Dave Smith Instruments SYNTHESIZERS

Hi,

I wrote the message below to a list member (Marc) but my e-mail gets 
bounced back. It concerns an off-list message Marc sent me re last 
week's thread "evolver and poly questions?". I thought it appropriate 
to post it here instead.

Best to all,

Tomas.



On 16 Feb 2007, at 21:27, nick wrote:

> hi thomas
> does the sysex message really works ?
> Is the correct format for mek-part 1
> F0 01 20 01 51 0 F7 ?
>
>> Of course, for this to work you need a MIDI controller attached to
> your PER that is able to send sysex, so I'm not sure this helps...>
>
> perhaps it could help: the midi solutions processer transforms midi
> messages in sysex messages, so probably you can choose the different
> PER-part through a common midi note or cc message. I've not tried
> already. I've also read, that DSI uses a special sysex format (two
> nibbles???) so not every sysex controller is able to generate the
> appropriate message
>
> best regards
> marc
>


Hi Marc,

It works for me. I do the following: I have a Mono Evolver Desktop, a 
Poly Evolver Rack, and a MIDI controller (BCR 2000) all attached to a 
MIDI  interface (AMT8), which talks to my Mac running Logic Pro 6. 
Since the BCR does not send sysex, I cannot send the sysex string

F0 01 20 01 51 xx F7   (where xx=00 to 03, depending on the part of the 
PER I want to select)

directly from it to the PER. Instead I send a MIDI CC message from the 
BCR (I use CC 58 on channel 1, but of course this doesn't matter much) 
into Logic, which translates this into the sysex string above (the 
value of CC 58 determines the part 00 to 03). In Logic I use a 
transformer object to do this translation, but also the MIDI Solutions 
Processor should be able to do this.

On the other hand, if you have a MIDI controller which does send sysex, 
you can directly send the sysex string from there. Every controller 
that sends sysex should be able to do this. The problem with some MIDI 
controllers---Novation?---is that their knobs are unable to send more 
than 128 different values, while some of the parameters of Evolver have 
more values to choose from. This is not a problem here since we only 
have four values (00 to 03).

If you do not have a MIDI controller, but you do have the MIDI 
Solutions Processor (or something else that will turn MIDI messages 
into sysex), you could also do something like this: the MED (or MEK) 
sends out a bank message (CC 32) when you change banks, so you could 
translate this CC 32 into the sysex string above and let the bank (1 to 
4) determine the value (00 to 03). In this way you could select a part 
on the PER by selecting a bank in the MED. (I tried this using Logic as 
a translator and it works.)

This would also work with any other CC messages which Evolver sends 
out, but the bank messages seem appropriate.

However, in each of these cases, when you are changing parameters of 
the PER by turning knobs on the MED (or MEK), the parameters of the MED 
will be changed as well, so that when programming the PER via the MED 
this way, you 'lose' the voice of the MED.

Hope this helps.

All the best,

Tomas.