Download and Installation

Installing the nn.terrain~ externals to MaxMSP/Max4Live.

Last modified 2025-08-18

Jasper Shuoyang Zheng

Table of content

Download
Installation
With nn~ v1.5.6
With nn~ v1.6.0

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This repository is a set of MaxMSP/Max4Live externals to build, visualise, and program latent terrain:

Object	Description
`nn.terrain~`	Load, build, train, and save a terrain. Perform the coordinates-to-latents mapping.
`nn.terrain.encode`	Using a pre-trained autoencoder to encode audio buffers into latent trajectories, as training data for `nn.terrain~`.
`nn.terrain.record`	Manually recording latent trajectories, as training data for `nn.terrain~`.
`nn.terrain.gui`	Edit spatial trajectories, as training data for `nn.terrain~`. Visualise the terrain. Create and program trajectory playbacks.

All externals above are designed to work together with nn~, which is a MaxMSP/Max4Live external developed by acids-ircam to load and use deep learning realtime audio processing models:

Object	Description
`nn~`	Hosting the decoder of an AI audio autoencoder, to decode latents to audio in realtime.

Download

Depending on which version of nn~ you're using:

If you're using nn~ v1.5.6 (torch v2.0.0/2.0.1) (the 2023 version):
Please download nn.terrain~ v1.5.6.
If you're using nn~ v1.6.0 (torch v2.5.0/2.5.1) (the 2025 version):
Please download nn.terrain~ v1.6.0.

While the 1.6.0 nn~ offers amazing add-on functionalities, I personally use the 1.5.6 version more often because it does exactly what I need already, and it's more stable with nn.terrain~.

If you're unsure which version you're using, this can be checked from your Max console when an nn~ instance is first opened in Max:

max console

If you have a customised nn~ like me, you might need to consider compiling your own nn.terrain~ from source, please see instructions Compile from Source.

Installation

nn.terrain~ needs to be installed in different ways, depending on which version of nn~ you're using:

With nn~ v1.5.6

macOS
- Uncompress the .tar.gz file into the Package folder of your Max documents, which is usually in ~/Documents/Max 9/Packages.
- Reopen Max and you can find all nn.terrain objects.
- You might get a quarantine warning, proceed will disable this warning.
Windows
- Uncompress the .tar.gz file into the Package folder of your Max documents, which is usually in ~/Documents/Max 9/Packages/
- Copy all .dll files in the package next to the Max.exe executable (if you have already done this for nn~, you don't need to do this again).

With nn~ v1.6.0

macOS
- Uncompress the .tar.gz file
- In ~/Documents/Max 9/Packages, copy and merge the unzipped folders to the nn_tilde folder, make sure that all externals (e.g., nn.terrain~.mxo) are placed next to nn~.mxo in the same folder.
- Reopen Max and you can find all nn.terrain objects.
- You might get a quarantine warning, proceed will disable this warning.
Windows
- To be updated soon.

If the externals have trouble opening in Max, or doesn't work correctly with nn~ you might considering compiling the externals yourself, see Compile from Source.