Reaktor or Max/MSP or ???

Ok, so say for instance im a struggling musician and i've just managed to get myself a new macbook pro, and firewire audio interface.. However, other than a host, i've only got the money to buy one piece of software. Which means that i want a piece of software that can basically do everything i need it to do, be it a synth, or a sampler, or effects. I was wondering, then, which software people think would be best...

Reaktor is the obvious choice, but how does it compare with Max/MSP? Is there anything that Reaktor can't do? likewise with Max. Are there any other programs that fit the bill?

Thanks.

V. cheeky, Derek.

Jack, if you have the chops for either one of those, but with no preference, and don't require a user library, then why not consider the very powerful, very free and very portable Pure Data?

More info here.

Haha.. Ok, lets say i've only got the time to learn how to use one of them... Which is more worthwhile?

You're looking at "days to learn, lifetime to master" in either case. We have no idea what your skillsets are or what you want.

If you want pre-made ensembles, go with Reaktor. If you want better MIDI control, go with Max/MSP. Both will take some serious programming chops if you want to dig deep and do your own thing, but I reckon that Max/MSP has more resources once you've reached that stage.

Edit, maybe "months to learn", who knows...

Hi, I'd really recommend Reaktor just for the included ensembles. As a software dev by trade, I had fully intended to get under the hood with Reaktor and mostly ignore the bundled content. Once I tried them out, however, I was blown away by their quality and have barely opened "structure view" (i.e. got under the hood) once. I think it's safe to say that Reaktor will basically "do everything you want" out of the box.

People always say that Max does more things than Reaktor, but those things (multimedia stuff, MIDI control options, etc.) generally don't seem to be very valuable to me. Plus, Reaktor is considerably more user friendly.

If you're interested in checking out all the mega softsynth options, you should also research Kyma and heck, even CSound.

Reaktor.

Carbon2 copy cats.

hey! how do you do the stick-out-tongue smily?

that puker smiley is kind of cool too.

Max is a programming environment first, with ability to process audio streams and do all sorts of various synthesis things. Sort of a programming interface with CSound on top. THis is why it's used by lots o f installation art folks for all sorts of control things, that's what I've been using it for as well.

Reaktor is more designed as a module-building-block thing that you can put full ensembles with pretty interfaces together. It has the ability to do almost arbitrary things, but you've got to dig deeper. The modules you have avaialble to you do all sorts of nifty sound processing stuff without much additional work (unlike Max/MSP which mostly give you primitives ot do all of this)

You can write your own module things for both so they're equivalent in what they can do (anything), but Reaktor is definitely biased towards finished with-interface ensembles. And there's a large collection of them available in the Reaktor magic online library.

Further along the chain is something like the Nord G2 modular, which is all modules, little general programming, but allows you to very easily build anything resembling a VA modular and quite a few other things as well. This is focussed on making it as easy as possible to build VA stuff, because all of the other possible synthesis types that clutter up reaktor aren't there.

So, what do you want to do?

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