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!

@Dizzy-Dizzy A freeze means Pd is not hooking into the computers audio correctly.
It could be that the latest Pd 0.54 wil work better...... it states that it is for the M1........ http://puredata.info/downloads/pure-data
I find the best way to change audio settings for different shows and soundcard combinations is to start Pd with command line switches e.g.

"C:\Program Files (x86)\pd\bin\pd.com" -path C:\Users\David\Desktop\PDMusic\Minx -path C:\Program_Files_(x86)\pd\extra\readanysf~\ -r 44100 -asio -nomidi -audioindev 15 -audiooutdev 12 -inchannels 32 -outchannels 22 -audiobuf 2 -blocksize 64 -callback -nosleep -open Minx_Run.pd
exit

But of course the audio settings need to be valid still for Pd to run properly.
I imagine on a Mac you would run a shell script to do something similar.
David.

@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.

@Dizzy-Dizzy Ah,,,,,, there have been some very big changes in 0.54....... multichannel audio objects etc.
I am not using Mac OS so I cannot investigate..... but quite a few people on the forum have M1 machines so you should get some replies about that.
Did it resolve the issues in your OP?
If it did then how the soundcard was addressed was updated in 0.53-2 to solve Mac hanging issues and maybe that would still work with your externals...... https://msp.puredata.info/Pd_documentation/x5.htm
David.

@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!

@Dizzy-Dizzy No, the externals problem is rare....... the last time was around the end of 2017 when after years of striving towards a 64-bit binary it finally happened.
Audio stayed as 32-bit floating point, but some OS's were going 64-bit only so it had to happen.
It took a couple of years for helpful people to re-compile the externals for all the OS's.
https://github.com/pure-data/pd-lib-builder/issues/40 and Lucarda did a lot of that work.

This time the audio has experimental 64-bit double precision, and multichannel support etc..
It has been a long time coming..... https://www.katjaas.nl/doubleprecision/doubleprecision.html
And that could have broken some externals despite Miller always striving for backwards compatibility.

Does the console say that the externals cannot be found?..... in which case you should check that the externals are still in a Pd standard path, or add the path to File, Preferences, Path in the Pd top menu.

Or does the console say that they are found and then you still get a "cannot create"?
In that case you could try sending Pd a compatibility setting from your patch........ https://forum.pdpatchrepo.info/topic/13887/general-backwards-compatibility/4 to set compatibility to a version that you know will work.
Pd 0.54 might have taken too great a leap, but 0.52.3 might work with a compatibility 0.52 setting.
David.

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.

Maybe 0.52-1 was running using Rosetta2 which is emulating Intel. A compiled external has to be for both the operating system and underlying architecture. Intel mac is x64, and M1/M2 is arm64/aarch64.

you can go look at these https://deken.puredata.info/ - you need ones that say 'Darwin-amd64-32' to run built for M1/M2 Macs .. But lets see the mac lore is they let you keep Rosetta for two versions of Mac OS, so for now you can stick with Rosetta2 (and that means install the Intel Mac version of PD and emulate it, at some point they will release like 13.3 or whatever theyre at (I'm still using mojave) and take it away but hopefully by then the externals you need will be compiled (or you can compile them yourself), otherwise stick with Big Sur or whatever you are on to keep Rosetta2 - I really haven't been paying attention.

@fishcrystals said:
'Darwin-amd64-32'

huge apologies - you need ones that say Darwin-arm64-32 - it's so easy to confuse them when they are called amd64-32 (intel mac/x86_64, for non macs this is most computers as well) not Amd

you need Arm - also sometimes called arm64, aarch64, M1, M2

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