Tutorials and Topics - Peabody Computer Music

Tutorial 4: Fundamentals—Routing signalsRemote signal connections: send~ and receive~The patch cords that connect MSP objects look different from normal patch cordsbecause they actually do something different. They describe the order of calculations in asignal network. The connected objects will be used to calculate a whole block of samplesfor the next portion of sound.Max objects can communicate remotely, without patch cords, with the objects send andreceive (and some similar objects such as value and pv). You can transmit MSP signalsremotely with send and receive, too, but the patch cord(s) coming out of receive will nothave the yellow-and-black striped appearance of the signal network (because a receiveobject doesn’t know in advance what kind of message it will receive). Two MSP objectsexist specifically for remote transmission of signals: send~ and receive~.send and receive for Max messages; send~ and receive~ for signalsThe two objects send~ and receive~ work very similarly to send and receive, but are only foruse with MSP objects. Max will allow you to connect normal patch cords to send~ andreceive~, but only signals will get passed through send~ to the corresponding receive~. TheMSP objects send~ and receive~ don’t transmit any Max messages besides signals.There are a few other important differences between the Max objects send and receive andthe MSP objects send~ and receive~.1. The names of send and receive can be shortened to s and r; the names of send~ andreceive~ cannot be shortened in the same way.2. A Max message can be sent to a receive object from several other objects besides send,such as float, forward, grab, if, int, and message; receive~ can receive a signal only from asend~ object that shares the same name.3. If receive has no typed-in argument, it has an inlet for receiving set messages to set orchange its name; receive~ also has an inlet for that purpose, but is neverthelessrequired to have a typed-in argument.74