The Logic Off Topic list

Thoughts from the mind of litepipe, 24-04-2001:

>  > This depends on the structure of the Emu.  Can you, using the Emu's
>>  front panel, do the things you describe (i.e. edit the multitimbral
>>  setup _and_ edit parameters for the constituting programs at the same
>>  time)?
>
>   Well, kind of... I can acces the presets in multi-timbral mode. But the
>keyboard has this "safety" feature that doesn't save any of the tweaks once
>you switch to a differant preset. That is unless you save the changes which
>I don't want to do. So, if I tweak the preset on channel 2 and then want to
>tweak the preset on channel 8 it doesn't remember the tweak on channel 2.
>Drag!!

The immediate consequence of this must be that what you want is just 
not possible.  There generally is no way to "cheat" the synth by 
using sysex.  Remember, using sysex is (in a sense) nothing more than 
tweaking knobs from a remote location.  If you can't do something 
with the physical knobs, you've got a 99.9% chance that it can't be 
done with sysex either.

>  >if you
>>  drag a slider up quite fast, you would soon be generating tons of
>>  sysex, having the synth flip back & forth between various modes --
>>  which the synth might find hard (or impossible) to digest.
>
>   I noticed this from experimenting with various commands for SYSEX faders.
>With a couple of them my keyboard went buggy.

Be very careful with this stuff.  I've had my synth crash on me 
several times while experimenting with sysex and LA's environment. 
And 'crash' meant: synth went dead, power off, power on again, and 
discover that the entire memory had been erased.  If in such a case 
you don't have a backup of the entire state of the machine (which I 
fortunately had), you're really in for a bad day... :-/

In general it would be a good idea to find a way to store the entire 
machine's memory somewhere on harddisk, before trying any 'dangerous' 
experiments (where building a large editing environment in LA already 
counts as dangerous).
With the sysex knowledge you now have, you should be able to make a 
pushbutton in the environment that sends out e.g. an "all memory dump 
request" (or whatever it's called)  (in LA: make a fader with a 
button look, a range of 0-0, and an out-definition of sysex).  Put 
Logic in record mode, hit this button, and record the incoming sysex 
on a track.  Save the song, and you'll have your backup...

>  > Well, editing the multi-timbral parameters for individual programs
>>  should be possible (stuff like relative volume, midi channel, maybe
>>  "keyzone", etc) -- but that's obviously not the same as editing
>>  program parameters (filter attack time, LFO waveshape, etc.).
>
>     I guess I'll have to get over this dream. It sure would be a nice
>feature, wouldn't it? Does Sound Diver allow you to achieve this without
>altering the keyboards default presets?

No, no way.  SoundDiver does nothing more than you -- use sysex to 
talk to the Emu.  The Emu may have some sort of editbuffer system -- 
i.e. the sound you're editing is in a temporary buffer.  Hitting the 
'write' button writes the buffer to permanent memory.  Starting an 
edit for a new sound without hitting 'write' first, will overwrite 
the edits you made and load the new sound.  Obviously there's no way 
_any_ program would be able to work around such an architecture. 
Software is not almighty -- far from it, in fact :-).

In theory a sort of workaround _would_ be possible, but that would 
involve sending tons of sysex back & forth -- not something you 
really want, for various reasons.  But a workaround could be:
Reserve e.g. program locations 1-16 for editing purposes (functioning 
as 16 seperate edit buffers, thus overcoming the machine's 
1-editbuffer limitation).  Then in multitimbral mode, pick the 
programs you want to use.  The software now should copy those 16 
programs to locations 1-16.  Whenever you edit one of the parameters 
of a sound, the original sound is left alone and the copy is edited 
instead.  After each edit, a Write Request is sent to make the edit 
permanent.  Etc.  Picking a new program for e.g. channel 7, would 
copy _that_ program to slot 7, etc.  You get the picture.
In practice this would mean: send sysex dump request for "Organ 64", 
receive this dump in the computer, send it back to the Emu to program 
location 7 (repeat 16 times for 16 programs), then you change a 
parameter so: flip to program-mode, program 7 (non multitimbral), 
send sysex parameter change, send write request, flip back to 
multitimbral mode.  Not very feasible...

>    Thanks for all the tremendous help!! It wasn't a waste I assure you.

Good, glad I could be of help.  And you're welcome.


cheers,
Hendrik Jan
-- 
     Hendrik Jan Veenstra    ( h@... )