In conjunction with Ableton’s introduction of Live 10, Cycling ’74 has announced that they’ll be releasing Max 8 in the second quarter of 2018, with performance and workflow improvements.
The Ableton Live 10 beta is using a preliminary version of Max 8.
Cycling ’74 shared this info so that users would know the status of the upcoming release and how it relates to Live:
In order to make it easier for the Max for Live user, Ableton is now including a version of Max inside the Live application. (Previously it was a separate download.) The version of Max 8 bundled inside Live 10 will not affect your use of either Max 7 or Max for Live in older versions of Live.
During the Live 10 beta period, we chose to provide Ableton with a preliminary version of Max 8 whose user-facing features are identical to Max 7 but which contains many changes under the hood. By doing this, we hope to get a lot of testing on these changes as part of our Max 8 development project.
As of November 2, 2017 anyone who purchases a full version or an upgrade to Max 7 will receive an upgrade to Max 8 for free. Anyone who is an active Max subscriber when Max 8 is released will have access to the new version.
Not exactly a surprising announcement given the recent acquisition, Live 10 announcement, and tight integration between the two. Lots of exciting ways Ableton could use this though. I’m not expecting audio rate modulation for VSTs out of it but it should be very cool in it’s own way.
The upgrade pricing seems to be pushing people towards Suite. Seems like a smart move on Ableton’s part to avoid a bunch of disappointed users. All of the fun and exciting stuff will be happening with Max, and Live 10 doesn’t seem to offer the standard users much more anyway. They’ll probably keep standard around for new users and try to sell them up to the Suite once they see what they’re missing.
Interesting to look at the related articles. 8 years ago (almost exactly) Max was a $300 add-on for Live. Followed by 5 reasons to avoid Max for Live (lol!). Guess it still kind of is (price difference between standard and Suite) but you get a lot more for it. We’ve come pretty far in what feels like a short amount of time.
Hopefully 8 includes a way to visually customize the patching environment. The color scheme and dark boxes of 7 are a real pain to look at, and the main reason I’m still on 6.
Excited to see what this update brings and how Autechre uses it!