Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

2012/10/13 steve_the_composer <smw-mail@...>:
> Nice detailed reply here!! I have added a few comments (basically footnotes) below. Hope they help.

Thanks, glad you liked it. I

> Steve: I think the wearing out of flash RAM is a good point. Somewhere there is a discussion of the life span of the RAM.
>
> Steve: I do believe you can stack parameter edits within a single sysex message by specifying sets of parameter id and value pairs. (Please double check me on this.) If I am right, you could change (for example) the edit layer pointers and the values for each of 4 layers all in one sysex command.

Yes, I even think it would be possible to do something like this:
 - F0 + some standard SysEx voodoo for P2K
 - select preset A
 - do stuff to preset A
 - select preset B
 - do stuff to preset B
 - F7

Didn't test it though.

> Steve: Perhaps to not wear out memory and create sysex storms, it might be possible to filter what gets sent out such that if a slider on the controller goes from min to max rapidly, not all of that gets sent out.

Some controllers simply allow you to adjust their "verbosity", so you
don't have to filter anything.

> Steve: Yeah!! This is kinda what I have had in mind--the ability to tweak a whole bunch of sound parameters on different channels. The 16 E-Mu knobs are nice, but you still have to flip channels (unless you have the different channels programmed, but you are still limited to 16 at once).

...or you have an external controller with a bunch of knobs, that can
be assigned to different channels - or having ONE knob sending TWO
different messages on TWO different channels (BRC2000, I'm looking at
you).

>> And if you want to change arp patterns for multiple presets at once
>> AND you know upfront the relevant combinations, you can use multis,
>> pointing to the same presets but with different arp patterns. Not sure
>> though, how fast it can happen - after all you recall almost complete
>> sound module setup, with 32 presets, FX settings etc.
>
> Steve: Hmmmmm. Its been a while since I switched multis on the fly; not sure how much of a glicth there would--mainly because there is a bunch of data that gets changed with multis. Instead, it might be better to have an external controller with buttons to switch just those parameters that need to be switched--basically emulating multis, but without changing everything. For example, 16 buttons to send out "psuedo multis" (just the data needed) with some sort of toggle to select banks of 16 multis.

Which would boil down to just sending Program Change messages. If
switching FXs is expensive (in terms of time), then it makes perfect
sense.

> Steve: I think this is a great discussion! It is making me want to carve out time to get back into designing my ardunio-based midi controller.

I'm planning to hijack the mind of my more tech-savvy friend to get a
MIDI-equipped Arduino, and then learn how to program this beast. Of
course that would leave me with about 4 hrs of sleep per day, but...

Anyway, I would say that emulating P2K's arp engine should be quite
easy, since - while it has some interesting features, like latching -
it's not very sophisticated, so an Arduino would do. Also, while we're
at it, why not to just make the MIDIBOX SEQv4...

Cheers,

Bruno