Patches and discussion for Ensoniq VFX family

Greetings,

I tried to import a number of the .syx files from the archives found here, and can't get any of the patches to show up in Sounddiver 3.  I also tried sending them directly with a Sysex utility, and none of them will transfer to the VFX.  Is there something specific about the format used with these files that may help me to understand what to do?

The Lot Converted.zip
Sounds.zip
patches.zip

Thanks

neurokrash,

You know to unzip these first, right? Do they unzip fine for you?

I believe the base channel of your VFX has to be set the same as the
base channel of the VFX the sysex dump was taken from in the first
place.  The base channel is usually set to 1 for trading between
people.

I looked at a hex dump of the first few bytes of the first file in The
Lot Converted.zip, and it looks fine, with base channel of 0 in hex,
which means channel 1 (the midi standard says the channel numbers are
0-15 in binary as transmitted, but should be displayed to the user as
1-16).

Do you know for certain your midi cable / connection is good, i.e. your
computer can cause the vfx to play notes from a sequencer or similar?

Is sysex receive turned on?  Press the sytem control MIDI button a
copule of times; first check BASE-CHAN to see if it set to one, then
look for SYS-EX and make sure its ON.

That's all I really have to offer, I hope this helps somehow.  If not,
a complete description of what you're using: What brand/model midi
interface?  What platform are you on (windows / mac / other)?

-> Steve

On Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 04:34:32AM -0000, neurokrash wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> I tried to import a number of the .syx files from the archives found here, and can't get any of the patches to show up in Sounddiver 3.  I also tried sending them directly with a Sysex utility, and none of them will transfer to the VFX.  Is there something specific about the format used with these files that may help me to understand what to do?
> 
> The Lot Converted.zip
> Sounds.zip
> patches.zip
> 
> Thanks
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------
> 
> Yahoo! Groups Links
> 
> 
> 
-- 
Steve Wahl    steve@...

One day, the light bulb in the fridge burnt out, and I thought to myself,
"At least now I know it's off when the door's closed... Or do I?"

> You know to unzip these first, right? Do they unzip fine for you?

Yes, no problem unzipping.  All of the files contained appear as intended.  I tried unzipping on both a PC and Mac in case one was corrupting the files.

> I believe the base channel of your VFX has to be set the same as the
> base channel of the VFX the sysex dump was taken from in the first
> place.  The base channel is usually set to 1 for trading between
> people.

That I probably do not have set to 1, which could explain why the direct sysex dump did nothing.

> Do you know for certain your midi cable / connection is good, i.e. your
> computer can cause the vfx to play notes from a sequencer or similar?

Yes - Sounddiver 3.1 is able to communicate with the VFX and both transmit and receive sounds.  I replaced the internal copy of the ROM sounds with the ones from one of the cartridges, and retrieved all the patch names to put into Logic.  I was also able to send a sysex dump from the VFX to an Atari and store it.
 
> Is sysex receive turned on?  Press the sytem control MIDI button a
> copule of times; first check BASE-CHAN to see if it set to one, then
> look for SYS-EX and make sure its ON.

It seems to be on and functioning, at least Sounddiver can successfully communicate via sysex.
> 
> That's all I really have to offer, I hope this helps somehow.  If not,
> a complete description of what you're using: What brand/model midi
> interface?  What platform are you on (windows / mac / other)?

I have a Mac G4 (mirrored drive door version) with Sounddiver 3.1 (OSX Beta).  The MIDI interface is an emagic AMT 8 connected via USB.  I've also tried using Sounddiver 2 ST and Dump-it on an Atari TT030 connected to the VFX directly using the built-in Atari MIDI ports.

When attempting import the sysex files into Sounddiver, they show up as blank with no entries.

I'll try changing the VFX channel to 1 a little later and report back.

Thanks!

> 
> -> Steve
> 
> On Tue, Jun 09, 2009 at 04:34:32AM -0000, neurokrash wrote:
> > Greetings,
> > 
> > I tried to import a number of the .syx files from the archives found here, and can't get any of the patches to show up in Sounddiver 3.  I also tried sending them directly with a Sysex utility, and none of them will transfer to the VFX.  Is there something specific about the format used with these files that may help me to understand what to do?
> > 
> > The Lot Converted.zip
> > Sounds.zip
> > patches.zip
> > 
> > Thanks
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > ------------------------------------
> > 
> > Yahoo! Groups Links
> > 
> > 
> > 
> -- 
> Steve Wahl    steve@...
> 
> One day, the light bulb in the fridge burnt out, and I thought to myself,
> "At least now I know it's off when the door's closed... Or do I?"
>

I can recommend SysEx Librarian - dumb and stupid but works.

On Thu, 2009-06-11 at 13:57 -0700, Joe McMahon wrote:
> I can recommend SysEx Librarian - dumb and stupid but works.

I use amidi on Linux.  It doesn't do anything clever, just send the file
as given out over a raw MIDI port.

Gordon.

Hi Folks

at the risk of being repetitive, don't forget that the VFX series like 
their SysEx delivered to them S-L-O-W-L-Y, in-fact VERY slowly.  I used 
to use an old sysex transfer programme in OS-9 exclusively simply 
because it let you slow the transmit speed down (a lot).

(and yes, for those wanting to be technically accurate, the bus speed at 
which midi works is fixed (32k isn't it?), BUT the packets are sent with 
time delays between them when one "slows" the transfer down. The vfx 
likes this approach a lot!!).

This caused me endless grief until I found this out this key bit of info...


Good luck with it



Cheers

Roger 
(the mighty and omnipotent poster of "the lot)

Okay, first I tried importing the syx files into Sounddiver 3 for the Mac, which produced empty lists of nothing.  Then I tried importing them into Sounddiver 3 for the PC, which brought up the patches and filenames, but on every attempt to put the patches in a library, the program would crash.  Great.  Finally, I fired up an Atari TT030 with Sounddiver 2, and can properly open and build a library from these sysex files.

I think the reason that I couldn't communicate directly with the VFX before was that there was a mismatch in device id - a separate issue.

So, I'm going to take a stab at putting all of these patches into a Sounddiver library (or a few).  Is anyone interested?

Thanks

I am uploading the Sounddiver 2 and Sounddiver 3.1 libraries for "The Lot" into the files area.  I had to delete one or two patches with blank filenames that were crashing the program, and will replace these if I find any other errors or omissions.

Cheers