I know I can change my settings to something different so it appears THAT way every time I open pure data, but I would like to avoid that. Instead, I would like to have my patch change the audio settings once I open the patch... via a loadbang [to some messages??].

More specifically, for this current project, I'd like my patch to set my macbook pro's output to my external dac (a Presonus Firestudio), and set the input to "Built-in Input"... all when I open the patch.

Is there any way to do this? maybe using messages?

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thank you for your time,
Sebastian

Launching PD with command line options? you can set a large of options in this way...

pd --help in a terminal show all the options

Or you can use [get-audio-dialog], or just
[r pd]
|
[print]

then go to audio settings, set whatever you like and click ok (after apply of course), and you'll get a message in the pd window like: audio dialog 0 0 0 0 2 0 bla bla
Copy it into a message box and fire it with a lodbang..

Awesome! I should really learn about [r pd] and ... seems very powerful