Good morning all,
I am working on employing additive synthesis in my new work. I am building the infrastructure of the piece and running into a problem.

I right now have probably over 200 osc~ objects (And I would like more), freeverb~ objects, distortion objects, and other objects I have created in developing this piece.

I am using a Pd 0.54.1 on a macOS, sample rate 48000, Delay (msec) 30, block size 64,

The mac has a 2.6 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i7, Memory 16GB 2400 MH DDR4, macOS 13.6.6.

I am getting clicking noises in the output. I am assuming I am overloading the system.

Any thoughts and help would be appreciated.

@raynovich Maybe not overloaded but difficult to know. Try relaxing the soundcard Delay (mSecs) ..... maybe 80msecs just to see if that makes any difference.
I have much the same computer and have had nearly 2000 [osc~] running although I use Bootcamp for windows.
Make sure the final output stays below +-1.
Try not to have any visual feedback on screen..... Gui's (even bangs) or arrays updating.
What load is the Mac reporting for the processor, and what size is Pd showing in memory?
Try disabling the Wi-Fi.
I don't know whether OSX gives priority to the audio thread, but interrupts from a Wi-Fi card, USB drives etc. can cause dropouts, and Intel macs connect even to the trackpad, keyboard etc, through USB.
David.

Thanks for all the ideas.
I do keep wi-fi on, so I will turn that off and as many items as I can, like bluetooth?

The CPU load is getting up to 60%.

As for the Activity monitor it is getting Pd is taking up more than 80% at times. I am also trying to implement a process where I turn on and off using switch~ the osc~'s. I am worried that that may not be a good idea.

I will continue to work on it.

As I am playing live with the additive synthesis portions of the piece am not sure I can go to 80ms delay, but I can see if that helps.

I have an old 2010 13" macbook pro thats about similar, it kind of chokes compared to a desktop.. but you definitely should be able to run 200 oscs~

its probably the FX - maybe there's a cheaper reverb out there (they use delay lines) or maybe use delay lines more sparingly

it might also be the UI if you have a PD screen full of number boxes, sliders, other things that are giving feedback all the time, reducing the amount of responsive UI can help

if you are using two monitors try just one, definitely close browsers and other apps, turn off the network

but yeah upping the delay msec setting is usually where you go to try and fix it, you're right around the threshold I run into when I jam in netpd with that laptop. theres a patch you can open with your patch running - its called test audio and midi and listen to the sine wave - if it crackles or sounds weird while your patch is on try setting the delay msec up until its good.

leave the block at 64 - a lot of stuff expects it to be 64, so that can only cause weirdness.

It isn't as much latency as you think it is because its 64+that setting, as little as 2. this is different than something like JUCE which just says its a power of two buffer. it would be 104 at 40. vs 128 is the lowest usually offered

side note: testing the round trip settings in the extras I was able to set it down to 3 on an intel mac. 2 with asio and a roland dac on a pc. quickly had to turn it up when I started working on complicated patches tho