max 8’s new multi-channel audio programming system. David and Tom demonstrate techniques for generating rich and interesting soundscapes that they discovered during MC’s development. They also touch on the psychoacoustics behind our recognition of multiple sources in an audio stream, and show how to use these insights in both musical and sound design work. So even if you don’t use Max, this presentation might just expand your thinking about what multi-channel audio is and its potential as a creative playground.
Learn more about Max at Cycling´74’s website