[LAU] one general question concerning puredata

[Paul Davis]

On Fri, 2008-11-14 at 19:45 +0100, maex at firstfloor.org wrote:
> hello again.
> 
> 
> while patching some examples in puredata, i tried to compare the datastream of [pd]
> and analog modular synthesizers for a better understanding of modular synthesis.
> the result is now this one question of the basic data stream desing of pd.
> why is there this difference of audio and data streams, because it isnt any
> in the analog domain. is it the domain question, digital/analog, or a datastream
> management need?

the short answer, in the terms your question was posed in, is datastream
management.

the slightly longer answer is that pure data (and max) are derived from
the original Music N language's conception of how to manage this kind of
thing (the same ideas still found in CSound and SuperCollider). even
though they have gone far beyond it, they continue to distinguish
between audio & control datastreams for reasons that are mostly related
to efficiency. there are many, many cases where control data being
delivered at a bits-per-second rate significantly below that of audio
(or even as a stream of events rather than a constant flow) is more than
adequate, and saves a lot of CPU cycles.