Yamaha DTXpress/DTXplorer/DTXtreme

Geez - this site looks comprehensive - to a scarey sort of level! I 
recently bought a DTXII and so far I love it. But . . .
yesterday I reverted to the 'factory' defaults and I seem to have 
lost a few of the preset kit sounds. Has anyone else had this 
problem - and any tips on how to rectify?
The other thing that's happened is my kick drum now seems to 
have all sorts of sensitivity that it didn't have before - going from 
very soft to quite punchy even though I'm using a constant weight 
of hit from my pedal. Any ideas would be most appreciated.
Mark.

--- In DTXpress@yahoogroups.com, "Mark" <marf@d...> wrote:
> Geez - this site looks comprehensive - to a scarey sort of level! I 
> recently bought a DTXII and so far I love it. But . . .
> yesterday I reverted to the 'factory' defaults and I seem to have 
> lost a few of the preset kit sounds. Has anyone else had this 
> problem - and any tips on how to rectify?
> The other thing that's happened is my kick drum now seems to 
> have all sorts of sensitivity that it didn't have before - going 
from 
> very soft to quite punchy even though I'm using a constant weight 
> of hit from my pedal. Any ideas would be most appreciated.

Hello Mark,

Welcome to the group. I assume that you bought the DTXP2 used. A 
reset shouldn't affect the preset kits at all, but it would delete 
the previous owner's elective kits (49-end) completely. You'd have to 
program your own user kits, and this time download something like 
DTXchange to store them on your PC, just in case you had to reset 
again. The group also has access to a PC text editor for the DTXP2 
that will make life easier for you working with sysex. 

The factory reset might also have removed a previous owner's trigger 
setting for the kick that cut down on its dynamic range. If your 
DTXP2 wasn't a second-hand purchase, then troubleshooting would be 
more complicated. Please advise whether we need to wear our heavy-
duty thinking caps.

Ed

Hi Ed
thanks for the swift reply. No - as a matter of fact it was brand new and still in 
the box when I bought it. Thanks for the tips about sysex etc, but I haven't the 
foggiest what that means - sorry. I DO have a pc  - a mac  - but no sound card 
or interface so I guess that makes downloading a bit useless (?)
Sorry if I sound totally uninformed, but the world of e-drums and midi is all 
quite new to me - thankfully there are forums like this!

Mark.

> 
> Hello Mark,
> 
> Welcome to the group. I assume that you bought the DTXP2 used. A 
> reset shouldn't affect the preset kits at all, but it would delete 
> the previous owner's elective kits (49-end) completely. You'd have to 
> program your own user kits, and this time download something like 
> DTXchange to store them on your PC, just in case you had to reset 
> again. The group also has access to a PC text editor for the DTXP2 
> that will make life easier for you working with sysex. 
> 
> The factory reset might also have removed a previous owner's trigger 
> setting for the kick that cut down on its dynamic range. If your 
> DTXP2 wasn't a second-hand purchase, then troubleshooting would be 
> more complicated. Please advise whether we need to wear our heavy-
> duty thinking caps.
> 
> Ed

--- In DTXpress@yahoogroups.com, "Mark" <marf@d...> wrote:
> Hi Ed
> thanks for the swift reply. No - as a matter of fact it was brand 
new and still in 
> the box when I bought it. Thanks for the tips about sysex etc, but 
I haven't the 
> foggiest what that means - sorry. I DO have a pc  - a mac  - but no 
sound card 
> or interface so I guess that makes downloading a bit useless (?)
> Sorry if I sound totally uninformed, but the world of e-drums and 
midi is all 
> quite new to me - thankfully there are forums like this!

Mark,

Did you do the factory reset because you knew about the bug that we 
discovered on the DTXP2, or because you had been fiddling around with 
the buttons without much rhyme or reason? I'm still wondering whether 
the differences that you noticed afterward were the result of 
eliminating changes that you inadvertently had made. If that's not 
the case, it would help if you could tell us which default kit sounds 
you lost (they're all listed in the back of the manual) and how you 
noticed? Even though your description could mean that something is 
wrong with your unit, we just don't know enough at this point to say 
so, and the odds are definitely against it. 

Would you mind telling me where you bought it, and what the deal was? 
Ever since the DTXP3 was on the radar scope, the 2 became difficult 
to find brand new. Just because it was nicely wrapped in the box 
doesn't necessarily mean that no one had tinkered with it (I'm not 
just being a skeptic; it could have been a floor model or a return). 
If someone did program changes into it before you bought it, you ight 
have lost them with the reset.

The sysex is the software in the module that stores, organizes, and 
interprets the signals that you enter when you hit the pads and set 
the parameters. Let's get the basics down first, and then we can deal 
with extras like text editors, MIDI connections, and the like. Forget 
that I mentioned it.

Ed

emf said:
> The sysex is the software in the module that stores, organizes, and
> interprets the signals that you enter when you hit the pads [snip]

hmmm not exactly... The software in the module would be referred to as
"firmware" as it is stored in a solid-state memory chip (usually an
EPROM).

SYSEX stands for SYSTEM-EXCLUSIVE and it refers to MIDI codes that are
outside of (seen as an extension to) the agreed upon MIDI spec. SYSEX
codes are defined by each manufacturer for use with their specific
product(s).

M.I.D.I. (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a *standard* and so
the data that can be sent and received by a device must strictly conform
to that standard. Only instruments that do conform to the standard may
display a MIDI logo. Compliance with the spec. will insure the device
will interact with other MIDI devices.

Though the MIDI spec defines a huge amount of data (have a look here
http://www.borg.com/~jglatt/tech/midispec.htm ), there will always be a
case when it would benefit a device to be able to send data that is
specific to itself. So, when you use a SYSEX editor to alter settings on
your DTXpress, you're using codes that are sent on the MIDI interface,
but only "make sense" to a specific device.

For example, the SYSEX dump utility we use to offload all the settings
from the DTXpress would not work with a Roland module (and vice versa),
through both the Roland and the Yamaha are MIDI standard devices, their
SYSEX codes and data would not be compatible with each other.

Clear as mud? :)

Vern

-- 
Vern Graner CNE/CNA/SSE    | "If the network is down, then you're
Senior Systems Engineer    | obviously incompetent so why are we
Texas Information Services | paying you? Of course, if the network
http://www.txis.com        | is up, then we obviously don't need
Austin Office 512 328-8947 | you, so why are we paying you?" \ufffdVLG

--- In DTXpress@yahoogroups.com, "Vernon Graner" <vern@t...> wrote:
 
> hmmm not exactly... The software in the module would be referred to 
as
> "firmware" as it is stored in a solid-state memory chip (usually an
> EPROM).

Thank you, Vern. Spoken like a true systems analyst. :-) By the way, 
how the hell are you?

Ed

emf said:
>Spoken like a true systems analyst. :-) By the way,
> how the hell are you?
>
> Ed


Sad to say my dtxpress kit has a nice layer of dust growing on it. They
laid off the other tech where I work and I'm now the only one in our
division. Of course, they gave me 100% of the other guy's workload... :(

Vern

-- 
Vern Graner CNE/CNA/SSE    | "If the network is down, then you're
Senior Systems Engineer    | obviously incompetent so why are we
Texas Information Services | paying you? Of course, if the network
http://www.txis.com        | is up, then we obviously don't need
Austin Office 512 328-8947 | you, so why are we paying you?" \ufffdVLG

OK - the kit was sealed in its box with big staples etc, so I don't think it had 
been tampered with - it all looked absolutely kosher. I bought it in Sydney 
Australia, along with a Pearl Eliminator kick pedal (which is great by the way). 
The price for the lot was $1,900 Australian - about $US1,300 - which I thought 
was a pretty good deal.
Yes - I was fiddling about with sounds without rhyme, or indeed reason - I 
think I was trying  to replace a gong sounding cymbal with a crash at the time. 
The one kit sound I liked when I first played with the kit was GM Funky Sound 
(or something similar) - and that's the one I noticed is missing now. That's not 
such a big deal really - I'm sure I'll be able to work around it, but it's the kick 
pedal thing that's really bugging me more than anything. At one point in 
pressing buttons and navigating around, I had a display that was showing a 
percentage readout every time I hit the kick pedal - and it was all over the 
place. I've since gone into trigger settings and changed it from medium to 
'easy' and that's made it more like the feel I had before - but not quite the 
same. I'm baffled as to how the 'factory' set I had in the first place differs from 
the set I now have, because yesterday was the first time I'd had a go at 
changing anything.
Hope this isn't opening up a can of worms. . . 

> Did you do the factory reset because you knew about the bug that we 
> discovered on the DTXP2, or because you had been fiddling around with 
> the buttons without much rhyme or reason? I'm still wondering whether 
> the differences that you noticed afterward were the result of 
> eliminating changes that you inadvertently had made. If that's not 
> the case, it would help if you could tell us which default kit sounds 
> you lost (they're all listed in the back of the manual) and how you 
> noticed? Even though your description could mean that something is 
> wrong with your unit, we just don't know enough at this point to say 
> so, and the odds are definitely against it. 
> 
> Would you mind telling me where you bought it, and what the deal was? 
> Ever since the DTXP3 was on the radar scope, the 2 became difficult 
> to find brand new. Just because it was nicely wrapped in the box 
> doesn't necessarily mean that no one had tinkered with it (I'm not 
> just being a skeptic; it could have been a floor model or a return). 
> If someone did program changes into it before you bought it, you ight 
> have lost them with the reset.
> 
> The sysex is the software in the module that stores, organizes, and 
> interprets the signals that you enter when you hit the pads and set 
> the parameters. Let's get the basics down first, and then we can deal 
> with extras like text editors, MIDI connections, and the like. Forget 
> that I mentioned it.
> 
> Ed