Frequently asked questions

Live 12.2 or newer, with Max for Live. That is a hard requirement: the device is written for the V8 JavaScript engine that arrived with Max 9, and Live has only shipped Max 9 since 12.2 (June 2025). On Live 11, 12.0 or 12.1 it will not load. If you own Max 9 as a standalone application you can point Live at it and run on an earlier version, but that is an advanced setup.

You need Max for Live, which is included in Suite and available as a paid option with Standard. Live Intro and Lite cannot host Max for Live devices.

Both, with identical behaviour. One macOS detail is worth knowing: holding a key may not repeat until you disable the accent menu — the documentation gives the one-line command.

No, and it is not meant to. The piano roll is excellent for drawing, moving and stretching. A tracker is excellent for typing fast and reading at a glance. MaxTracker writes in a grid and then drops the result into a Live clip, where the piano roll takes over.

Yes — that is what it does best. Put a MaxTracker Receiver in front of each instrument, pick the tracker as its source and switch on the channels it should play. Live devices and VST plugins alike, each on its own track with its own effects. See Piloting the whole Set.

Because an instrument placed directly behind the tracker receives all eight channels in a single MIDI stream, and most instruments ignore the MIDI channel. That is Live, not the device. The Receiver is what really separates channels — or export channel by channel with Channel to clip.

It travels with your Live Set like any other device parameter, and duplicating the track duplicates the pattern. There is nothing to save by hand and no file kept beside the device. To carry a groove from one piece to another, or to hand it to someone, save a device preset in Live: it is a complete snapshot — the notes, the effects, the channel names, the muted channels and every setting.

A MaxTracker holds one pattern, and one only: there is no pattern list, no song mode, no bank to step through while it plays. That is not an omission — the arranger is Live. Three ways to build a track: export, then arrange — write a pattern, EXPORT it to a clip, write the next one, and you end up arranging ordinary MIDI clips that no longer need the tracker to play — in the Arrangement, or in Session view, where Live’s follow actions chain the clips on their own, in order, in a loop or at random; several trackers, since nothing limits how many a Set can hold — one track per section, or per instrument; or device presets, each a complete snapshot of a pattern, filed in Live’s browser and recalled on any instance.

Yes, and it is the tracker's own: Shift+Z undoes, Shift+Y redoes, ten steps deep. It covers everything — notes, effects, settings, channel names, mutes, down to the number of rows — a burst of typing counts as one step, and it is safe during playback. Do not use Live's Ctrl+Z on the pattern: it does not reach Live while the grid holds the keyboard, and during playback it leaves the pattern and the engine out of step. Beyond ten steps, save a device preset.

Real-time recording hands the notes to Live's MIDI stream, which timestamps each note-on and each note-off at the next audio buffer boundary and rounds them independently — durations drift by a buffer from one note to the next. EXPORT writes into the clip through the Live API, at the tick. Nothing to quantise.

No, and this one is documented rather than hidden. A Max for Live device can only emit at Live's audio buffer boundaries — 11.6 ms at 512 samples — so an Rxxy with spacing 1 to 3 lands on a grid rather than where it aimed. Drop the buffer to 128 samples (256 changes nothing) or export to a clip, which is exact.

No, deliberately. Anything living in an envelope — CC, pitchbend, aftertouch, MPE — plays but cannot be written into a clip, because the Live API only writes notes. Rather than add a command whose result vanishes at export, MaxTracker offers Gxxy, a discrete glissando made of ordinary notes, which exports perfectly.

64 rows and 8 channels; 1/96 is the finest row speed and 1/32 the finest that is really usable; the LEN column holds two digits, so 99 ticks — four beats at 1/16; a muted channel is not exported. The free Lite edition is held to 4 channels and 16 rows.

Yes — MaxTracker Lite, free, with no time limit and no account to create. It is the same program with four channels and sixteen rows, and without the MaxTracker Receiver, so its four channels all play the same instrument. Everything else is identical, timing included, and it saves with your Set like any device. When you move up, your patterns follow by copy and paste — the clipboard is shared between the two editions. It follows the fixes and the minor improvements; new features are for the full edition, and so is the manual in PDF and EPUB — for Lite, the documentation on this site stands in for it. Since 1.1, one Lite plays per Set: drop in several and they all open, keep their patterns and can be edited, but only one sounds — remove the one that is playing and another takes over. See the pricing page for the full comparison.

The licence is granted to you, not to a machine — install it on every computer you personally work on. There is no activation and no serial number.

Gumroad, as merchant of record. It issues the invoice, collects and remits the applicable VAT, and hosts the download. Card details never touch this site.

Not within the 1.x line — they are free. A new version replaces the files in your Gumroad library, reachable from the link you already have, and we email everyone who bought it. A future version 2, which is where mapped Live parameters and the Mxxx command are headed, would be a separate product.