Slow Down Sysex Data Transmission SOLVED

[Byron Dickens]

 

 

I am trying to send a Sysex dump to my Korg X3 and having trouble. The keyboard only takes about half of Bank A. Most of the rest appears to be scrambled - random & missing characters in the patch names and the last few patches and all of Bank B remain in the initialized state.

I suspect the dump may be too fast for the keyboard to handle.

In the documentation, I found "Sysx .ini file settings" but what's confusing me is that there are several different  "TTSseq.ini" files spread around in different places and none of them have the lines

SysxSendDelayMsecs=n

SysxDelayAfterF7=n 

or

SysxSendPacketSize=n

Which are what I am supposed to edit to slow down the data transmission.

 

Any ideas?

Edited April 28, 2021 by bdickens

[Mark Peters]

Another possible cause for this behaviour is corrupt data. To test for this you could try sending the same file from a third-party MIDI utility that allows you to adjust transmission speed, such as SendSX, to see whether the problem remains. I've found that some banks have the NULL character where a SPC should have been (00 00 instead of 00 02) and that with my gear this causes exactly the problem you describe.

[Byron Dickens]

I get the same - perhaps worse - results from MIDI OX. I've got several different sysex files I have been trying. Hard to believe that they are all corrupt, although it's certainly possible.

Any way to look inside one of the files & possibly fix it?

Edited April 27, 2021 by bdickens

[bvideo]

If you don't see those variables in the [options] section of TTSSEQ.ini, cakewalk uses the default values. The file most likely for you to add those variables is %AppData%\Cakewalk\Cakewalk Core\TTSSeq.ini  (where %AppData% is based on your windows ID).

[Byron Dickens]

What happens if I screw something up editing it?

[bvideo]

Save a backup & be happy. Seriously don't worry, you won't screw it up.

[Mark Peters]

8 hours ago, bdickens said:

I get the same - perhaps worse - results from MIDI OX. I've got several different sysex files I have been trying. Hard to believe that they are all corrupt, although it's certainly possible.

Any way to look inside one of the files & possibly fix it?

Does MIDI OX allow you to slow down transmission? That's the first thing to try, since it can be done without getting into sysex files themselves. And if a slower transmission speed works then the files must be good.

I agree that if the problem applies to all your banks it is not likely to be due to data corruption. If you do want to see inside and edit sysex files, SendSX lets you do it, but you need to know what you are looking for, as the content is displayed like this:

F0 0F 02 00 02 0D 04 01 04 0D 04 01 04 00 02 00 02 02 03 00 01 08 02 0E 00 02 03 0F 03 06 01 00... F7

[Byron Dickens]

After some more digging, I tried Bome Send SX and it worked like a charm! First time go.

I started the process, went to get a refill on my coffee and when I came  back it was done.

All the tweaking in MIDI OX didn't accomplish squat, even when I slowed the transmission down so much that it took all day. ALL DAY!

Thanks to Mark P for that suggestion!

Now that I finally got them up & running, I gotta try to make some actual music with these two old hardware devices. (The X3 here and the Proteus FX from another thread..)

[Mark Peters]

I am pleased that you've got a workaround. I suspect that you're still getting errors when dumping from Cakewalk, though. Working with sysex dumps over the last few days I've noticed that Cakewalk dumps a great deal faster than the default settings of SendSX, so your original suspicion that Cakewalk is too fast for your X3 could well be right. I don't have anything to offer on slowing down Cakewalk as I've not found it necessary, but if you figure it out I'd like to know.

[Byron Dickens]

Haven't had a chance to try anything yet.

I was most interested in getting all the sounds back in while I am waiting for a new belt for the floppy drive and the chance to install it.

[User 905133]

Glad you got it solved. FWIW for years (but not recently) I have used Cakewalk/SONAR to backup and restore bulk data dumps from a number of modules--including some with terrible small buffers (VZ-8m), Proteus 2000-based gear (202K/206K sized banks), among others (probably the P/1+ Orchestral, too).  I do remember having to tweak the sysx parameters occasionally, though I haven't been doing much bulk data dumping/restoring since starting with CbB.  A few years ago I started using a patch librarian an E-Mu gear user developed. If someone has developed a librarian for your gear, that might be a better route if you create your own banks or if you want to juggle presets/patches from a number of different banks.  For restoring banks your solution is ideal.  

[NatHanSolo]

I just had the same problem where it would not complete the transfer using Midi-OX
When into Midi-0X Sys-Ex view and scratchpad window, sysex tab, configure and up'd the buffers until they transferred.
Still fails on the sequence sys from the "X3_Factory_SysEx_Preload" set. Had to do one section at a time for the other bits.
Low Level Input Buffer set to 2048 and 128 and same for output buffers.
So might simply need to adjust buffers in Cakewalk or download and use MidiOx

My X3 capacitors leaked and damaged the mboard so I've lost some functionality. 
Bought an X2 cheap to play very old tracks from the 80's.
Both drive belts have gone. Have bought a Gotek USB reader to replace X2 floppy but not yet installed. These allow you to use a USB with I think 999 folders of 1.4mb each emulating a floppy drive.
Just copied my old floppy's to my pc for safekeeping.  14kb?  hahahah how bad was that.

Also have X3-EdPro  (X3-Edit) but not worked out how to send png or sng files yet.  It's old now freeware but has a demo mode
Also Xedit  for X series and 05r/W but it does not play on current windows (from Windows 3 era).
I ended up just using the X3 for a midi input to Logic Audio 5 way back but now using Cakewalk.
There is heaps of Xseries stuff available online.