Hi Liam,
>Two thoughts - you might want to reread what Bruce said. He
>mentions the reliability Win98SE not XP. If /when you go to XP it's
>a whole new ball game with XP.
Yes this is an important point. MIDI performance was pretty good in Win 3.1, fell off in Win 95 and 98, then returned in 98SE. It seems to have gotten worse again in Win2K. Win98SE is the most stable Windows musical platform I have seen. I have no idea if XP will be an improvement or not.
In my particular case, I also have some difficulties with other programs under Win2K, such as running the Korg CX-3 update program through the legacy port. In both cases -- AN1xEdit and the update -- I cannot even send the first packet of data, and in both cases, the actual data is quite large -- the CX-3 update takes 12-15 MINUTES to send via MIDI!
>2nd, successful bulk dumps are not indicative of much as there
>is NO error checking whatsoever - it's strictly hit or miss. You
>might want to reread some of the recent discussion regarding
>the packet size of SysEx strings from the AN1x to better
>appreciate why these problems occur. AN1x SysEx is a hog!
Just to put some perspective on it; these are all full SysEx dumps of gear I own or used to own, including global/system parameters:
AN1x bi-timbral VA synth 260,391 bytes
Alesis Quadraverb/S4 16-part multitimbral synth 77,776 bytes
Korg CX-3 modeled (VA-like) organ 19,025 bytes
RED Sound DarkStar 5-part multitimbral VA 32,928 bytes
Voce V3 modeled (VA-like) organ 16,392 bytes
Alesis DM5 drum machine 7,932 bytes
As can be seen, the AN1x uses a much larger SysEx file than many comparable keyboards. Some of this may be because of the complexity of the design, but I also feel that Yamaha made little attempt to streamline the data. Unfortunately, the large size means greater opportunities for error. In addition, the AN1x has no "send all data" command, so AN1xEdit has to ask for each patch and user sequence separately. This results in a good bit of MIDI traffic, which needs to interweave to complete the data dump.
Regards,
-BW
--
Bruce Wahler
Design Consultant
Ashby Solutions™
http://consult.ashbysolutions.comCloneWheel Support Group and HiNote moderator
978.386.7389 voice/fax
bruce@...