Okay, so I know [soundfiler] does exactly this: gives the sample size of a file from its left outlet. However, it is also heavy handed, in that it is causing audio dropouts while another file is playing using readsf~

I know that [soundfile_info] from iemlib does this. However, it's not compiled for 64 bit MacOS and I also need it to run on a Raspverry Pi as well.

Are there other solutions?

@me-andmymonkey [soundfile_info] works for me from deken (on 64-bit MacOS)

@seb-harmonik-ar I got it working too actually. But I'm still curious about Vanilla-friendly solutions if there are any!

If you work with huge arrays or at a high write speed, use [array define] rather than visual arrays, it's much faster.

I am wondering why, if using [soundfiler~] without a specified array, it still causes dropouts with long files? It seems to not read the header only.
[soundfile_info} or [shell] really might be better. You can rely on iemlib for sure! Even on an ARM.

In this patch, [soundfiler~] is running as [pd~] subprocess. On a different thread If you have multithreading CPU.: it looks highly inefficient!
pd~soundfiler.zip

Be aware that the size is rounded at high sample-counts.
edit: still dropouts on much larger files

( edit much later: since pd version 0.52 there is the [file size] object )
(...edit: conversation goes on: https://forum.pdpatchrepo.info/topic/13988/get-the-size-of-a-large-wav-file-without-loading-it )

@lacuna I'm currently just playing files using [readsf~]. I'm only using [soundfiler] to get the sample length of the next audio file I want to play, so I can figure out what random snippet from it I want to play.

Each audio file might be up to hour or two in length, and there are around 40–50 files the patch can choose from at random, so loading them all into array doesn't seem very efficient to me.

I need the number of samples (and sample rate) of the file in order to do this. [soundfiler] just seems very heavy handed for all I want to do.

[soundfile_info] works perfectly. I'll look into these other solutions you'e flagged.