Hi everyone,

Sorry for an obvious question (I've been reading/searching/trying all week)...but, I'm playing around with building a patch to make up for a 'lack' in ableton live having to do with the follow actions that it uses...to not go into too much detail, ableton allows you to put trigger options on the end of clips that randomly selects another clip in it's 'column' but it would be good to be able to dictate other options, like playing samples from other 'columns' (files) etc.

Anyway, so I thought I'd begin by building a simple multi-wave trigger player, but I'm confused with all of the various sample playback objects...readsf, tabread, tabread4, sampleplayer, etc..

Can anyone explain the best uses of each? I know that most put the sampled sound into ram (via an array right?) but I playback very long samples (8 to 10 at the same time, often 5-8 minutes duration each).

I'm not interested in manipulating the sounds as they play, just trigger, and allow to either loop, or randomly select another sample from a designated file.

So, my questions are...can someone explain the differences and best uses of each of the sample playback objects?

And two, could someone help me or point me in the right direction to add the functionality of having each 'playback strip' be able to either loop or with a toggle switch, randomly select and playback sample from a pre-selected file?

Thanks...I've attached my baby-patch that I've worked on today with...I've er, stolen from most of you here

Thanks,

Bill

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/main.pd

damn, you need this too...

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/sfread.looper.pd

sigh.....last one...sorry!!!!

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/output~.pd

i don't know sampleplayer and readsf~ should not be used, as far as i know (flossmanuals)....
tabplay~ is good to build simple loop players for loopin the full content of an arry or parts of it, but you can's play samples backwards or in different speeds (afaik). tabread~ needs a control for the readposition as input, e.g. a line~ or phasor~ object and is more expensive then tabplay~ but offers more possibilities, like backwards playing and different speeds, also granular algos can be implemented with this. tabread4~ is like tabead, but with a 4 point interpolating algo, for most issues tabread~ should be enough. did you check the sampler examples in the help browser --> audio examples?

[readsf~] should be fine--[sfread~] is the one that you should probably avoid. It tends to not work for a lot of people. In fact, if you're doing 5-8 minute samples, [readsf~] might be the best choice. [readsf~] will read directly from disk, while the others read from an array that is stored in RAM. And since Pd does everything 32-bit, any 16-bit files you have are going to take up double the space in RAM than they do on your disk. As long you're just playing them and looping (which you can do by using the bang from [readsf~], though to maintain accurate timing you might need to use a [metro] and counter or [delay] combo), it should be fine. [readsf~] doesn't allow backwards or variable playback speeds, but it sounds like it shouldn't be an issue for you.

Thanks both of you, and yeah, to be honest, they're mostly drones and field recordings, so accurate timing isn't really an issue, just don't want hiccups etc.

Any idea about how to have it select samples from random? I can't seem to find anything about this?

Thanks,

Bill

Take a look at the patch I posted on this thread:

http://puredata.hurleur.com/viewtopic.php?pid=14350#p14350

It should get you started.

Ah great Mailstorm, I should have come across that when I was searching the forum but missed it..I'll give it a go in a day or so and report back..thanks again,

Bill

@Maelstorm said:

[readsf~] should be fine--[sfread~] is the one that you should probably avoid.

damit, i confused those objects.

Haha...yeah, for the first few months of using Pd I had to look at the help patches every time I was looking for the object like [sfread~], then would say, "Goddammit, it's just [readsf~]!" It just kept happening over and over...