SynthMakerinfuzion ·
http://cycling74.com/2011/07/12/announcing-max-6/
Effective immediately, we’re lowering the retail price of Max/MSP/Jitter to $399. We’re also lowering the price of some of our upgrade and academic options. And starting today, if you purchase Max 5, you’ll get an upgrade to Max 6 for free.
In the DSP realm, our new gen~ object is a new domain of low-level signal processing operators that let you build recursive filters, delays, spectral processors, and sound generators, all using 64-bit floating-point internal precision. (...And, to eliminate errors with large numbers, long envelopes, and recursive algorithms, MSP processes all audio with 64-bit precision. ...) Not only do these things sound great, but the performance gains over equivalent Max patches are simply stunning. Where you could actually implement the same algorithm with MSP objects, a gen~ version will be up to 15 times faster. And in many cases, there is simply no way to implement the same kinds of DSP algorithms with MSP objects, you’d have to write C code. Not only is gen~ cross-platform, unlike C code, but in our tests, gen~ operators are nearly as fast as equivalent MSP objects written in C.
In the Jitter domain, quality means the ability to achieve visual complexity more easily. One way you can do that is with the new materials system — an advanced toolset for high quality rendering of 3-D objects. Other ways we hope to enrich your Jitter work is though better support for 3-D model and animation files, better support for cameras and lighting, a new physics engine, and hierarchical animation and rendering tools.
...Another major area has been Javascript, where we’ve integrated the latest Mozilla runtime engine for significant performance gains. We’ve also exposed an efficient new 2D graphics API in Javascript that can be used to port existing HTML5 Canvas code to Max. We now run the audio of every top-level patcher in its own thread for effortless multicore processing. Performance improvements have taken place in many other areas as well.
(Side-note, Cycling'74 did have a round of layoffs about a year ago, not sure if they hired back the gaps, or is just doing more with less like everyone else is.)
Really, the thing I wanted SM for is to patch together modules (synths & simple effects) like I did in Buzz. Now VSTForx & a pleathera of cheap/free VSTs fill that gap: http://www.vstforx.de/