Susan G


Hi-

I agree with Frank, FWIW.  It's not as though if enough people pile on and tell Tom he's doing it "wrong" he'll suddenly see the "error of his ways". He's repeated what he wants to be able to do, and that he can do it in other sequencers, and that he wishes he could do it just as easily in SONAR, simple as that. There's no reason at all to ridicule him, IMO.

I almost always use an auto-send bank in Sysex Manager to set up my Motif with channels going to different audio outs, etc., and I'm really glad that feature's available.  I've never tried recording sysex in real time, but I do remember a while ago wondering why SONAR couldn't load/play back a .syx file in a MIDI track. That was basically just idle curiosity, since I had no need for it to, but it is possible in other sequencers. The largest sysex file I've played back that way contained 4244 bytes, but I don't know what the practical limit is, since that was my Motif's complete bulk dump.

The Sysx Banks can contain "one or more very large System Exclusive messages", but I also remember running into SONAR's 255-byte Data Event limit during my idle experiments. I'm sure there's a reason for the limit, but I don't know what it is. I suspect it's a "computer thing", much like the 128-byte limit on Text Events. Which isn't to say it couldn't be upped.

Tom, if SONAR let you insert a .syx file as a MIDI clip anywhere you wanted that might be a partial solution (?) -- assuming I'm reading you right (you'd still have to record it somehow, obviously).

I don't know how much support there'd be for it (not too much, judging from this thread!), but I guess the only way you could really do what you want is if they increase the Data Event size limit.

-Susan

NoKey


Hi Tom,

I don't recall you posting this:

"However, if you use the Sysx View (which can store up to 8,192 banks of SysEx messages), there is a way to 'embed' triggers for the SysEx banks in a track, and have them play back at any time."

,.... which the article above details, and explains how you can circumvent some limits.

daveny5


OK... we get it. So why not submit it as a feature request to the Sonar developers for a future release. That's how changes get made.

rbowser


Oh well.  In my own way, I was trying to be helpful.  Even though it's usually true that it's nearly impossible to convince someone to try a different approach, I thought I'd try to encourage you to try the more usual way of doing what you need, Tom, since wrestling with this Sysex approach has obviously been so maddening for you.

Speaking for myself, I didn't mean that what you're trying to do is the "wrong" way so much as the less efficient way.  I think that would be difficult to disagree with, since in post after post you've been showing us how convoluted and laborious your approach is.  And we've been trying to point out that all that hassle can be avoided with the simple, straight forward Patch Change approach.

I doubt if what you're asking for would be a feature request that would be taken very seriously, but of course I could be wrong.

The SysEx view is extremely helpful.  Once your customized data is parked in there, it becomes part of your project, and any number of hardware synths can be quickly set the way you want when you open up the project.  

Nobody's been suggesting you shouldn't use that- it's the only efficient way to tie hardware synths into your projects.

If you have custom patches for a project, those can also be in that Sysex dump, setting User Patches slots in your synths the way you need.Then during the course of the song, all you need to have are Program Changes as needed.  Any specialized Sysex required for the song will already have been sent to the synths before you pushed Play.

The SysEx information posted on this thread from the Help files goes Way back.  But I'm sure you'd already studied all that since you've spent days thoroughly exploring what's available in Sonar.  And you already saw for yourself that the small macro dumps during a sequence weren't what you needed.

Nostalgia - this thread has been nostalgic, taking me back to the days when all I used were hardware synths.  I hadn't thought so much about those times in a long time before reading this thread.

Here's one scenario I've remembered now which called for a full Sysex dump during the course of a sequence -

The Yamaha FB-01.  Remember that unit?  8 voice synth which was multi-timbral, but which didn't dynamically allocate the voices.  You had to assign each instrument how many voices you wanted it to have - Bass, 1 note, Lead one note - etc.  Well there were times when I wanted the entire configuration in FB-01 to change during the course of a song - I'd come to a point, for instance, where I needed all 8 of the synth's voices to be assigned to one instrument.  The only way to do that would be to send out a complete re-configuration.  Other synths would be carrying the music along while I sent out that data dump.

But that was using a hardware sequencer, it was way before I had Cakewalk.  All I had to do was enable Sysex recording, push record, and send the data dump from the synth to the sequencer.

Now it's a different world, and I primarily use soft synths.  On the rare occasions when I'll use one of my old hardware synths, Sonar's SysEx View serves me well.  And if I'd need to change patch data during the course of a sequence - I'd do that in an instant via Program Change.

I hope you get back to working with your music soon, Tom.  It's been an interesting thread.  I wish you the best.

Randy B.

info@tomflair.com

NoKey


Hi Tom,

I don't recall you posting this:

"However, if you use the Sysx View (which can store up to 8,192 banks of SysEx messages), there is a way to 'embed' triggers for the SysEx banks in a track, and have them play back at any time."

,.... which the article above details, and explains how you can circumvent some limits.

 
please nokey - i know you wanna help me :-) but this detail doesnt change the fact that the procedure itself is way to complicated ...its STILL the 12 steps i mentioned in the other thread (or at least step 7 to 12) - there is nothing to do about it..NO other approach - NO workaround THIS is the ONLY available routine to get a midi dump bigger than 255byte anywheer in a miditrack
 
1: open sysex-view
2: arm the recieving status
3: select the way how the signal transmission is activated
4: send dump from synth
5: confirm dump has been fully transmitted
6: remember the bank number (because names are not displayed later in the event insert !!!)
7: select a midiclip
8: open the event list
9: insert an event pressing "ins"
10 :choose eventtype
11: choose number of eventtype
12: specify the time of the event - because in contrary to the manuals claim the inserted event is NOT where the nowtime is allocated but at the end of the selcted clip...

best regards