determine total number of voices from inside a poly~

MaxMSP
Mattijs's icon

Mattijs

Hi everyone,

A simple question: inside an abstraction loaded into poly~, is it possible to determine the total amount of poly~'s voices?

I vaguely remember seeing some #X that is replaced by the total amount of voices when the abstraction is loaded into poly~, but I can't find anything in the help files or archives. Can someone help me out?

Cheers,
Mattijs

LoneMonad aka don malone's icon

LoneMonad aka don malone

[poly~] second argument denotes the number of instances (voices)

#n can be used inside your abstraction for argument variables - see topics and tutorials "$ and #"

Mattijs's icon

Mattijs

Thanks for your reply. #n works in abstractions but it doesn't seem to work inside poly~. I tried the following:

Max Patch
Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

Save as insidepoly:

Max Patch
Copy patch and select New From Clipboard in Max.

Then try this:

The t inside the poly~ detected zero's as arguments. Did I overlook something obvious?

Thanks,
Mattijs

Owen Green's icon

Owen Green

Try

[poly~ 1 args 1 2 3]

instead.

The gory details of poly~'s arguments can be found in the "optional-arguments" subpatch of poly~'s help file.

hth,
Owen

LoneMonad aka don malone's icon

LoneMonad aka don malone

i control variables of abstractions inside [poly~] with send/receive or send~/receive~

Mattijs's icon

Mattijs

Thanks Owen,

That works. Pity though that now I have to do
[poly~ grain~ 16 args 16], where the 16's are always the same, but I can live with that.

> i control variables of abstractions inside [poly~] with send/receive or send~/receive~

Yeah, me too normally, but I wanted this to be a black box where it would be enough to set the amount of voices. The grain patcher inside needs its phase to be set according to the amount of voices.

Anyway, thanks guys, this will do fine.
Mattijs

langsound's icon

langsound

you could have a loadbang in each voice send a bang via a send/receive
connex.
since the send/receive pair could be like a global variable. each
voice would bang a counter and that would tell you how many voices you
have.

there have got to be > 1*10^999 ways to get info on the state of your
poly~ abstractions...

the args way mightbe the easiest, but if you need a dynamic way of
dealing with the number of voices you could use thispoly~ and its mute
state to allow the number of *active* voices to be known too...

also you could probably come up with a phase setting scheme that was
independent of total voice count. for example use a hashtable where
the voice number from thispoly~ would call a phase value.
1, 0
2, 180
3, 90
4, 45
5, 135
6, 22.5
7, 67.5
8, 112.5
9, 157.5
10, (keep splitting the differnce)

Mattijs's icon

Mattijs

you are propably right. The best way though would be if thispoly~ would simply output the total voice amount on bang.

Cheers,
Mattijs