This patch demonstrates the use of the cycle~ object to control quadraphonic panning in such a way as to simulate circular movement of a sound. It's an abstraction that can be used inside another patch to provide 4-channel distribution of a sound source. This abstraction uses another abstraction, which in turn uses another abstraction.
This patch shows several techniques relevant to granular synthesis, playing a stream of short excerpts of recorded sound. (The patch uses one abstraction, called pan~, that's provided in the example titled "Constant-intensity panning subpatch". You'll need to download that abstraction and save it with the name pan~ somewhere in Max's file search path.)
Did you know that there are several different ways to turn MSP audio on and off in Max?
The delay~ object creates a "ring buffer" into which it constantly records the signal coming in its left inlet. The first typed-in argument specifies the size of the buffer, in samples. The second argument (or a number in the right inlet) specifies how many samples in the past delay~ should look for the signal it will send out its outlet.