Output details

Maximilian

<08> Maximilian is a library of C++ software that was written, and continues to be directed, by Grierson. Kiefer, Grierson’s Research Assistant, contributes to the library under Grierson’s direction. It is a free, cross platform, open source, MIT-licensed audio synthesis and signal processing library designed to increase the speed and simplicity of programming complex audio software on any device. It is developed and tested through regular (15-20 per year) rapid prototyping workshops with novice coders and users, leading to simple but powerful classes. It includes novel and highly complex DSP techniques that have no other real-time implementation, such as matching pursuit-based filtering. It has greatly increased the usability and availability of real-time DSP for interdisciplinary computing.

This library was designed and implemented to support participatory research projects. No other library has all of the necessary attributes to enable software development with users: the library needs to be cross-platform, powerful, and simple to use. According to Joshua Noble in his book Programming Interactivity: A Designer's Guide to Processing, Arduino, and OpenFrameworks, audio programming "..became much easier when Mick Grierson released Maximilian, a simple but powerful library for creating and manipulating audio data". The library is very popular amongst developers, and Github stats show that the library has 150 stars. It has been integrated by professional programmers into a range of game development platforms including Cinder and Marmalade and has been ported to the Web Audio API.

Maximilian is used by many commercial mobile and plugin developers: it has been used to develop successful apps by third parties on the Apple App Store, and games commissioned by Sony Computer Entertainment. The games company Roll7 licensed a closed source version for their music-driven game "Beatfighter", developed as part of the University of Abertay's Scottish Enterprise “Proof of Concept” Programme