Inte rlude A - Prog ramm ing with Max/MS P IA

This argument can be any string, and wha t is importa nt is that objects must share
the same argument string in order to commu nicate. A fl oat number box 1scon-
nected to the send object in th is patch, and every time the number changes,
it wi ll be transmitt ed to the receive object. send and receive are very
importa nt, and are used so ofte n that they can be abbreviated simply by using
their init ials 's' and 'r' . It is possible to transmit any message whatsoever, and if
t here are more than one receive objects with the same argument, the send
object w ill fan the same message out to all receivers (as shown in figure IA.69).

hellowhois there?
ls teleph one 1
hello who is there? 7
1

Fig. IA.69 The same message received by two receive obj ects

Natu rally, it is also possible to have mu ltiple send objects that share t he same
argument, and each w ill tra nsmit its message to all receive objects that pos-
sess this argument. The pair of obj ects becomes indispensable w hen maki ng
complicated patches, because it enables you to eliminate, for example, t he
pat ch cords betwee n objects t hat are far apart t hat wou ld in the end be graphi -
cally conf using. On the other hand, if there are too many send and receive
objects in a patch, it becomes diff icult to fo llow t he rout ing of messages. You
must, t herefo re, carefully balance the use of patch cords w it h t he use of wire -
less comm unication!
It is importan t to emphasize t hat send and receive objects fu lly replace
direct connection by patch cords. Two or more objects connected via send
and receive behave exactly as thou gh they were connected direct ly by patch
cords. This means, for example, t hat MSP signals con nected to send objects
w ith the same argument s sum their incom ing signa ls in exactly the same way
that signals connected to the same inlet wit h patch cords are summed .11
Open the fi le IA_07 _multisend .maxpat (show n in figu re IA.70 ).

r list <· the "receive" objec t receives the lists

l'.

b o.
[; oo
:~·o~o
b ~ ct:)~ ct:)ct:)~
In edit mode. create a second
message box with 10 numbers
and connect it to the [s list] objecl
l
1 0 -0.111 0 0.04 0 -0.02 0 0 0.012 0

> s list <- the ·send" object sends the lists

After this . switch to perfor mance mode and click
alternately on the two lists, observ ing how this
affects the boxes connected to the outlets of unpack

Fig. IA.70 The f ile IA_07_mult isend .maxpat

11 We spoke abo ut this property of M SP signals w hen discussing the fi le 01_06_glissandi.maxpat.

See figu res 1.33 and 1.34 in Section 1.3.

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