Hi all,

I have a system by witch I send messages through [netreceive] to instantiate abstractions in a pd-subpatch and send their audio via a [throw~].

The abstractions seem to get stuck before they produce any audio but if I go in to the patch and even just move the abstractions with a mouse they immediately spring to life and produce sound.

This behavior is especially prominent in an abstraction that uses [oggread~] because I instantiate it, send it a message to load a file, send it a start message and only when I move it with a mouse does it finally trigger playback of the sound file.

this same behavior occurs when I instantiate a patch which uses a noise source to produce sound the only thing the two patches have in common is that they both transmit sound via [throw~].

Thanks in advance.

yeah, it's a well known glitch. The DSP tree doesn't get recompiled properly when objects are created by messages.

there are workarounds, but i forget exactly what you need to do. Maybe try adding an extra dummy object after the abstraction?

anyway, it IS a known issue, and there are ways around it.

I have found that, generally, if you turn DSP off first, dynamically patch in DSP objects, and turn DSP back on, it will usually work right. Even without the bug, it's still good to do it that way because the DSP graph will only get compiled when you turn DSP on. If you leave it on, it will get recompiled with every new object, which takes a lot of time. If it doesn't work, then patching in an extra dummy object usually corrects it.

It is a shitty bug, though. Really wish it would get fixed.

as i keep saying, it's NOT technically a bug.

dynamic patching has never been a supported feature of PD.

I see, thank you both for your suggestions.

I know that there are different paradigms for solving this kind of problem, for example, Reaktor users have always used polyphony as a kind of thread/kernel like construct that can be multiplied by the number of voices but I can't figure out how to implement this powerfully in pd.

I also tried using patches instead of abstractions but setting an initial unique ID (or reliably getting $0 back over the network) for each patch proved to be difficult.

I would like to hear some of the other ways that people have solved this problem. I have to add abstractions while sound is playing so switching DSP on and off probably wont do.

I will try making dummy objects, I suppose I have to create one every time I create an abstraction.
Maelstrom, in your experience, does the dummy have to be instantiated in the same subpatch as the abstraction? Or, can I have a subpatch called compile-graph in which I can just spam create-abstraction messages to?