Thankx! My synth has 10 voice polyphony. But when I play 3 or 4 notes I get audio errors (digital cracks). My laptop is six years old (Intel i7 2.6GHz with 16GB memory), perhaps someone with a more recent, faster model could check my patch to see if the same cracks occur when playing chords ? I'd like to know, to ensure that there is no 'bug' somewhere in my patch...

I've released a new version 0.91 of [mimba] on my site...

I designed a physical modelling synth [mimba] in Pd, it's mainly Karplus-Strong. Documentation, sound samples and downloads are on www.hansroels.be/mim.html

It's an early version (0.90): there are still some minor bugs and it's not really cleaned up yet... It's also rather complicated... but I've created some nice presets (guitar, organ, percussion-like sounds)! I hope you enjoy my work.

After your message I did some testing with writesf~ and I think there are two problems: 1) it even records when there is no signal leading to writesf~ and 2) there is no output (from writesf~) about errors that can be used in a patch + the error messages in the main Pd console are incomplete.
I have also sent an email about this issue to the Pd mailing list.

I agree that writesf~ works very well but I want to have a simple, visual feedback to know that the recording is taking place. This is for 'complicated' situations: while performing and recording simultaneously in a concert or talking and recording in an interview. In these situations all kinds of (technical) problems might occur, sometimes just before or even during the concert. The recording isn't the most important concern at that moment. After concerts I have noticed that I miss a few channels or some songs. I guess often the problem is that the dsp was switched on and off (for example, when you notice a microphone connected to the sound card isn't reacting) or a name was given to the recording (open message to writesf~) but no 'start' command followed.
That's why I make this patch. My initial idea was: if I just have a green light/button flashing, saying that the recording is proceeding well and the recording files on the hard disk are growing, I just have to watch one simple thing (for the recording part of the concert...).
The growing filesize solution doesn't work but I have another idea: just check if each writesf~ received an 'open' followed by a 'start' message and simultaneously check if the audio signal/connection going to writesf~ is really sending audio. I'll post it tomorrow.

(Another solution could be to visualize the amplitude curve -the waveforms- of the audio going to writesf~ , but personally I don't like this: when you are recording lots of channels - in complicated situations - you have to watch too much curves + you can't see the difference between silence (zero signals~) and a broken connection.)

I noticed that there is a serious problem with this check-rec patch: as the recording proceeds, after 30 seconds or more, digital cracks start to appear, not in the recording, but in other parts of the patch. I guess the number of samples (of the recording file) becomes too large and thus, [soundfiler] needs too much time to count this.
I'll remove my check-rec.pd file and post another solution later on (to the question: how can you be sure that Pd is recording and thus writing a file to the hard disk).

Hello,

This is a small subpatch that I'd like to share: it controls if a recording to the hard disk is really taking place. This happens -with [soundfiler]- by checking if the size of the file being recorded is growing. It outputs 1's if the file size is increasing, 0's if not; you can use this output to trigger a visual GUI, showing that the recording process is going well.

This patch might be handy if you want to use Pd for professional recording, where you want to be 100% sure that the recording is happening. I didn't test it extensively yet, let me know if something wouldn't work as expected.

www.hansroels.be/check-rec.pd

Hi,

I've uploaded a new version of my abunch library. This is a set of Pd vanilla abstractions that I've been using for more than 10 years to teach and perform.

www.hansroels.be/abunch-eng.htm

The example files (starting with 'ex') are the easiest way to get to know this library. The abstractions also have a help file and additionally, there is a website with a short overview of all the abstractions:

www.hansroels.be/objects-eng.htm

best, Hans