Tutorials and Topics - Peabody Computer Music

Tutorial 1Fundamentals:Test tone...so they look a little differentThe names of all MSP objects end with the tilde character (~). This character, which lookslike a cycle of a sine wave, just serves as an indicator to help you distinguish MSP objectsfrom other Max objects.The patch cords between MSP objects have stripes. This helps you distinguish the MSPsignal network from the rest of the Max patch.MSP objects are connected by striped patch cordsDigital-to-analog converter: dac~The digital-to-analog converter (DAC) is the part of your computer that translates thestream of discrete numbers in a digital audio signal into a continuous fluctuating voltagewhich will drive your loudspeaker.Once you have calculated a digital signal to make a computer-generated sound, you mustsend the numbers to the DAC. So, MSP has an object called dac~, which generally is theterminal object in any signal network. It receives, as its input, the signal you wish to hear.It has as many inlets as there are available channels of audio playback. If you are usingCore Audio (or WWWW on Windows) to play sounds directly from your computer’saudio hardware, there are two output channels, so there will be two inlets to dac~. (If youare using more elaborate audio output hardware, you can type in an argument to specifyother audio channels.)dac~ plays the signalImportant! dac~ must be receiving a signal of non-zero amplitude in order for you to hearanything. dac~ expects to receive signal values in the range -1.0 to 1.0. Numbers thatexceed that range will cause distortion when the sound is played.58