When we want to make use of Max inside Ableton Live, we will need to add a Max for Live device. We have three options for doing this:
Using a Max instrument
Using a Max audio effect
Using a Max MIDI effect
This just reflects Live's architecture. There are audio and MIDI tracks. An audio track can just contain audio; therefore, we can only use an audio effect in it. MIDI tracks, on the other hand, can contain all three different devices, or to put it differently, the following:
A Max instrument takes MIDI input and outputs audio
A Max audio effect takes audio input and outputs audio
A Max MIDI effect takes MIDI input and outputs MIDI
This actually forces us to think about what comes in and what goes out of our Max patch before building it, which is a good design strategy anyway. We can of course also change our opinion later on by just copy-and-pasting what we built into a different device type.
If we now choose to drop in a new Max instrument, we are presented...