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.
hello.
thanks for the answer, so in a way it is a rational construction
to save cpu time. exactly this i figured out for instance with the snapshot conversion
and a fast metro, and i thought it might be better to have just one
stream of data instead of converting the different streams back and forth, but
this thinking was wrong. i am amused that this still is a issue at these times.
m