Bc2000 (for the BCF2000 & BCR2000)

--- In bc2000@yahoogroups.com, "muziekschuur" <fvandenberg@...> wrote:
> I own a BCA2000. I assume the midi interface of the BCA is the same as 
> the other BCx devices. I use it to connect to a Behringer FCB1010. I 
> use an application called Ripwerx. It is able to do a looptest using a 
> large sysex message. (see FCB1010 UNo group here in yahoogroups). Are 
> you aware of such a limitation in the behringer midi interface 
> implementation or is this an error by Mike Reilley the programmer of 
> Ripwerx. 
> 
> I have another application, able to send an sysex to the FCB1010 over 
> the BCA2000
> 
> I'm not sure this is an application or software incompatibility.

I've looked at your correspondence with Mike in the FCB1010uno-group.
(Perhaps I should mention at this point that I have an FCB1010 myself,
and I have also written my own (never-published) FCB1010 editor. I
don't have the uno-chip, though.)

The MIDI setup you're using is quite complex: the MIDI data flows
through several software and hardware layers. The fact that Dixon's
editor does go well would seem to indicate that it's a problem at
least in part related to Mike's program. But the problem might lie
elsewhere too. For one thing, the FCB1010 is notorious for its quirky
handling of MIDI data.

To make a comparison (as you're suggesting) between the BCA2000 and
the BCF/BCR2000 is somewhat tricky, since the BCF/BCR2000 operate in
several different connection modes. I don't know how the BCA works in
this respect, so it's perhaps not immediately clear what any test
results actually mean. However, for what it's worth, I've just done a
small experiment that might be relevant:

I sent SysEx messages of varying lengths (containing only zeros in
between the obligatory F0 and F7) from a sequencer program (Sonar 6,
as it happens) to my BCF2000 via its USB MIDI connection. The BCF
passed these messages on to its standard MIDI Out, then that was
looped back directly to its standard MIDI In, and sent back to the
computer via the USB MIDI connection. There the messages were captured
by a MIDI monitoring program.

It turned out that SysEx messages of 1020 bytes or longer (counting
the starting F0 and finishing F7 as well) were returned incorrectly.
In fact, the longer the message, the more bytes disappeared. So a
message of 1019 bytes was returned correctly, but in case of 1020
bytes, the return message was only 1017 (!) bytes long (in fact, the
terminating F7 was missing, so the Windows MIDI input driver returned
an error saying "invalid MIDI message". And a SysEx message of 5000
bytes returned as 4984 bytes, so 16 were swallowed.

So the SysEx handling of the BCF/BCR2000 (or its drivers) indeed seems
faulty, and it would be interesting for you to do a similar experiment
with your BCA2000 to see if the exact same limitation exists. (Just
leave the FCB1010 out of the loop, to avoid complications.)

One other thing you might try: does the Ripwerx looptest to the
FCB1010 go well when you route it through the MIDI I/O ports of a
standard (non-USB) MIDI computer interface (e.g. a cheap, standard
sound card) instead of the BCA2000?

Mark.