Why Does MIDI Hate Me

[Me$$iah]

Aaarrghhh

I am pulling my hair out with this. And I know its gonna be something simple Im just not seeing.
I have a couple of external fx boxes, which I love the sounds from. Ive been 'happy' up till now editing using the front panels.
However I finally decided I should try using the editing software.
This is where my problems start.
The softwares just cant see by fx. I have no idea why. Ive got the MIDI leads plugged in, load up the software and nope it cant see the box.
I have tried 2 boxes with 2 different softwares and nope. They just cant see em. Why could this be.
Ive tried various leads, different cards MIDI ports (luna/Pulsar) and a dozen diffent things in the routing window.

What am I missing??

I just cant get this to work. I have no problem feeding MIDI into my sequencer from my keys, and back out again. But this just aint having it.
Any help on this would be most welcome.

Thanks

[at0m]

For routing, I'm just stating the obvious: Software > Scope Seq Src > Scope MIDI Out > Device and again in reverse. You can have more complex chains, but that's the most basic.

Not sure what software you use, but it usually uses SysEx. For these System Exclusive messages to be read, and at least for the device to respond, they need a certain "ID", for in case you have multiple units on the same chain, and sometimes other system settings need to be adjusted: when "Filter SysEx" is enabled for example, the device won't read incoming SysEx. You can change these settings both in the device and in the editor, check their manuals. Usually at the end of the unit's manual comes the MIDI specs and SysEx settings.

Another possibility is that the software sends at bit-/baud-rates that are too high for the hardware's MIDI ports. A solution is to go in the editor's settings and increase delays and buffers, to decrease wait times between messages etc.

I hope that's useful...

[Me$$iah]

Absolutly correct.... it does indeed use sysex.
However, despite how many tries it just aint seing the devices.

Ive tried them individually and in a chain. But to no avail. The most annoying thing is, on my second computer (I use this as a VST farm and drum sample box) both devices are seen with no problems. Going through a soundblaster live card. I mean if itll work with that it really should be as simple with my SC cards.

Im not even trying to go through cubase yet, just to use the editing software to back up my presets and create some new sounds.
Automating them with the sequencer is gonna be another punch in the eye, I guess.

Increase the software buffers, you say, ok. I'll give it a go.

thanks guys.

[astroman]

if Cubase is running while you use the controller application, it may block the respective port
if you have a midi filter on against active sensing and such stuff, it may block sysex
and of course the messed cable... done this a hundred times

cheers, Tom

[siriusbliss]

sequencer source/dest modules pointing to the editor?
Add a separate MIDI I/O module and plug a MIDI monitor to the incoming source as well as after where you have the editor connected (separate seq. source).

Otherwise you can also use MIDI-OX to monitor all incoming traffic and see if there is any filtering going on.

I've dealt with editors that preferred only one MIDI channel rather than omni, so I agree that this might be a possible problem.

Greg

[at0m]

Right, that channel's sometimes called "control channel": if you have 2 units in a chain, you can send for example program change messages to a specific device.

What if you just manually dump the unit's SysEx and record it in your MIDI sequencer, ie. Cubase? Of course check Cubase's MIDI filter settings. You should then see a single event after the recording: a whole stream of SysEx can be viewed/edited from the Event List there. From the SysEx, one can see weither it arrives or not, and, when the device uses a control channel, which it is. Then set the editor to that same channel.

If it recorded fine, it should also receive it: now send that recorded bank back to the device. Its display should show something along the line of "Receiving SysEx".

For the Pc1600x, when I don't have a bi-directional connection, I can also manually dump SysEx to the editor, which then has to be put in sort of a "listening mode". It then waits for incoming SysEx, as opposed to sending a trigger signal to the Pc1600x for it to dump whatever back to the editor.

During these SysEx transmissions, good practice is to not have any other traffic on the line.


But my bets are still on timing and buffer settings, both in the editor and in the hardware unit: increase delays, decrease sending block sizes, increase receiving buffer,... Just make both the device and the editor go real slow on Scope's MIDI IO

Hey, Me$$iah, automating the devices will be easier, and more straight-forward: usually that uses CC# instead of SysEx, that's easy to draw from controller lanes in the sequencer.