[PD] Is asynchronous but fast loading possible?

[Matteo Sisti Sette]

Hi,

Well, I still have to look at the [sndfile] everyone is talking about, but 
anyway, with regard to the general discussion about sound playing and 
loading,
please let's distinguish between two completely different problems:
-PLAYING audio files (i.e. reading them in real time)
-LOADING audio files (storing them into a table).

[readsf] is for playing. In my opinion its only "flaw" is that you never 
know exactly how much you have to wait before you send it a [1( in order to 
be able to trust on its output. A "fix" would be an outlet that bangs when 
the buffer is full or something like that...... Or even something more 
sofisticated, such as being able to know at any time how much of the buffer 
is full - so one may have a bigger buffer for security, but start playing 
when a smaller portion is full......... obvioulsy I'm talking of an object 
that wouldn't be called [readsf].

It would be marvallous to have an object capable of *immediately* start 
playing, but I suppose that loading a sufficient portion of a file in a 
1/44100 of a second is impossible in most platforms, or isn't it?

[soundfiler] is for loading. Its limit is that it blocks everything untill 
it finishes loading. Reading a file in realtime is NOT an alternative. The 
alternative would be an object capable of "threaded" loading, but still, 
loading as fast as possible, not reading at a certain realtime speed; and 
banging when finished.
I dunnow if [sndfile] is such an object but I suppose it isn't since it has 
been said to be a "bad hack" and not to be the solution to my problem.... 
however I'll have a look at that.


Hope I've not been too pedantic, but I had the impression that the problems 
of playing and loading were a bit mixed up, and I thing it's key to 
distinguish them or a "solution" is far to come.


Talking about PLAYING (real time reading):
it would be grate to be able to override the sample rate of the file (or 
read it at a given speed, which is the same in this context) which afaik 
from documentation, is not possible with readsf. Even varying playing speed 
during playing would be desirable....


Bye
M.