[maxmsp] Big set - CPU strategy ?

Hi list.

And quite new to MAx (6 months now) and need some assistance on a particular point. 

I'm currently working on the musical part of a dance performance.

I have 10 different sets (patches). They all deal with real-time audio or video processing, using contact mics and/or video tracking.

Now the problem is: they all work fine independently, but if i want the audio to be continuous between the scenes  (making transitions), i need to load and run at least 2 patches at the same time (1 + 2 / 2 + 3 / 3 + 4 etc...)

So I tried different approaches for this, the first is one mega-patch containing all ten subpatches, and muting (with mute~) all unused patches successively, but even whith muting, i have severe audio dropouts and clicks.

The other approach was having a "control center" patch loading externally all the patches one after the other with always 2 sets open at the same time. (Opening nr 3 closes nr 1, opening nr 4 closes nr 2, etc...) but i also have (sometimes long) audio interruptions during loading times.

So... i'm wondering if you can share some knowledge to help me solve this issue.

(And oh yes... i also have to run Ableton Live in parallel to route some audio back and forth. But the problem arise even without Live)

Thanks in advance !

Philippe

max 4.6.3 with MBP 2,33 dualcore 2 Gb Ram