Audio output and on/off


dac~ acts as the link between your ideas in MSP and the real world. It is simply the Digital-To-Analog-Converter through which you will route all signals from MSP out to your computer speakers or audio hardware to be audible to the human ear. It also gives you access to the DSP-window which controls your audio settings and hardware.


Name Type Opt Description
number-of-output-channels int opt You can create a dac~ object that uses one or more audio output channel numbers between 1 and 512. These numbers refer to logical channels and can be dynamically reassigned to physical device channels of a particular driver using either the DSP Status window, its I/O Mappings subwindow, or an adstatus object with an output keyword argument.Arguments, If the computer's built-in audio hardware is being used, there will be two input channels available. Other audio drivers and/or devices may have more than two channels. If no argument is typed in, dac~ will have two inlets, for input channels 1 and 2.


int stop/start-flag (0 or nonzero) [int]
A non-zero number is the same as start. 0 is the same as stop.
list output-channel-designations [list]
A list comprised of integers, sets the logical output channels for each signal inlet in order from left to right.
(mouse) Double-clicking on dac~ opens the DSP Status window.
open Opens the DSP Status window.
set output-channel-designation [int]
In any inlet: The word set, followed by a number, sets the logical output channel for the signal inlet in which the set message was received. For instance, sending set 3 to the left inlet of dac~ makes the signal coming in the left inlet output to logical output channel 3.

Note that if the audio is on and you use the set message to change a dac~ to use logical channels that are not currently in use, no sound will be heard from these channels until the audio is turned off and on again. For example, if you have a dac~ object with arguments 1 2 3 4 and signals are only connected to the two leftmost inlets (for channels 1 and 2), the message set 1 3 will not immediately route the leftmost audio signal to logical channel 3, because it is not currently in use. A method to get around this is to connect a sig~0 to each channel of a dac~ you plan on using for a set message. At this point, you might as well use a matrix~ or selector~ object to do something similar before the audio signal reaches the dac~.
signal A signal coming into an inlet of dac~ is sent to the audio output channel corresponding to the inlet. The signal must be between -1 and 1 to avoid clipping by the DAC.
start Turns on audio processing in all loaded patches.
startwindow Turns on audio processing only in the patch in which this dac~ is located, and in subpatches of that patch. Turns off audio processing in all other patches.
stop Turns off audio processing in all loaded patches.
wclose Closes the DSP Status window if it is open.

Information for box attributes common to all objects


Audio: dac~ produces no output internal to the application. The signal received in the inlet is sent to its assigned logical audio output channel, which is mapped to a physical device output channel in the DSP Status window which is also made accessible via the dac~.


Switch audio on and off send signal to the audio outputs

See Also

Name Description
adc~ Audio input and on/off
adstatus Report and control audio driver settings
ezadc~ Audio input and on/off button
ezdac~ Audio output and on/off button
MSP: Audio Input and Output MSP: Audio Input and Output
MSP Tutorial 1: Test Tone MSP Tutorial 1: Test Tone