Why is soundfiler outputting the sample rate, not number of samples, in Pure Data?

Question

I tried copying the help file example for soundfiler, but my soundfiler keeps outputting the sample rate of the file, not the total number of samples read, unlike the example does and the documentation says it should.

(I know the output is not the total number of samples because I've used different files and it keeps outputting 44104.)

Can anyone see what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

By default, soundfiler has a maximum length to load. In the Pd console you will see the message

soundfiler_read: truncated to 4000000 elements  

that will alert you of the truncation. So soundfiler stops reading when it hits the max.

To fix this, change your read message to include -resize and in the properties of the array increase the size to like 400000000.

Background info: soundfiler reads sound files to memory as fast as possible, it will not wait for other processes and therefore will stop audio playback and the GUI will be unresponsive for this time. To avoid unintended lock-up of Pd when loading a long sample this arbitrary limitation exists that the user can override.