Hello.

I got a bit tired of going to Audio Settings and MIDI Settings and selecting devices there every time I restart PD. I figured, I should be able to automatically examine the list of connected devices using [mediasettings/audiosettings] and [mediasettings/midisettings].

I'm still planning to do that but I found one inconvenience that limits how convenient my abstraction can be. If I connect a MIDI controller after PD has already been started, it doesn't show up in the Midi Settings dialog. [mediasettings/midisettings] doesn't return it too. So I'll have to restart PD every time. It's still better than having to restart PD and fiddle with the dialogs but I was wondering if it's a known issue with Pure Data. I'm using Mac OS 10.9.5 if that matters.

Thanks.

@lzr Hello,
I am using windows so the experience is maybe in some respects different.
However, what you have observed holds true.
But for windows none of it is specific only to Pd.
I had tried using asio4all which performs much like "aggregate device" in osx. However in windows a new instance of asio4all is run for each program when it is opened and so new devices do not show up.

Maybe that is not so for "aggregate device"? and you could select that...... as because the new devices will not show in Pd while it is running they will not change the position of "aggregate device" in the Pd device list? But will they appear always in the same order in the "aggregate device"? I doubt it.

Then I hoped to use a batch file to always select asio4all as my Pd asio driver, but if any device is plugged in before Pd runs that will change the position of the driver in the Pd list.
So in the end I have a batch file for every setup, and I am rigorous about the order in which I plug my devices. A set of batch files and a set of text files to remind me how to proceed....
David.

Hi, @whale-av.

I'm not really using aggregate devices at the moment. I'm just plugging and unplugging individual audio and MIDI devices while PD is open: they never appear in PD's dialogs, I always have to restart it. Tried this with a different app: devices appear in a couple of seconds after I plug them in. So this is definitely possible in Mac OS.

As for your problem with the Asio4all drivers, @whale-av, do you always have all of your devices plugged in to USB before starting PD? If that's the case, the patch I'm working on may be of help, since it'll automatically select known devices in PD, by name. I'm not familiar with how Asio4all works, but if your devices have unique distinguishable names, you should be able to automatically select them from a PD patch by using the mediasettings library and sending "midi-dialog" messages to [s pd]

@lzr Yes, I had thought of using those tools to automate the setup, and it would be superb if audio at least could be made reliable. But there are other problems with audio especially. If you automatically select a device you cannot know whether it will run at the samplerate you have set, and especially you cannot know whether it can run with the currently set buffer. I suppose that if you know what device could be plugged (for your own set-up) then you can allow for that, but a universal patch will be impossible without parsing an on-line database. Even then, with different drivers for different os's and numerous possibilities for hard and software buffering.......?
I played around for a long time with the possibility. I also could not find a parameter for setting the block size (it can be set from an audio-dialog message, but not by parameters). Here is what I found and built to test what would work for windows.....
audio.zip

Semi-GOOD news for you (maybe)...... in windows when standard (not asio) drivers are selected the [listdevices( message (and the audiosettings window) does update as audio devices are plugged/un-plugged (see get_audio_parameters.pd in the zip)..
David.