I searched a bit but could not find anything. Is it possible at all to turn off signal processing in M4L? I tried mute~ with thispatcher, no luck there.

turning-off-signal-processing-in-m4l

you cannot turn off all audio processing in m4l per se because it defers to live and in live audio is 'always on'. however, on a patching basis this is very basic doable max usage:

you need to look at the helpfile of [mute~], to be used in conjunction with a subpatch with a [pass~] inside. it is all in the helpfile. look at it.

more powerful and useful: look at [poly~] and helpfile and the various tutorials about it, in conjunction with a [thispoly~] inside. dynamic muting / managing of resources is a breeze.

Sorry, should have mentioned that I am aware of that. Actually I was looking for that DAC-off kind of thing. Anyway, you are probably right, I will have to put a part of the signal network into a subpatcher.

Best way to do this is to simply turn off the entire patch. If you turn off a Live device then Live will ignore it so no processing takes place. That is the counterpart of using dac~ to turn stuff on or off.

I guess you are talking about bypassing a device. Is that scriptable with M4L? Seems a little messy to do that from "outside the box"...

For what I want the signal network has to be switched off without any additional user interaction. Just like sending a 0 to the dac~ object.

Well, I made one false assumption up there; turning the device in its entirety off isn't the same as turning off dac~ or ezdac~. While you do stop processing you'll also stop the entire device itself.

See the example patches below. I used a timer which should turn the device back on once its stopped but that never happens.

The good part however is that the device 

 respond to remote signals. So you can easily turn the device back on using a remote controlling device.

Either way; another option to stop signal processing could be by using a gate~ object. Open the gate when you want processing to occur, close it when not. See its reference page 

The good part however is that the device will respond to remote signals. So you can easily turn the device back on using a remote controlling device.

Either way; another option to stop signal processing could be by using a gate~ object. Open the gate when you want processing to occur, close it when not. See its reference page here.

Turning off signal processing in M4L