Like the transmogrification of Pluggo, this post has been some time in the works. Attendees of Expo '74 had Pluggo's squish confirmed at the event, but the writing was on the wall much earlier. In the wake of Cycling '74's announcement that Pluggo is now Max For Live, I'm inundated with emails from friends and users wondering what will happen to their favorite sonic FSU software: the Daevl.Plugs. Now is the time to let the cat out of the bag.

First, as context, let me drop some history for the Daevl.Plugs. I created the Daevl.Plugs in Max/MSP back in 02006, but they began life long before that year as parts of a toolbox of patches I use to create music solely in Max/MSP. I boarded the Ableton Live maglev train all the way back at version 1, and as my use of it grew I found myself needing to integrate Live and my Max music making machinery more tightly. Pluggo provided this as a VST/AU wrapper for Max patches.

I generally prefer clean, minimal interfaces. The look of the Daevl.Plugs comes entirely from my love of minimal tool design as created within the strict GUI limitations of the Max 4 environment. Somewhere during the first pass at the process I realized through Pluggo I could make the Daevl.Plugs widely available to people with no Max experience, who simply wanted to manipulate audio in interesting, non-repetitive ways. Several more design revisions to generalize the interfaces so users wouldn't have to be me to understand them and the Daevl.Plugs came screaming into the world.

I tried to have no expectations for success or failure at their release. A small concession was made to copy protection in the form of serial number authorization, mainly to provide a widely accepted method of signaling to honest people the commercial nature of the product, though I set the price low at $36.

I was stunned by the response. Since 02006 the Daevl.Plugs have been purchased in huge numbers, by people throughout the audio and video worlds of all levels and interests: bedroom hobbyist to post-production guru, electronic cult act to professional rock star. Add in piracy orders of magnitude higher, and they've made their way throughout the sonic landscape of the latter half of the Twenty Zeros.

The main benefit of Pluggo was instant leveraging of work done in Max/MSP. Rather than create a VST and AU from the ground up, with all the attendant troubles and shenanigans of those two plug-in formats, Pluggo allowed me to take my work in Max and move fast. The troubles and shenanigans were still being dealt with, just not by me. Cycling '74 handled the compatibility nightmare. When compatibility issues began to uncoil with VST3 hosts and an increasing parade of problems with newer ProTools versions began, I began to see an imminent playground design shift. I've kept it in mind since: I built a castle in their sandbox.

Enter Ableton Live in a big way. From the data I've gathered, the Daevl.Plugs user base is comprised of mostly Live users at somewhere above 80%. There are a significant percentage who use Live in conjunction with another environment, such as Logic or Digital Performer, but over 4/5 of those rocking the Daevls use Live at some point in their workflow. Given that Live is the most widely used and generally the most compliant and well behaved of the host environments available, I understand Cycling's decision to focus solely on a host where maximum cooperation is possible. Throw in the unique aspects of Live plus Ableton's willingness to break ground and it seems a perfect match.

Here's the open bag, here's the cat: I'll be converting the entire suite of Daevl.Plugs to Daevl.Plugs MFL. I'll still support the current Pluggo version of the Daevl.Plugs until Max For Live is released later this year, at which point they'll only be available by request and with no promises of support. All purchasers of the Daevl.Plugs will get a free upgrade to Daevl.Plugs MFL.

What's this? Another cat in the bag! In addition, there is a second set of plug-ins, the Daemon.Plugs, which I'll be releasing only as MFL devices. These have been in development for some time, continually bumping up against the edge of what Pluggo was capable of. They're much better served in their functions by Max For Live.

I'm saddened by the death of Pluggo and the closing of old possibilities, but I'm excited by the new possibilities opened by Max For Live. Pluggo, in attempting to live everywhere, ended up a second class citizen in all environments. Max For Live will reach levels of integration Pluggo could barely dream of. It's a quantum leap for Max and Pluggo users, and a vast new world for the exploration of those beaming in from Live.

Change happens. Evolution is built on strengths, not weaknesses.

It's time to do something new.