[PD] readsf~ vs sfread~

[IOhannes m zmoelnig]

siggmuss wrote:
> hi list, i was wondering which are the differences between readsf~  and
> sfread~......sfwrite~ and writesf~
> 
a long time ago, pd had no soundfile-player built-in.
several people started to write soundfile-players and -writers to fill 
this gap, namely günther and wini.
all of them had several features and bugs.
after some time, another sf-player was integrated into pd.

[sfread~] (ggext): only raw data accepted (you can tell the object to 
skip a fixed number of bytes); varispeed; loop-mode integrated
[sfplay]  (zexy): only raw data accepted(see [sfread~]; this object has 
been optimized via a state model, to spread the number of system-calls 
(and thus possible time-outs (clicks) because of slow harddisks) over time.
[readsf~] (pd): several file-formats (WAV, AIFF,...) and endianesses are 
recognized; the hd-access is in a separate worker-thread, which should 
circumvent the problem with the timeouts of system calls.


all in all:
use pd's built-in [readsf~] !
it is certainly the best tested and optimized and (most important) it is 
available on any (recent) pd. no need for an external at all.
the other objects are basically there for compatibility reasons (at 
least [sfplay] is; i cannot speak for günthers objects)


mfg.a.sdr
IOhannes