Im not sure what the best way is to instantiate variable number of objects, for example consider polysynth.pd:

Theres a fixed number of manually placed voices, suppose I want to have the top patch to contain a counter through which one may increase or decrease the number of voices, how would I go about that (without manually placing a load of voices and disabling them...)?

Whats the vanilla way to do this? Whats the pd-extended way to do this? ...