Flufs is the loudness meter and analysis tool for Ableton Live (Max for Live) you’ve always wanted. But more than that, it’s designed to be accessible to blind, low vision, and sighted users alike. And if that’s interesting to you, there are more developer tools on the way.
Iftah has been busy lately – a recurring to-do item I have is to “check Iftah’s Max for Live devices.” It’s overdue time for some studio time messing around with knobs. (His third-party and first-party Ableton work have each featured on the site before – here are some great examples.) But this one is the most detailed so far.
Flufs does a lot, both for real-time and non-realtime analysis:
- Real-time metering (with multiple display options)
- Fast multi-channel audio file analysis for offline use
- Normalize to a loudness target (ah, I’ve always wanted to do that easily inside Ableton Live)
- Export loudness data to CSV (single and batch)
- Beautiful, accessible color themes (ideal for a variety of vision needs and lighting situations)
- Light on the CPU
- Screen reader support (VoiceOver, NVDA, etc.); compatibility with Braille displays and other assistive tech
- Integrates with native accessibility features on macOS and Windows
- Complete keyboard shortcut support
Flufs is free / pay what you will. (A US$30 version is available if you want to support at that level, or enter a different level if you can.)
But more is coming. Next week, Iftah tells us he’ll release a set of externals he made for Max for Live that will help developers add accessibility to your own devices.
The accessibility story
Improving accessibility, removing barriers, and expanding inclusivity are the only reasons you need to work with this kind of design. But producing better accessible design, as I’m fond of saying, is also just producing better design. So you’ll notice that the work done to make operation more accessible for other users means sighted users will find better keyboard shortcut support or themes that work better in different lighting conditions.
Or to put it a little less diplomatically, an ableist, non-inclusive approach to design is making the stuff we build worse. Yeah, you heard me.
The work here is comprehensive, down to how the video is produced. Tim Burgess of Raised Bar did the work on this; Tim is a familiar name to anyone following this, as he’s worked with Sibelius, Kurzweil, Expert Sleepers (in Eurorack), SurfaceReader, Native Instruments, and more. Here’s a great recent article from him:
Tim Burgess: improving hardware accessibility using MIDI
He also joined this recent Audio Developer Conference panel which is a who’s who of this work, including Andre Louis and Ableton’s Adi Dickens, among others:
Workshop: Inclusive Design within Audio Products
Just having the technical support is one thing, but getting user feedback is another. So on this device – and as Iftah rolls out the other device support – I’d be glad to hear from readers about how you’re working with these tools. You can even email me directly at peter @ (the domain of this site).
Previously:
