[buffer~: out of memory reading] but the system has lots of inactive memory!

How big are the files you are trying to read?

One consideration: for all you may have umpteen terabytes of free memory in your machine, out of a combination of legacy and performance concerns certain objects can only allocate a maximum of 64kB at a time. Other objects may possibly only have this limit depending upon what thread they’re in at the time of allocation.

I was not aware that buffer~ had this particular restriction, at least not at instantiation time. Hence the question above.

FTR: On Max 4 this limit was 32kB.

FWIW: I can’t replicate your error. Add’l details?

10" is pretty long for buffer~. Don’t forget that MSP is using 32-bits/sample, which in most cases makes the memory requirements twice what an AIFF or WAV file needs on disk. At stereo you’re talking >200MB per file. Do the math;-)

Plus, if you’ve got a waveform~ attached, at some stage MSP has to allocate add’l memory for the visual representation. Dunno if this is enough to make a difference.

I just loaded a 20 minute AIFF into the buffer~ in waveform~.help. No problem (although it beachballed for a bit). But if you want a dozen different buffer~s, each with 10" of audio, you’re using a lot more than the 1.1Gig you were talking about earlier.

You might be able to work around your problem by just loading in, say, 30 or 60 seconds from each file, and shifting file position as required by the user. Could be a bit tricky to patch, though.