i have a problem, that i cannot figure out:
say, i have a synth with two osc's, each of them have for example 3 voices. now i want osc 1 to modulate osc 2's frequency by a constant amount of - for example - 100.
now, it seems that i have to use 3 multipliers and 3 signal cords, so that every voice of osc 1 can be multiplied by 100 and then routed to it's voice-"twin" of osc 2.
in my case i have 12 voices and i want to add some other modulation sources and targets, so you can imagine, that i'd run into problems, if i have to use millions of cords for a modulation matrix.
is there any way around this?
i know, a comparison to reaktor is not possible - but in reaktor the voices are all transported via one cable and automatically routed to their target.
in pd, the routing of messages is pretty easy but i have no clue how i could build a signal bus transporting 3 or more signals with a voice index.
can someone help?

edit: i tried conversion from signal to message domain to benefit from the packing and routing options from at messages, but operations on a bus have to be done with list objects/abstractions - this is unbelievable cpu hungry. i attached a patch with two different signal sources, but it takes about 30 percent of cpu usage on my machine.

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/test_bus.pd

I get around the cords by sends and receives. When I create a voice I create it with arguments name and parent id

[voice v1 $0]

The only inlets voice has are for note and velocity.

From within voice I can access stuff from the parent
for instance $2modfactor would reference parents $0modfactor
so I can change $0modfactor in the main patch and all the voices will receive the value.

For the voices local sends use

Lets say you want all the voices to use the same table for an lfo table.

you would use [tabosc~ $2lfo] inside the voice
and inside the main patch the tables name is $0lfo
you can even trigger the lfo in each voice so that it is gated on by noteon or have it free running. Each voice could in effect scale the frequency of the lfo by some parameter like kbd note tracking. It gets a little complicated trying to keep up with what all is going on but I think it is simpler than having so many wires.

I don't know. I'm trying to get my head around the question... and the answer.

But you didn't include your abstractions in the post, so it's a bit hard to see what's going on.

I don't see how you get three voices out of one [osc~]. Am I missing something? I'm really interested in the question though.

I'm a bit confused by your question as well. Do you mean this to be a three-voice synth with two oscillators per voice? If that's the case, I would think the easiest way is to make an abstraction with two [osc~]s in it and use [poly] for voice management.

i have 2 wave generator abstractions. these contain 12 abstractions (each voice one), every of them with it's own adsr and filter. so, in sum, i have 24 oscillators, 12 in each wave generator, both using twelve voices polyphony. if i want to modulate the frequency of wave generator 1 by the signals of wave generator two, i have to route 12 signals (for each voice one) two 12 targets, and i multiply them all by a variable fm-amount.
by the way, i found a nice solution using pack~/unpack~ again. i have to go to work now, but i'll post it later.

okay, here is a demonstration patch, how a different source osc's could be routed to target osc's depending on voice number, without using a million cables by subpatching. the routing via one bus and then split depending on identifiers is (afaik) only possible in the message domain, so i convert the audio signal to messages. the cpu usage is relatively moderate.

http://www.pdpatchrepo.info/hurleur/demo_patch.zip

The only thing like this I've attempted this far just used clone to generate voices . There are tutorials from better programmers than me out there that show proper ways of doing things. I did not have to wire every every voice though they all got their info from the outside.

Well tbf [clone] wasn't around 11 years ago