DiskPlayer feature request?

Question

Am I the only one who wishes there was a DiskPlayer with a "live" FilePosition parameter?

Comments

oh ... and an end point, too. :-)

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I would use a Sample or a SampleWithTimeIndex if I wanted to random-access segments of a file in real time.

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Of course, that's certainly possible. But I simply don't have the patience to wait for a really long sound file to load every time I edit the sound and have to recompile it. The one I working with currently is over 18 minutes. But it's not the first time I've wanted this feature.

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i've been touring with my custom made 'DJ' Sound in Kyma, which can random access from many  Disk files. It would take half of the average Sound check to load all the files into RAM at compile time. Instead I read them all from MultiFileDiskPlayers and scripted file selection. I create offline .txt files with my 'set list' , names of files, and Kyma reads from those specially named text files when the set gets compiled to run. This means I can work on what I will play offline, without Kyma attached. Its quite ok and encourages me to prepare more.

But yes, all files must then be played from the top. Its an interesting constraint I have to say, I have learnt how to perform well with this constraint in fact. I'm not sure I would play better if I could skip thru or drop into the files , but then again I haven't really tried. I really like the way Kyma plays slowed down files, it sounds great at 48K, more like slowing down tape or vinyl.

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I don't know for sure if I would use this wish-list feature in performance. I think mostly, I would use this feature during early exploratory experiments when working with a large source file. I could drop into various locations in the file and experiment with various live processing options. Instead I spent an afternoon creating dozens of DiskPlayers with various start times.

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Hey Mark, for the exploratory phase maybe you could set up a Multigrid with your long file in one track and various live processing options in another track (or tracks). Use a submix to route the disk track output to the track(s) with the live processing options. Then you could switch at will and, if you have more than one track with processing effects, you could also try different combinations of processing and effects.

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Another approach would be to use a Script to create a sequence of segments from your longer disk file. Put the DiskPlayer into a SetDuration and set the duration to ?Dur s. Set the FilePosition of your DiskPlayer to ?startTime s. Then you could write a Script to play back from a sequence of start positions and durations for your exploratory work.
You could combine this scripted playback with the Multigrid to try even more combinations.

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Another way to create new DiskPlayers with various start times and durations is:
Open the file in the WaveEditor
Select the segment you want
Do a copy (ctrl+c)
Paste into an open Sound file window or Timeline or Multigrid (ctrl+v)
That will paste a new DiskPlayer with the FilePosition and SetDuration already set to play exactly the segment you just selected.

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^^^ Hmmm on my system it doesn't create a DiskPlayer, but rather a sample player ... so it loads the entire 20' file, which takes "forever" .... or at least 30" before it starts playing.  But it's a cute trick. I didn't know about this one.

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Confirming this test produces a sample with time index on Kyma under Win 10.