More beginner questions from me.... Ok, so I have been continually improving and expanding a 6-channel 64-step sequencer patch that I have been working on. It can be used to control midi devices and/or play samples from the patch itself. I have a few effects in it as well such as a master delay and some other stuff I've chopped out of other people's patches.

Anyway, last night I was messing with it and plugged my headphones in and noticed that there is quite a bit of ugly noise coming through when I turn the audio on. What I'm wondering is which is better: having multiple [dac~]'s or a master [dac~] that everything is running to. I just modified it to have everything go to a master [dac~] in order to use a crossfader effect.

Is it similar to recording on tape? Like, the more tracks you stack up the more noise comes with it? Should I put in some sort of noise gates? or lowpass filters?

If I could I would post the patch, but I'm at work right now.

i don't think it matters how many dac~ objects you make. it certainly shouldn't affect sound quality. but i think 'good patching style' would be to have only one.

my guess is that your 'ugly noise' might be coming from having too many GUI objects doing too much. pd quickly overloads from too much gui activity.

but yeah. it's not the dac~, so post the patch if u want.

oh, also make sure you don't have a 44.1khz / 48 khz sampling rate conflict. that might cause noise too maybe. just check the sampling rate of your soundcard, and compare that to pd's sampling rate in the menu.

I was messing with it again last night and I noticed that the noise comes in when I plug in my usb to midi cable that is connected to my sampler. I also realized that it's really not that big of a deal because the noise isn't overpowering, but I'm all for making things as efficient and clean as possible. Thanks for the response.

That sounds like some sort of groundloop problem...