in the PD description it reads "... use osc~ instead of cycle~..." why ?

because [osc~] is part of the basic 'vanilla' pd distribution, while [cycle~] is an external

there are quite a few advantages to using vanilla objects, including:

* easier to share patches with other users
* more reliable and properly tested
* if you ever work on a commercial project, you are ok to use vanilla objects, because they are under the BSD license, whereas most external objects fall under other licenses (usually GPL, which does not allow you to use the code for financial gain)
* easier for other users to understand and find bugs in your patches.
* possibly better quality (i'm not sure how cycle~ is implemented, but there was a test obiwannabe posted a year or two ago that showed how to compare oscillators, and pd scored reasonably well)

thanks !