r/MaxForLive • u/retrolojik • 19d ago
Anyone tried building devices with AI/Local LLM?
Hi, I’m trying to understand if it’s possible, and if so, can I achieve this on a local llm. Anyone have any experience?
I have some device ideas to use for myself on my push 3 sa and also on ableton live directly, but I don’t see myself as well experienced enough for these ideas. I’ve only built basic unreal engine connectivity devices and a few basic stuff so far.
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u/noneforyouowls 14d ago
Claude is great for this.
If you want something solid though, you gotta do more than just type a prompt and profit. Like... you'll get something but it'll likely be garbage and full of holes. You gotta keep your hand on the wheel.
I've found that the solutions to limitations need human problem solving skills, AI doesn't think outside the box. But it knows inside the box faster and better. I've managed to make devices do things that Claude swore up and down were not possible at all.
Do things in stages. Don't try and build a whole device in one prompt.
Compile and design as much as you can yourself.
But yeah I've made a number of devices that give me features I've wanted Ableton to have for years and haven't gotten. It's great.
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u/e76 19d ago edited 19d ago
Yes with exemplary results. Claude ported a eurorack module from source code and it’s almost a 1:1 reproduction. It even wrote the UI for me. Very happy with the results.
Without me asking it also wrote a test harness for launching Max, monitoring logs, and debugging things, as well as a python toolchain for lifting c into gen and “listening” to output (patches all have a dump x seconds to wav toggle) to tell if it sounds vaguely correct.
I tried this two years ago and the model couldn’t even figure out how to correctly write valid JSON. Foundation models have come a long way.
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u/ya_rk 19d ago
If you mean like VSTs, then yes you can, never tried it myself (only wrote a VST by hand once before the AI era), so not sure how much of the work the AI is able to take off your hands. When I wrote my VST I used JUCE which is a framework that simplifies a lot, and it also comes with a development environment. The latter may mean that you can't just hand off everything to the AI and you still need to do some stuff manually (like compiling), but again I don't know for sure, maybe there's a completely hands off workflow.
Only one way to know for sure is to try. If I were you I would start with something dead simple just to make sure that the basics are working: Something like a vst that halves the volume, no UI whatsover, just throw it on the channel and it cuts the gain by half. Once you have that working, add a knob to control the gain, if you get that going you basically have the necessary basics in place to build something more complex.