Hello, PD. I'm new to the language, having found my way this direction due to a dissatisfaction regarding the limitations of various "modular synthesis" programs, and I must say that I'm having a great time! Anyway, thanks in advance for your help; I really hate bugging people on forums, but, being a niche language as it is, there isn't as much documentation available on Google as I would like.

Anyway, I'm building a synthesizer and, because I want the experience to be as educational as possible in the sense of getting a feel for the language, I'm trying to use only the most vanilla objects in PD. I came across a problem, though, when I found that I can't create ">~" objects, or any such objects to compare two signals rather than just two messages. Because of this, I'm rather stumped about how to make a variable duty-cycle pulse wave.

The tutorial at en.flossmanuals.net/PureData uses the expr~ object for this purpose, but it also claims that this is an object from pd-extended. Even if it isn't, the design philosophy seems to be different from most of the other vanilla objects (making use of dollar-sign variables), which makes me frown.

I can add signals to messages with +~, subtract them with -~. Is there a way to compare them without using expr~?

-David

Mod, I just tried your solution and it worked the trick, but I'll have to find a way to get around that 1000hz limit. Now that I'm more knowledgeable, though, I'm sure I'll think of something.

-David

Oh, wow. Thanks for that explanation -- it really is very enlightening. I had read about that 64-sample-block thing before, but I didn't make the connection. It's nice to know that the timing tools are precise; that really multiplies their uses. Thanks for your patience.

Thank you, Mod! Your solution looks like just what I need, but are metro and delay accurate enough for the job, timing-wise? I had an idea for a solution that involved threshold~ and a counter that would alternate between sending a 1 and a 0 to the DAC~, but the timing wasn't accurate enough to produce musical tones, although it did sound like a square wave. The reason that I didn't try using metro and delay was because, after that, I assumed that objects that send messages rather than signals aren't suitable for the job, but I wouldn't be surprised if I misunderstood.

Anyway, I'll give your idea a try and see for myself.