Users who upgrade to Max 5.1 may have heard of Max for Live and seen the new objects in the objects menu. However, you don’t need to purchase or run Max for Live in order to take advantage of some neat new objects. That’s not to say Max for Live isn’t worth buying, but more that you don’t need it in order to use the new objects.

Ultimately these objects are meant to combine with Ableton’s Live software, but with a few easy tips, you can work them into an ordinary Max patch. The majority of them offer functionality that has been lacking in Max since the beginning: thin lines, meters with display, combined meters and gainsliders, text toggles, and the like. Here are some tips on how to best make them work for you:

1) Remove or edit default names
A good example is the live.dial (found in third row of your object palette). When you first put it in your patch, it has the name “live.dial” appearing as a title above the dial itself, which isn’t very practical for your patch. If you put more than one dial, it will be assigned a number and the name will also be shortened (see below). Ugh. So use Apple-I to call up the inspector and scroll down to “Short Name” and edit it. You can also leave it blank for no name. This method works for all the new live objects. I haven’t investigated what “Long Name” means, but we’ll leave that for now.

Default name

Change the displayed name

2) Remove Border Color (focus)
OK this might be a personal preference, but every time you use the live objects, you’ll see a black border when you hover over it. This isn’t typical Max behavior, and I don’t like it much. Get rid of that border by using Apple-I to call up the inspector again. Go to Border Color (focus) and then turn down the Alpha channel all the way. This is a handy shortcut for disabling a colored item while keeping all the default colors intact.

Disable borders by turning Alpha channel down

The highlights of the new live.objects

1) Live.arrows These output the words “left, up, down, right” but you can use them to send bangs by routing the words to outlets (see below)

Route arrows to bangs

2) Live.dial The live.dial is one of the most important new objects because it’s so flexible and practical and unlike anything that came before it. If you look at Ableton Live’s logo, you’ll notice that this dial is an important part of the logo and of their identity. So obviously if you fill your patch with Live dials, the connection will be inescapable. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. The new dial comes with several advantages. The first is that there is a built-in display and title. That will save you the trouble of connecting a number box and manually adding a comment to it. The second advantage is that you have access to several different dial types. You can use the dial to change gain, note name, value, percent, q, pan, time, transport and others. In order to access the multiple dials, you click on the number above the main object in the palette (in this case, 10: see below).

Access multiple dials by clicking on number in object palette

3) Live.line It’s hard to believe that we’re making a big deal about a line, but if you’ve been using Max for any length of time, you must know what hell it was to add a simple line to your interface. The one option was to use the colored panel and to compress it to line length, but that was pretty nasty (you can see a comparison below). The other option was to create fake inlets and outlets and to use connections to create lines, but that was pretty weird. You could also create a picture of a line and import it – this was probably the best option but complicated to beat the band. So the new lines are a welcome addition.

4) Live.gain~ This has got to be one of the most useful objects. It’s an integrated level meter and gain slider. I will be using this exclusively from now on. It lets you set the meters to pre or post gain and you can change the decibel range, display, speed and of course color, orientation and other design parameters.

The Live.gain~

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