Cycling '74 Max: Howard Sandroff Recalls When It Was Opcode

December 14, 2007
Cycling 74 Max History

Howard Sandroff, the Director of Computer Music at the University of Chicago and Professor of Sound Art At Columbia College, remembers back to his days at Earcom in the mid 80's for the development of what we now know as Cycling '74 Max.

Max has been turned over quite a few times from Earcom to Opcode to Gibson to Cycling '74. He also remembers how Opcode transformed it from experimental programming to a commercial software program which should work all the time since people pay money for it. Sadly, software developers forget that sometimes these days.

Visit Cycling 74's official website for more information

How To Make A Subgroup Mix Bus In Propellerhead Record (Video)
Sennheiser E602 And A Plethora Of Drum Mics With Erik Wofford Of Candi And The Strangers
Fairchild 670 Compressor A Vintage Compressor Favored By Ed Peifer
Composer, Producer, Bassist Steve Horowitz On How Much Home Studio You Really Need, And More (Video)
Expert Sleepers ES-5: Your Modular System, Expanded
Jomox Moonwind: New Analog Stereo Filter
Waves Audio PuigChild Hardware Compressor: Remake Of The Fairchild 670
TC-Helicon VoiceLive Play: Multi-Effects Vocal Processor Announced
Steinberg CI2+ Production Kit: CI2+, Cubase AI 6, Plus WaveLab LE 7
CyberStep KDJ-ONE: DAW Touchscreen Smartbook, At Your Fingertips
Hartke HA3000 Gets The Right Tone For Vonnegutt Bassist, Patrick Postlewait
M-Audio Avid Recording Studio: Pro Tools SE Plus Fast Track Audio Interface
Cycling ’74 Max 6 And Cycling ’74 Gen Add-On Patching Domain Released
Cycling '74 Holiday Sale, Cycling '74 Vizzie Announced
Endangered Guitar: Call PETA, This Guy's Abusing A Protected Species!
Cycling 74 Max for Live Makes Us All Go, Oh Wow!
printer friendly version

Earcom and More

By: Anonymous Coward (not verified)

A couple of comments: Max was first developed at IRCAM (pronounced "Earcom"), the government-subsidized music research facility founded by Pierre Boulez. MIller Puckette was the principal developer, along with other, at IRCAM.

Between IRCAM and Opcode, Intelligent Music, where David Zicarelli worked and developed M, Jam Factory, and other interactive composition programs, had the rights to Max and actually began Max's development path from experimental research software to commercial product. Unfortunately, Intelligent Music went out of business before Max could be fully developed, and the rights were assumed by Zicarelli, who then went to Opcode to continue development. Zicarelli had earlier created one of the first Macintosh MIDI applications, a DX-7 editor-librarian, which was licensed by Opcode.

Max is named for Max Mathews.

Fri, 2008-02-29 12:30

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.
  • No HTML tags allowed
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.

More information about formatting options

CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Please type in the lowercase letters that are shown in the image above.

HOWARD SANDROFF: Max has got an interesting history, and it’s all tied up with its development at IRCAM.

GRETCHEN HASSE: Mmm hmm.

HOWARD SANDROFF: And the first time I saw it, I was at IRCAM. I don’t remember exactly when this was. This would have been in the ‘80s, middle ‘80s, and it was running on a NeXTcube using signal processing, hardware and software -- signal processing hardware called the ISPW, and it did signal processing as well as MIDI. I was much interested in signal processing but it was very expensive, and then NeXTcubes were tricky.

Well, IRCAM then released a version of it that just did MIDI and ran on a Macintosh. At that time, a Macintosh was incapable of doing signal processing; it just wasn’t fast enough. And even a NeXTcube couldn’t do it by itself. It used these cards that plugged into its expansion chassis to do the signal processing. Signal processing requires a lot of computational power. The Macs didn’t have it at that time neither did the NeXTcube.

Shortly thereafter, IRCAM turned it over to a company called OpCode who released the Macintosh version of it commercially, and again it controlled MIDI. It is essentially a programming language. It’s a visual programming language in which you gather a whole series of little objects which in and of themselves are computer programs that you can connect together visually using these little things they call patch cords. And so, if you’re looking at the screen, you see all these little boxes connected by the patch cords.

And as time went on, OpCode released more and more workable versions because of course the difference between research software that would be at a place like IRCAM or MIT is that it doesn’t work all the time because it’s not intended to work all the time. It’s an experimental platform. And software that has been commercially released is that commercially released software that the expectation is that if you pay money for it, it works. So, OpCode cleaned it up and they made it commercially viable and they continued to support it until they were bought up by Gibson Guitar Company and went out of business. And the rights were reverted back to IRCAM and they turned it over to one of the original authors, David Zicarelli, who came up with a company called Cycling ’74, and he’s been maintaining and supporting it in all of its progeny since those days.

As the Macintoshes became more sophisticated with faster and faster processors, then they too could do signal processing.

[HOWARD SANDROFF’S “TEPHILLAH” PLAYING]

I need awesome gear... I'd like a free gear catalog!
My opinion is awesome. I'd like to take a gear survey