[PD] Purpose of sig~

Andy Farnell padawan12 at obiwannabe.co.uk
Wed Nov 3 17:14:04 CET 2010


There are some uses of [sig~] which are not immediately
obvious but turn out to be desirable. By definition it
is useful any place you want a message domain value converted
to a signal, without any further ado. Without it, relying
only on implicit conversion you might never have access to
a signal except by a degenerate idiom like

[$1(
|
[line~]


Crucially, [sig~] can be given a creation parameter, as in
[sig~ 1], and will not need any messy initialisation 
like using a [loadbang] in order to obtain a signal 
constant immediately. 

Why might you want a signal constant? Perhaps for
a relation like (1 - x), useful in panning, crossfading,
or (1 / x) common in waveshaping.

Matju raises a question over DSP on/off. I have encountered
problems relying on implicit right inlet conversion 
with deep abstractions, so from practical experience 
it seems safer to use [sig~] in these circumsatnces.

It also make code more readable to make important
message/signal distinctions explicit.





On Wed, 3 Nov 2010 14:46:51 +0000
Jamie Bullock <jamie at postlude.co.uk> wrote:

> 
> Hi all,
> 
> This is more of philosophical question than anything else. I'm curious to know why [sig~] hasn't been designed out of Pd. Why not have implicit control -> signal conversion everywhere it is possible?
> 
> For example why not allow this?
> 
> |2(	|3(
> |	|
> [+~ ]
> 
> Jamie
> 
> --
> http://www.jamiebullock.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Andy Farnell <padawan12 at obiwannabe.co.uk>



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