Audio devices become scriptable, reproducible, and version-controllable instead of being trapped in a visual editor.
Made with Python, Max for Live, Audio DSP and PyPI.
- 100+ DSP blocks
- Tests assert audio behavior
- Reverse-engineering pipeline
2026. Active.
m4l-builder
Max for Live devices written in Python instead of clicked together in a GUI. Pure standard library, ships to PyPI.
Write scripts, emit .amxd files straight to your Ableton User Library. No Max GUI required.
The problem
Building Max for Live devices means clicking around a GUI, which makes the work hard to version, review, or reproduce.
What I built
Pure-stdlib Python library that emits valid .amxd files: 100+ DSP blocks, a theme system, jsui visual engines, a recipe layer for common combos, and a reverse-engineering pipeline that reads existing devices back into Python.
Where it is now
Ships on PyPI with a test suite that asserts the produced .amxd files actually load in Ableton, and a corpus-mining toolchain that turns external devices into structured fixture data.