@Il-pleut Can you expand on this? Saturated as in over zero?

@whale-av I had four buttons, so I changed up what they are controlling and have dedicated one for start and one for stop, which seems to have helped a lot. Adding the [change] object is also a great tip. Thank you!

This whole thread has been so useful, thanks all. I will be returning to it for future project also, when I have more time and I'm starting a bit earlier in the process.

@whale-av here's the inside of the debounce abstraction: I set the one on my 'record button a bit longer (400ms, on the left) to see if that would help... I seem to be getting 0 messages from the button before it is released, which cuts off recording too early, sometimes before any audio is even captured! Maybe I need to replace the button itself?

@60hz Thank you! By subpatches, do you mean abstractions? This will help? I thought the only benefit was to make things less cluttered.

@fishcrystals Thanks for the suggestions! I don't really have time for reinstalling patchbox but it looks awesome: I'm going to use it going forward. I've had a lot of audio issues with the regular raspian.
I tried booting to the text console but it negated the startup script I had in place using Autostart- I know there are alternatives to make the patch run on boot but I am under the gun here! Also, switching to text console meant I lost the ability to use VNC viewer, and I only have a teeny little screen to plug directly into the pi which makes things difficult to read.

@whale-av Thanks for all these resources! I added dwc_otg.speed=1 to boot/cmdline.txt... And maybe it worked? The glitch isn't consistent, although it is still happening. I have noticed that the buttons connected to the arduino nano may have become more jittery: is it possible this is a result of dwc_otg.speed=1 ?
The bang in the screenshot is actually because I took a screenshot of a screen recording that was paused. However, I have subsequently seen them stick when the glitch happens- it's as though the patch freezes for a period of time, and during that time the audio also gets stuck in that frozen way.
I've removed a bunch of those bangs since but it's still freezing intermittently.
I may have "intensively investigated" the patch but I'm still a noob, so could easily be missing something!

This sound clip demonstrates the glitch, just after 0:03, for about one second

glitch.mp3

Hello, I feel like I've been blowing the forum up recently, sorry if I'm coming across as needy

This seems like it would be discussed a lot online but I cannot find relevant advice on it despite some intensive searching.

I'm running a Pure Data audio patch on a RPi, with an external USB soundcard. The patch samples from an external microphone and plays back the sounds in a sequence to a beat. When this 'beat sequence' playback happens, it is routed and recorded as another discrete sound file. Recording and playback are triggered by buttons connected via an Arduino Nano and the pduino object.

As I've been working towards my deadline to finish the device and ship it, the patch has become more prone to a specific audio glitch where it freezes mid sound, kind of like a skipping CD. I've experienced this before on other projects but never this frequently! I would assume I am demanding more than I should of the RPi, but I don't feel like it's a particularly processing-heavy project.

Are there ways I can avoid this glitching/skipping/freezing, either by making changes within the patch or by somehow optimizing the way my RPi is set up and running? It's only required to run this patch, so I'm wondering if purging a load of unneeded software that came with the OS might help.

Here's the patch in case that is a useful reference (I have a few abstractions I've put in there):

Any advice gratefully received - I'm worried this won't be up to a usable standard if it keeps glitching out during use!

Thank you @fishcrystals I shall check this out. I didn't know this 'externals wrangler' existed!

Hi David @whale-av.

When I open an existing patch the externals in question are in a dotted line and I get the "cannot create" message in the console.

Also, as previously mentioned, despite the fact that there is a path to them in my preferences, a whole bunch of external libraries are not showing up in my help browser. They are showing in 0.52-1 but not in 0.53-2 or 0.54. These include Gem, ggee, pduino, zexy and many many more.

I shall experiment with compatibility settings- I didn't know that was an option. There's always some new function that surprises me, it's so cool!

Thanks as ever for all your help.

This worked great, thanks for pointing me in the right direction!

Hello forum!

I have built the following patch for an interactive performance in order to achieve the following:
Button 1 will record a sound each time, which will be assigned a unique name "recording%d"
Button 2 will playback the most recently recorded sound file
Once 4 sound files are recorded, Button 3 will begin playback of these files, sequenced to a backing track. When the backing track finishes, all playback stops. During playback, all sound is routed to be recorded as a new sound file, which is also given a unique name "party%d".
Button 4 is set up as a panic button, to end playback if it is started in error via a momentary press. If the button is help down for 5 seconds it shuts down the pi.

I had hoped that by including a project save function (triggered just prior to shutdown), that the patch would remember the number assigned for each subsequent "party%d" sound file. However, when the Pi is rebooted it reverts to zero, and begins overwriting the prior sound files. I designed the patch so that the "recording%d" files are replaced every time, but I want to save the "party%d" files.

How can I get the patch to remember and continue where it left off? IE, "party1.wav" & "party2.wav" were created last time the device was on and the patch was running, so this time, once the pi boots up and the patch opens, we need to start with "party3.wav" and carry on from there.

Apologies that the patch is messy, I am still learning!

@whale-av Hi David, just now getting around to this, I was crunching up against a deadline!

Yes, the upgrade to 0.54 does seem to have resolved the issues in my OP, no freezing at all.

I also downloaded 0.53-2 and it also seems to have resolved hanging issues, but it also has the same issues with externals not working and not showing on the browser. Is it common for an update to stop a whole swath of externals from working? This gives me concerns about future proofing my patches - is it best to just not upgrade?

Thanks so much!

@whale-av Hi Davids, thanks for your help on this!
I just downloaded Pd 0.54 but it seems many of the externals I have downloaded which were working in 0.52-1 are not working on 0.54, breaking my patches: for example the maxlib library, which is installed and has a path, but is not showing up in the browser.
Any suggestions on this? I've not had this happened before.

Hello all,

Running 'Pd-0.52-1-really' on a 2021 M1 Macbook Pro. When I need to change my audio preferences (namely my audio output device) in PD, I can select the output I need, but when I click 'Save All Settings' or 'Apply' the following happens:

• 'Audio off' switches to 'Audio on' in the main PD window (the DSP checkbox does not respond, it remains unchecked)
• PD freezes: clicking OK or cancel in the Audio Settings window yields no response, the window will not close via any means. Similarly, if I have a patch open this will also freeze and cannot be closed. I have found I can close the main PD window, but I cannot quit PD- I have to force quit via the finder.

Upon reopening PD it's a gamble as to whether the audio setting I changed has even been remembered. This is extremely frustrating and is rendering the software very unreliable and hard to use (especially as I use it almost exclusively for audio).

Also, if I skip the process of clicking 'Save All Settings' or 'Apply', and just hit 'OK', the audio settings window closes, but the program still freezes in the same way.

Additionally, I'm trying to open a patch that contains a load bang to start DSP, and this will also freeze the program.

Has anyone else experienced this, and can they suggest any solutions? Thanks!

@whale-av thanks as ever for your help
In the console I'm just getitng the name of the object followed by '... couldn't create'.
For example:
pix_buffer_read vid
... couldn't create
gemhead
... couldn't create

Thanks both - I downloaded the zip file and moved the files into my externals folder (replacing the Gem externals I already had) but Gem objects aren't able to be created, just a dotted outline. Any hints on this? Running Ventura 13.2.1. Thank you!

OK, so I did some reading! Thanks to both posters who responded.

To recap, I'm hoping to track the movement of firefly lights to produce data that I can use to trigger or influence sounds. This will happen live, to create an aleatoric soundscape that a musician can improvise with. We will be staging these performances at dusk or shortly thereafter, so I suspect a big part of this will be making use of the fact that the fireflies are brighter than anything else- hopefully some form of threshold level will help me eliminate the other movement of leaves in the wind, etc.

@whale-av I have been working with the GEM patch from that textbook on my old macbook, and it's going pretty well, especially as the example patch in the book has a threshold control. However, I just found out find that GEM will not work on my new silicon M1 macbook (Ventura OS), which is the one I was hoping to use for the performance. I could use my old laptop, but it's a bit creaky, from 2012. I've looked through the forums and it seems GEM is no longer supported on newer macs, and Ofelia is way more complex to use (and there's no handy textbook for me to follow like with GEM)?

@ddw_music I am just now really reading your post. I'm definitely hoping to track multiple points (fireflies). You think I should look into Processing instead? I have some experience with Arduino sketches, but I'm not a skilled coder. Could you maybe share the sketch that you used, please?

Thanks all!

OK, I think I got it by googling and looking at some other patches: the [*~ 2] object needed to have the 2 argument removed. I changed it and it's accepting the connection from the [vramp~] to the right inlet now. Thanks!

Thanks @whale-av - I was actually already trying to do something along these lines with the [line] object but couldn't nail the parameters, it was either clicking or making a weird fluttery fade in.

So, I'm trying it with [vline~] per your recommendation, and I'm getting an error message when I try to connect the output of [vline~] to the right inlet of [*~ 2] that reads "can't connect signal outlet to control inlet".

I understand that signal messages and control messages aren't interchangeable, but this object has me stumped: it only accepts control messages and only outputs signal messages? How do I connect it?

Can anyone help me stop the audible clicks I'm getting at the beginning and end of each recording? Should I use a different object to writesf~? I see a lot of documentation on using arrays for sampler projects. Thanks!

@jameslo thanks for setting me straight on that! Things are getting closer to what I had in mind now, although I would be really interested in any advice I can get on making the playback 'sequencer' more controllable and rhythmically interesting - I have it super basic at present but will be working on it this week.