sfplay~

For this patch to work correctly, you must have the six guitar string samples in the same directory as you save this Max patch.

When Max detects a bug or a problem in your patch, it posts an error message in the Max window, such as “sfplay~: cant find file <filename>”.

This program demonstrates how objects in Presentation Mode can have a different location and appearance than they do in Patching Mode. Select the objects that you want to have appear in the presentation, and choose the Add To Presentation command from the Object menu. Then, to switch to Presentation Mode, click on the small easel icon at the bottom of the window (or type command-option-E). Now you see only the objects that will appear in the Presentation.

In signal processing, a "window" is a function (shape) that is nonzero for some period of time, and zero before and after that period. When multiplied by another signal, it produces an output of 0 except during the nonzero portion of the window, when it exposes the other signal. The simplest example is a rectangular window, which is 0, then briefly is 1, then reverts to 0. The windowed signal will be audible only when it is being multiplied by 1––i.e., during the time when the rectangular windowing occurs.

A single sfplay~ object can refer to many different sound files, or even specific portions of sound files, with a unique "cue" number assigned to each sound. Once those sound cues have been preloaded (i.e. taught to the object), you can cause the object to play a cue just by sending the desired cue number in its left inlet.

This patch demonstrates a way to use multiple delays with stereo panning. It requires that you have the tapoutstereo~ abstraction, found here, and the tapoutxfade~ abstraction, found here.

Audio delay is achieved by creating a buffer in which the most recent past sound can be stored. Usually this is called a "ring buffer" or "circular buffer", because when the buffer is filled (with, let's say, the past one second of sound), it loops around and begins refilling itself at the beginning, thus overwriting the sound that was stored more than one second ago.

Any given MSP patch cord represents a single channel of audio. If you want to generate or process multiple sounds or channels, you need to treat each sound or channel separately. For example, each sfplay~ object can have multiple loaded sound cues so that it's ready to play any one of several files, but it can only play one sound file at any given instant. And if it's a stereo file you need to treat each channel separately for mixing, processing, etc. This patch demonstrates that.

This shows how to record into a sound file, and how to play back the contents of the file. The example also demonstrates how you can use a quick fade-in and fade-out to avoid clicks when doing realtime capture during a performance.

The right inlet of sfplay~ accepts a rate factor (increment factor) to control the speed of sound file playback. The factor can be supplied as a floating point number or as a MSP signal.