Today I learned about [open( ] and [readsf~] in Pure Data. [open( ] is how you tell Pd where your audio file is. You send it a message with the file path, and it loads that file into [readsf~]. Nothing will play until you do this step first. I got pretty confused for a while because the samples were stored on Onedrive, and my Onedrive storage was full, so I couldn’t download the samples, but I figured it out.
[readsf~] actually plays the file. It needs a 1 message to start and a 0 to stop. The number boxes and counters I’ve been using can bang the 1 to trigger playback whenever I want. You can have multiple [readsf~] objects for different files and use select or random to choose which one plays.
Basically, [open( ] loads the file, [readsf~] plays it, and message boxes are your control system. Combine them with counters, +, %, and select and you can start building a sample player that reacts to buttons or sequencers. Once you get the flow, it’s straightforward but super flexible for triggering samples in a patch.
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