referencing files

bassfalk's icon

Here's a real beginner's question. How can I reference files in Max (both audio and video), so that they can be played back instantly when a patch is loaded? I've searched for some time but didn't find it, and I suppose this should be quite simple.

Thanks for help!

Luke Hall's icon

You can refer to them by their complete path anywhere on your computer. If you leave this path in a [message] object and use [loadbang] (or even [loadmess]) to trigger it when your patch loads it should work.

On a sidenote a quick way to grab the path is to hook [dropfile] up to a [message] box and throw your file at it.

Roman Thilenius's icon

generally, save yourself the trouble with full paths and put files you use in max
in the search path - then you can call them by filename only.

the only drawback is that file names like "track.aif" wont work well anymore
because sooner or later you will have 3 files with that name.