you can also join the #dataflow channel on the IRC network @ irc.freenode.net, to talk realtime. you have a lot of resources for pd. for instance at puredata.info, but also others around the web.

2010/9/10 Mathieu Bouchard matju@artengine.ca

On Fri, 10 Sep 2010, jm jones wrote:

Max forums seems more active than the pd, I hope this list is more active

...

: )

which pd forum are you talking about ?

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| Mathieu Bouchard ------------------------------ Villeray, Montréal, QC _______________________________________________ Pd-list@iem.at mailing list UNSUBSCRIBE and account-management -> http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list

Jose Luis Santorcuato schreef:

which pd forum are you talking about ? +1

Probably this one: http://puredata.hurleur.com/

m

On 11/09/10 08:05, jm jones wrote:

"I like the free-software nature of PD, but besides that, I want to know the pros and cons of the two environments.

1/ If you need *extremely* low latency, and are prepared to put in the effort required to tweak and maintain your system carefully, then you can get lower latency on a Linux system, Max does not run on Linux.

2/ If you are interested in running your music from small embedded systems, or in installations in galleries and so forth, or using rjdj or similar in mobile devices, then Linux has many advantages, again Max does not run on Linux.

3/ One of the original motivations for pd was the data-structures stuff, and what it could do in algorithmic music. This area is a bit more complicated than some of the other stuff in Pd, but really very interesting in many ways. I understand it is quite different to what is available in Max, but I don't use Max so I'm not sure.

4/ Using Linux allows for a different approach to working with hardware, if you are interested in using hardware to give a tactile interface to your music making then some approaches are more flexible using Linux, again Max does not run on Linux.

Max is "prettier" and with more GUI, but is really more easy to learn?

Perhaps it is a bit easier to 'discover' things by just clicking around the menus etc, but this is really only a small initial advantage, and good advertising. In any case real usage will require a similar learning curve after those initial stages, because most of what needs to be learnt is how to use a Graphical Dataflow Language to make music.

Im not interested in video, only music and sound. What about resources (patches, objets, etc)?"

Pd has lots available, probably Max does too, maybe the fact that Pd is open source means that you, or someone else, can adapt internals a bit to your needs, or make externals that are more integrated with the internals, but that depends on your programming skills and interests, i.e. do you want to do some of your work in C?

Maybe Max has a bigger user base, but maybe the FLOSS nature of Pd makes the sharing more open????? I don't Know much about the Max community, so a comparison is not possible for me.

Simon

On Fri, Sep 10, 2010 at 11:15 PM, Simon Wise simonzwise@gmail.com wrote:

On 11/09/10 08:05, jm jones wrote:

...

"I like the free-software nature of PD, but besides that, I want to know the pros and cons of the two environments.

1/ If you need *extremely* low latency, and are prepared to put in the effort required to tweak and maintain your system carefully, then you can get lower latency on a Linux system, Max does not run on Linux.

I am not sure to what extent this statement is correct. Apparently people are capable to obtain very low latencies with both MacOS and Windblows. Up until recently getting low latency was not easy in Linux. And in any case, tweaking a system for maximum performance and maintaining a system is difficult on any OS (well, it requires some specific knowledge).

However, what you did not say is that once you know what you are doing, tweaking Linux to use minimum system resources is much more doable than MacOS or Win.

4/ Using Linux allows for a different approach to working with hardware, if you are interested in using hardware to give a tactile interface to your music making then some approaches are more flexible using Linux, again Max does not run on Linux.

Well, you can interface all kinds of hardware with Win and Mac. And sometimes even more easily (Just yesterday I spent 2.5 hours to get wacom Bamboo working with linux but it comes with Win and Mac drivers out of the box).

I have just a general comment about this Max -vs- Pd thing. They both have shortcomings, just a different set of them. Pros and cons of both systems are too long to describe and often they amount to personal preferences. But those differences become apparent only after you have spent some time with both and are experienced enough to require some specific features/behaviours etc. I dropped Max in the late 90s in favour of Pd. Now, some of my professional activities require me to program with Max. I sometimes get frustrated that Max does not work the way Pd does. But then, I sometimes get frustrated that pd does not do something else the way Max does (I really wish I could type "" character into pd! Well, yes I can with [str to_symbol] by sending it [92( but that's not exactly user-friendly. And I am beginning to like the presentation mode of Max in spite of it being so un-pd).

With pretty GUI in Max you sacrifice performance (I cannot find the reference now but there was a post on the cycling74 forum and a bunch of people benchmarked Max 4.6 and Max 5 on different machines. Max 4.6's performance was superior according to the results). But how relevant it is to someone who is just learning? That also doesn't prevent hundreds (thousands?) of Max users to build stuff, perform etc.

You learn one, chances are you will likely stick to it in the future because although they use the same paradigm they do not work exactly the same. Once you learn a bag of tricks for one it is difficult to transpose that to the other without actually learning the new paradigm in some depth. If you have the luxury of time and energy, by all means learn both, it will not hurt. Essentially you can accomplish the same work with both but certainly by different means.

./MiS