I'm using [mp3play~] to trigger short samples. I've noticed that sending a stop message to kill the playback isn't too snappy. Noticeable delay.

So I was playing around with the pause message, because it's more immediate. But when I send a pause, then a stop, then re-open the mp3 file I'm trying to play and then re-start... it doesn't start at the beginning. It picks up where it left off.

I was thinking I could cut off the volume as an immediate stop, then sending the stop message to actually stop the thing. Or something of that nature.

Does anyone have any experience with [mp3play~] and it's quirks? Is there a message flow that works the best for rapidly playing and stopping mp3 clips? I'm currently sequencing small mp3 clips, so trigger lag isn't too much of an issue. But would it be feasible to have a live sampler that used mp3 files instead of wav?

Any help, thoughts, discussion appreciated.

The unpleasant aspects of mp3s is that they are written on the hd and need to be uncompressed. This is the lag that you are experiencing. An easy fix for this is to convert your sounds into .wavs, then load them into [array]s with [soundfiler] then play them back with [tabread4~] or [tabpplay~], whichever you prefer. [tabread4~] is better for scratching or wavetable synths, while [tabplay~] is better for cuing samples.

the idea here is now they are already uncompressed and available in ram so you don't have to wait for the disk to read. Same thing goes for video clips when you are GEMing it up.

Well, due to hard drive limits on the project that I'm working on I'm trying to avoid having to work with .wav files.

And there doesn't seem to be a lag starting the playback, just ending it. So in terms of triggering sounds, it works fine. It's just the killing and subsequent re-starting that gets a little laggy.

So I think I'm going to implement the mute/stop solution and see how that works. If there are issues, I might set up two instances of the mp3 player and "juggle" between the two. Otherwise I might just have to bite the bullet and go with your solution and figure out HD space some other way.

USB ssd sticks are about $2/gb. 2 gb is about 3.2 hours of cd quality stereo wav. How many samples are we dealing with?

I could be dealing with at least 10 to maybe 14 or even 15 hours.

I guess it's actually not that bad. I might be able to scrounge up 10-ish gigs of space on the machine I'm using. I perhaps I'll make two versions of this system and measure the pros v cons.