Here's what I have set up:

A drum machine sequencer running with all the audio running to dac~'s as well as all the audio running to a left and right writesf~ thing that I can use to grab the audio, sort of like using a looper pedal. I hit a key to prepare it to record, another key to start recording, and then a third key to stop recording and load that recorded audio clip into a looper thingy.

My problem is when I hit the third key in the series all the audio being output sort of cuts out for half a second (maybe even less than that, but it is enough to be noticeable) Eventually I would like to be able to grab a loop of the drum sequencer and start it looping seamlessly.

I know this probably isn't the most technically correct explanation, but it's the best I can do at the moment. I just wanted to know if there was something I am not aware of when using writesf~ and arrays and soundfiler. I know the clip needs to be loaded into the array which I assume takes some time, even if it is only a fraction of a second. Also, the length of the recorded loop is not set, so perhaps that causes problems too. I guess it's ok to be a little sloppy, cuz otherwise it'd just sound too perfect.

I imagine this has to do with [writesf~] having to flush everything out of RAM to the hard disk and then reading it back into an array, all while trying to start playback at the same time. Without seeing your patch, it's hard to tell, but I'm guessing either it's trying to play a few samples before they're loaded, or it's trying to do too much at once.

I remember you posting a while back about wanting to avoid [tabwrite~]ing to arrays so you could have arbitrary lengths, but doing that is probably the way to go here to avoid this problem. This avoids having to deal with the hard disk, which is much slower than RAM anyway, and you can access your recorded sounds immediately.

If you have a drum loop going, then you could easily set the array size to correspond with a number of beats by sending the [resize $1( message to the array. You could type in the number of beats when you arm the track, causing the array to be resized before you record into it. This might add one more step in your recording process, but since the size will be set, you could automate it to start playing right when it finishes recording, taking away one of your steps. And everything should sync up real nicely, too.