[PD] readsf and filelength

[Ian Nault]

"trying to get the absolute time of a file i want to play with 
sfplay/readsf~. Like a 3rd outlet which would give you the total length in 
samples, at loading the file. Found some old posts on the list from 2000 
when the discussion arose around IOhannes writing zexy, but without success, 
and am wondering if this has been tried somewhen. Any Ideas?"

I would recommend playing with [soundfiler] and [tabread~]. Read the help 
file for [soundfiler]; you need to send it a message with the filename to 
open and the array to send it to. [soundfiler] outputs the number of samples 
in the file when it loads it. I used this method to make a looping sampler 
that you can sequence out, using a sawtooth for lookup multiplied by the 
number of samples. Pretty nifty, I surprised myself when i got it to work.
In my opinion it's a much better method than using readsf~, gives you MUCH 
more control over the playback. But really, it's a matter of preference, 
readsf~ is good for one-off sample playback.
Hope this helps some.
Peace,
Ian