Hi,

I'm new to Pd and generally more comfortable with imperative languages so I'm struggling a bit with arrays of stuctured data.

What I'm trying to achieve is something like this:

1. define a structure that is capable of:

• receiving a path to a .wav file to play
• playing the .wav file
• receiving two arguments (for example pitch and volume) to alter .wav file playback
• automatically patch audio output to dac~

2. trigger a message via libPD to create or destroy such a structure and push/pop it to a list so it can be easily managed.

In simpler terms I'd like to be able to add or remove different .wav players passing for each player a different .wav file path and different volume/pitch.

I had a look on the forum and already found the tips-for-arrays post super helpful, especially Data_structures_arrays and Popping_and_Pushing_arrays.

That helps in terms of creating a struct that would hold the data I need to manage in an array (e.g. filename/volume/pitch), but I don't understand how I could have that also automatically create open/readsf~ objects and auto route the audio output to dac~. Additionally, I imagine would some sort of unique ID to be able to remove a certain element from the array dynamically.

How do you recommend I should resolve this ?

Thank you for your time,
George

@orgicus @orgicus Hi and welcome to the forum and Pd.
[readsf~] reads audio files directly from disk and doesn't allow you to change pitch. In order to do that you need to load the file in an array and address it with a [tabread4~] driven by a [phasor~] or a [vline~] that changes the pitch by reading the buffer faster/slower.

If you know the maximum number of wav players that you'll need it's probably easier to create them all at the beginning, otherwise you can create/delete "players" by dynamic patching, but it's trickier.

That is, if you need multiple wav files played simultaneously, otherwise you could just create two and alternate between them.

Does that make sense? I can send you example patches if that helps.

@orgicus Dynamic patching.... will throw errors to terminal as arrays are renamed...... but works....this.zip
It varies the speed, and so the pitch. Keeping the sample the same length and varying pitch is more complex.
Open [master_patch]
You can create more [reverse] objects and play them at the same time if necessary.
For volume just insert a [*~] in the audio chain before the [dac~] and attach a slider sending values from 0 to 1.
David.

@weightless Thank you very much for the input. It makes sense and I've successfully created multiple wav players manually. While this works how could I achieve this programmatically at runtime: e.g. create a new player passing a message via libPD to the patcher with a path to a new .wav file to instantiate a new player and automatically connect it to the outputs ?

@whale-av Thank you so much: that is awesome! It works nicely with multiple reverse object indeed. How can I create more of these at runtime and get them to patch to dac~ as well ?

@orgicus @weightless I will have a look (at what you want to achieve) this evening (European time) and try to fix the errors to terminal.
It only took a few minutes to modify an old patch, but I will be too busy during the days at the moment to build anything much.
David.

@orgicus Like I said to create multiple players at startup you need to use what is knows as "dynamic patching", which means that you create objects/abstractions by sending specific messages to pd. This is very tricky to understand if you are new to Pd.

This is what i've got so far, basically in the "main.pd" patch you send a messages formatted thus: [create <filename> <pitch>( and then a new player is created for that file, and the file is played in a loop at the specified pitch. If you send the [delete <filename>( message, the player is deleted. I've based it on this patch which explains how to add and remove subpatches dynamically.

The players don't seem to recognise the forced loadbang message, but I don't know why, perhaps somebody else can help you with that.

dynamic_players.zip

More generally, I only use dynamic patching when there's is no other way around a problem, and most of the time there are simpler ways to do stuff. In this case, I'd personally work out the maximum number of files I'll want to play simultaneously and then set them up to play with poly and clone or something like that, with [switch~] to turn on/off dsp for the inactive players.

@orgicus So little time....!
I have not looked at what @weightless has posted, but I am sure it is useful.......
Here is what I posted before. The errors are gone, the [dac~] is in the abstraction, so automatically connected...... the audio will "soft start" so no clicks....... and always start at the beginning of the track.
You do not need to give [reverse] an argument...... it can be created with no track to play.
this.zip
David.