[peteforde]

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.

[jiriknesl]

I don't think it is true.

There are massive communities around tools far more simple than Ableton was even a decade ago, like SP404, Akai MPCs, Elektron Digitakt.

Many musicians treat any item as an instrument, not as a plaform. There are probably dozens of videos on youtube, where musicians explain, why they use more limited tools instead of Ableton.

To make a successful music tool (that includes DAW), you have to own a powerful workflow, that some group of musicians love or need. Extensibility is fine, but not the only way to succeed.

There are now people making music on pocket trackers that have ± same amount of features as modplug Tracker I used in the end of 90s.

The thing is, when you make a music with a guitar, you don't want your guitar to be 'built around composable scripted modules'. You want to play an instrument, and the UX should enable it, and generally get out of the way.

[peteforde]

I believe that you misunderstood my message, which actually means that I didn't communicate well. Let me do better.

I am not proposing that someone needs to disrupt or make Ableton obsolete.

I am suggesting that the existence of Reaper strongly implies that there's an under-served demographic of people who (correctly) understand that the DAW can be more than a way to translate audio data from buffers to hard drive and VST host.

In the same way that there is currently a lot of innovation in mixers that don't just sum channels, it's not at all unreasonable to imagine that the DAW itself could be an instrument or at least provide composable functions that make other instruments more interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EclavOHIo4o

One of the best things about the golden age of music tools that we're experiencing is that guitars and guitarists have been decentered from the conversation. We don't call them guitar pedals anymore; they are effects pedals now. We're moving past the GROG TURN OVERDRIVE ON OR OFF phase into a much cooler place where pedals are usually MIDI controlled and often have CV inputs as well. Arguably the most lauded pedal of 2025 was the Polyend Mess, which literally allows sequencing of effects. It's awesome!

https://polyend.com/mess/

The cool thing about a truly composable modular DAW is that it doesn't have to get more complex. Being able to strip things down is also totally valid. Perhaps then folks wouldn't be making such a big deal about Tape:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKZhwIA9hiw

[jmole]

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.

[windowliker]

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

This is not strictly true, and Max for Live (M4L) is much more than a pseudo-VST. In the context of Live, the Max runtime is controlled by the DAW, which itself then exposes part of its interface to Max. So there's realtime bi-directional communication going on, more akin to how Propellerhead Software's (now deprecated) ReWire protocol used to work, the host passing control information (transport position, note data, etc.) and audio buffers into the client software and vice-versa. There is some superficial similarity with VST in this sense, but with M4L it's much more deeply integrated into the DAW as a whole. The Live Object Model[1], while not complete, is extensive, and there is very little that is off-limits to a M4L device to manipulate, with the caveat that care must be taken to avoid overflow of the control stream coming back from Max into Live (certain operations must be placed in the low-priority scheduler thread).

This new API gives much of the same control that M4L already did, but without having to have Max involved.

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

Again, not strictly true. Editing a M4L device opens the full Max environment, which has a snippets[2] feature much like any other good IDE. You can easily build a large library of boilerplate code for your own specific purposes with it. There are also many basic examples included out of the box.

[1] https://docs.cycling74.com/apiref/lom/

[2] https://docs.cycling74.com/userguide/snippets/

[jmole]

thanks for the correction - my assumption was that VST APIs had largely the same set of functionality.

[peteforde]

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]

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

[easyThrowaway]

They also offer substantial discounts if you attend their seminars. I was able to buy Live Standard for roughly 150€ a few years ago.

[peteforde]

Please say more

[0x1ceb00da]

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?

[ano-ther]

They describe it here: https://help.ableton.com/hc/en-us/articles/209771405-Buying-...

[coldtea]

>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]

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.

[coldtea]

>I don't own Max for Live, so the large ecosystem of useful tools that I'd enjoy trying out is unavailable to me.

Well, it's not that difficult to purchase as an update to Suite or by itself, on a typical western salary.

The ecosystem has tons of free/open source devices. Is it that bad that Ableton doesn't make Max (which they had to buy the whole company for) free too?

I prefer they have actual product revenue like that, and don't go the VC route, gifting stuff to get market share, and then coasting and rent-seeking like NI and others.

[Slow_Hand]

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.

[peteforde]

That is... not a good analogy at all.

What it is, though, is a misguided attempt to move the goal posts on what I actually said, which is that a huge amount of the value of Ableton is gatekept behind paid addons.

If a DAW was structured like Blender or KiCAD and designed from the ground up to be extensible (or minimal!) then you wouldn't have any impetus to try to shame people who haven't paid a gate toll to execute software people have contributed to the public domain.

[Slow_Hand]

Agreed. It's not a great analogy.

I'm annoyed because you keep referring to the cost of a license as "gate-keeping" or somehow "hiding away" your ability to use the software. Pay the cost for a license or don't. It's a reasonable price for the tools.

> I don't own Max for Live, so the large ecosystem of useful tools that I'd enjoy trying out is unavailable to me. t's not about special powers, just being forced to pay the gatekeeper to the otherwise free/OSS ecosystem.

You seem mistaken about Max/MSP being free or open source, which it has never been. Certainly not in the last eighteen years since I've been using it.

You seem to be saying that it would be a whole lot nicer if Ableton were an open source tool that we didn't have to pay for and could develop ourselves. Maybe that WOULD be an improvement in some ways. It would at least be free. A lot of things might be better. Some things not so much.

But it's not. Live is a paid product. And so is Max/MSP. And I'm very happy to continue paying these developers to keep doing a great job because they make tools that are tremendously helpful to me and they don't abuse that relationship with things like monthly subscriptions or unreasonable restrictions. In many ways Ableton is a model company that is self-governed and largely free of outside influence like private equity. I want them to succeed and I want more companies like them to thrive.

-----

There is a free and open-sourced alternative to Max/MSP: Pure Data. If you think open-sourcing this type of software is such a great idea, then you should develop in Pure Data instead of Max/MSP. There are probably open-sourced DAW projects out there too that you can integrate into as well.

Maybe then you'll realize that Live and Max/MSP's asking price is not so high after all.

[peteforde]

That's actually exactly what I do! And I highly recommend it as a viable alternative to Max/MSP. It's the native way to create patches for the Organelle and many other instruments.

PlugData in particular has been a real joy to play around with.

I'm glad that your tools are working out well for you. I do reject the idea that I should STFU about being annoyed that I can't run Max for Live scripts, though. Native Instruments Kontakt isn't my favourite piece of software (or company) but at least they understood from early on that making the player free drastically increases the value of a paid license for the people who make content on that platform.

It's 2026. I'd hoped that we were well past needing to debate whether OSS is good or not. Apparently we're not!

[honkycat]

You're describing reaper. Super great for scripting

[peteforde]

Cool! I'll check it out.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Well, you're also describing Ardour (with the proviso that we don't allow scripts to much on the GUI side of things). Access to the "object model" from Lua is extremely wide-ranging, and since Ardour itself is open source, you can add whatever other access you need or want rather easily.

[dumbdumb125]

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

[brookst]

IMO it’s going to work the other way around. I’m doing my best composition ever using LLM coding tools that just use Ableton as a rendering engine.