Some pure data questions for anyone who might know

Modular Synth design and releases (Reaktor, SynthEdit, Tassman, etc.)
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Hello,

I've been messing about with pure data, building stuff that I would normally use but building it from the ground up. There are a few things I don't quite get though. If anyone here has any idea I would very much appreciate it.

1st:. What's up with the audio settings? I have my rme control panel that allows me to set my buffer to various powers of 2, but then inside pure data there is another block size (that can also be changed per patch/ sub patch) that looks like a regular buffer setting but doesn't override the settings in the rme control panel. Further more there is a setting just labelled (latency) that is measured in ms. Do all of these add up to one full buffer amount? Are the settings for different driver types? Should the main patch block size be overriding my rme settings (they don't in practice)? I've been running in 96k mode to get a nice fidelity with fast audio rate modulation and math so the latency is rather small, but I'd still like to know what these settings do. I set the SR to 96k, the "latency" to 1 Ms and the buffer/block size to 64. This keeps things snappy for the most part. I'd very much like to know exactly what the hell these settings are doing or trying to do though.

2nd: I have extreme graphical issues in PD. Having a small array setup as a scope often freezes up and often there's some audio issues when moving any object around. Is there some GL or DX rendering going on (my of system has a crappy old card that may be dying anyway)? Is there a way to stop any use of graphics acceleration when launching PD? Anything that might help? I know it can be run gui free, but that's not helpful when building stuff. I'm using my old computer for this stuff so that I'll have a better idea of what it can do on a weaker system.

I'll leave it at that for now. Any help along those lines would be much appreciated. Please let me know if I was less than clear.

I am running a 3930k Intel system on windows 7 in this case with a small 2 GB fan less Nvidia graphics card

Thanks,

JJ
Don't F**K with Mr. Zero.

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I am more into Max/MSP, but occasionally fire up Pd as well. You first question would apply also to Max…
Your hardware has a buffer who's size will determine the minimum latency. Any audio program including Pd or a DAW also processes audio in blocks of samples which makes it much more efficient. The bigger the block size the less CPU it needs. It would not make sense to have a smaller block size than your interface buffer, as audio is delivered in chunks of that size. But you can have a bigger block size, usually in steps of power of 2, to gain CPU efficiency. If your patch grows too big, often a bigger block size helps… In general they are independent of each other except of the minimum block size…
As far as I know, Pd is still using an ancient technology called TCL/TK to do the GUI. I guess this is all without the aid of a graphics card and all done on the CPU…
Anyway, to get better help, there is a huge community around Pd which most likely does not lurk on KVR. You’d better ask there:
https://puredata.info/community/forums

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There's a Pd fork called Purr Data that doesnt use TCL/TK for the UI; uses HTML5 instead. It might be worth confirming if that behaves better on your system for the graphics stuff?
my other modular synth is a bugbrand

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And there is also a plugin that hosts Pd with its own GUI called PlugData:
https://github.com/timothyschoen/PlugData

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I've sorted out plenty of this stuff now. I'm looking at building some Bela based gear and I was just trying to get a better idea of how everything is set up. I'm gonna use vcvrack to use PD in a regular DAW setting. Thanks for the info.
Don't F**K with Mr. Zero.

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Tj Shredder wrote: Thu Jun 09, 2022 6:40 am As far as I know, Pd is still using an ancient technology called TCL/TK to do the GUI. I guess this is all without the aid of a graphics card and all done on the CPU…
It does and all on a single core - unless there have been any recent updates that change this. So this really limits the system. The method that worked best for me was to use the OpenGL functionality of the extended PD [for the GUI]. Been a while since I last used PD though.

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PlugData has its own Gui, I like it much better than the original. Its based on Juce… I would want Pd in a VST anyway since Max/MSP dropped Pluggo…

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Tj Shredder wrote: Sat Jul 02, 2022 5:46 pm PlugData has its own Gui, I like it much better than the original. Its based on Juce… I would want Pd in a VST anyway since Max/MSP dropped Pluggo…
I really need to look into this again. I concluded that Reaktor was best for sharing projects but there are things that PD does so much more elegantly and I miss working with it sometimes.

So I can optimistically guess that it will be possible to customise the GUI, even if I have to get JUCE involved? Though I see it's still early days for PlugData - I really hope this project gets the attention it deserves.

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Unaspected wrote: Sat Jul 02, 2022 7:25 pm
Tj Shredder wrote: Sat Jul 02, 2022 5:46 pm PlugData has its own Gui, I like it much better than the original. Its based on Juce… I would want Pd in a VST anyway since Max/MSP dropped Pluggo…
I really need to look into this again. I concluded that Reaktor was best for sharing projects but there are things that PD does so much more elegantly and I miss working with it sometimes.

So I can optimistically guess that it will be possible to customise the GUI, even if I have to get JUCE involved? Though I see it's still early days for PlugData - I really hope this project gets the attention it deserves.
You can modify the GUI if you're familiar with JUCE, it also has some basic built-in theming capabilities (colours and fonts only) if that's what you're after. If you do end up making any changes to the source, please share it with me, it could be useful!

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octagonaudio wrote: Sat Jul 23, 2022 2:08 pm You can modify the GUI if you're familiar with JUCE, it also has some basic built-in theming capabilities (colours and fonts only) if that's what you're after. If you do end up making any changes to the source, please share it with me, it could be useful!
Are you the developer/maintainer of PlugData?
Anyway, welcome to KVR…
PlugData works already pretty stable, I love it…

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