Cycling '74 (also known as "C74" and stylized as '74) is an American software development company founded in 1997 by David Zicarelli, headquartered in

San Francisco, California San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

and owned by

Ableton Ableton AG is a German music software company that produces and distributes the production and performance program Ableton Live and a collection of related instruments and sample libraries, as well as their own hardware controller Ableton Push. ...

. The company employs the digital signal processing

software tool A programming tool or software development tool is a computer program that software developers use to create, debug, maintain, or otherwise support other programs and applications. The term usually refers to relatively simple programs, that can ...

, Max.

History

Cycling '74 (C74) was founded in 1997 by David Zicarelli to serve as the distributor for his various collections of

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

. The company's website states that ''"the name Cycling '74 comes from a 1974 bicycle catalog from which some of the images that decorated our original site were inspired"''. The

Wayback Machine The Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web founded by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco, California. Created in 1996 and launched to the public in 2001, it allows the user to go "back in time" and see ...

provides a
archive of the website
from December 1998. C74 began producing the MSP extension to

Opcode Systems Opcode Systems, Inc. was founded in 1985 by Dave Oppenheim and based in and around Palo Alto, California, USA. Opcode produced MIDI sequencing software for the classic Mac OS and Microsoft Windows, which would later include digital audio capabili ...

's 1990 program "Max" in the mid 1990s, and in 1998 started distributing the products together. there is no longer a version of Max without audio processing.Sound on Sound Magazine, August 2008: "Cycling 74 Max 5 - Graphical Programming Environment For Audio & MIDI" In June 2017,

announced they had acquired Cycling '74.

Products

Max

C74 is the distributor and developer of the Max/MSP digital signal processing environment. The company has published the program since 1999, and in 2008 released Max 5, a major overhaul. A

Sound on Sound ''Sound on Sound'' is an independently owned monthly music technology magazine published by SOS Publications Group, based in Cambridge, United Kingdom. The magazine includes product tests of electronic musical performance and recording devices, ...

article (August 2008) covered its new software

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

. The new interface was designed using

Juce JUCE is an open-source cross-platform C++ application framework, used for the development of desktop and mobile applications. JUCE is used in particular for its GUI and plug-ins libraries. It is dual licensed under the GPLv3 and a commercial l ...

. Aside from re-designed graphics, the development of the new system concentrated on the original code base, and provided integrated documentation and debugging. With the release of Max 5, MSP and Jitter were included in the package.

MSP

MSP is a

DSP DSP may refer to: Computing * Digital signal processing, the mathematical manipulation of an information signal * Digital signal processor, a microprocessor designed for digital signal processing * Yamaha DSP-1, a proprietary digital signal ...

plug-in for Max, allowing realtime audio synthesis.

Jitter

Jitter is a plug-in for Max released in 2003 that allows

realtime ''RealTime'', also known as ''RealTime Arts'', was a free Australian arts magazine, published by Open City in print from 1994 until 2015 and online from 1996 to December 2017. History The free national arts magazine ''RealTime'', also known as ...

manipulation of

3D graphics 3D computer graphics, or “3D graphics,” sometimes called CGI, 3D-CGI or three-dimensional computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data (often Cartesian) that is stored in the computer for th ...

and

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syst ...

Pluggo

Pluggo was a Max extension that provided capabilities for VST design. Pluggo was required to export Max "patches" for use in

digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software program on a laptop, to an integrat ...

(DAW) host environments, but was discontinued after the release of Max for Live.

Max for Live

Max was integrated into

Ableton Live Ableton Live is a digital audio workstation for macOS and Windows developed by the German company Ableton. In contrast to many other software sequencers, Ableton Live is designed to be an instrument for live performances as well as a tool ...

, developed by

and Cycling ’74, to build unique synths and effects, create algorithmic composition tools, or fuse Live and controller hardware into new music machines. Unlike Pluggo, the device created with Max for Live can be edited directly from Live by pressing the edit button.

Record Label

Founded in 2000, c74 Music was created to release music produced using Cycling '74 technology. The same year, the label released its first record - a live compilation album by the

Freight Elevator Quartet The Freight Elevator Quartet (FEQ) were a music performance group specializing in improvisation, improvised electronic music active in and around New York City. They performed and recorded continuously from 1996 to 2003, and collaborated extensiv ...

.http://www.cycling74.com/c74music C74 Music The artist roster is: *DR.OX *Amoebazoid *Gregory Taylor *Crater *

John Shirley John Shirley (born February 10, 1953) is an American writer, primarily of fantasy, science fiction, dark street fiction, westerns, and songwriting. He has also written one historical novel, a western about Wyatt Earp, ''Wyatt in Wichita'', and ...

*Leslie Stuck *

Sarah Peebles Sarah Peebles is a Toronto-based Canadian - American composer, improviser and installation artist originally from Minnesota (USA). Much of her work explores digitally manipulated found sound, unconventional methods of amplification, and distinct ...

*William Kleinsasser *

Tetsu Inoue Tetsu (written: 哲, 徹, 鉄 or テツ in katakana) is a masculine Japanese given name. Notable people with the name include: *, Japanese photographer *, Japanese voice actor *, Japanese musician *, Japanese politician and Prime Minister of Japan ...

and

Carl Stone Carl Stone (born Carl Joseph Stone, February 10, 1953) is an American composer, primarily working in the field of live electronic music. His works have been performed in the United States, Canada, Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, and the ...

Kim Cascone Kim Cascone (December 21, 1955) is an Italian American composer of electronic music who is known for his releases in the ambient, drone, industrial and electro-acoustic genre on his own record label, Silent Records. Biography In 1989 Casco ...

* Amnon Wolman *

Interface Interface or interfacing may refer to: Academic journals * ''Interface'' (journal), by the Electrochemical Society * '' Interface, Journal of Applied Linguistics'', now merged with ''ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics'' * '' Int ...

*The

References

{{reflist Music technology Companies based in San Francisco