I am trying to make a patch that records when a certain level of sound is detected and stops when the level drops. I have tried using threshold~ but it seems somewhat temperamental. Sometimes it will trigger on and stay on, even after all sound above the threshold level has died away and the debounce(?) period has elapsed. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
thanks

did you try [env~] ??

Yes I have had some luck with [env~] on my PC, yet it does not work properly on PDa. (http://gige.xdv.org/pda/ ). This is why I was looking at using [threshold~].

what about [snapshot~]? sorry, i don't know what works on pda and what doesn't. maybe ask the mailing list

Instinct tells me you probably want to use [average] in your debounce stage.
If you have a level detector followed by a toggle switch of some kind then as the level moves over the threshold it often triggers multiple times. That's because atoms like [env~] and [threshold~] track pretty quickly (one block windows). In [threshold~] the debounce time is a fixed delay during which it won't switch, which is less than perfect. I'm guessing that's why it's "temperamental". [env~] is more flexible because its internal rms converter can set it's window size, like changing [env~ 8192] to [env~ 16384] doubles the window and so halves the "slug" rate.

The trick is to find a value of averaging that is quick enough to switch on recording when your music begins without cutting off the start, but sluggish enough to not switch off during brief minima in the sound. That time is roughly 40-60ms.

Try an arrangement like this and fiddle with the values

[hip~ 10]-~[clip~ 0 0.777]-~[env~ 4096 ]--[average 16]--[/ 100]--[>= t]--[sel 0 1]

Thanks for the suggestions.