Do SysEx sliders indicate like CC sliders?

Question

When a slider is set to transmit a CC message, it will also indicate when that same CC message is received.

Can you verify whether or not SysEx sliders behave the same way?  So far I've not been able to get it to work and I just want to make sure it's possible or not before I keep trying.

I'm using MIDI Designer as the parameter editor for a new little MIDI product that has no front panel for this purpose.  It's working great!  I have a layout with faders and buttons, and each sends a different SysEx to my product, and these successfully change the internal parameters.

What I'd like to do now is have a button that labeled "Return Current Values" that would send a SysEx message to the product, and the product would respond by sending back the same SysEx messages last sent by each SysEx fader.  Ideally each SysEx fader would in MIDI Designer would recognize that the incoming message as a match for messages it sends (like the CC faders do), and set itself to the returned value.

Am I making myself clear enough?  It's kinda hard to explain, let me know if I need to clarify.

Anyway so far I've not been able to remote control a MIDI Designer sysex fader the way I'm able to remote control MIDI Designer CC faders, so I thought I'd ask if they respond the same way and what I might be doing wrong.

Thanks!

Steve

Comments

Oops, I just read the answer to "Reading a preset from hardware into MIDI Designer", and the answer there seems to indicate that SysEx faders don't "listen" to their own messages when echoed back to them.

Ha, of the course my next question then becomes, "Could you make them behave that way?"  Ha, as if you don't have anything else to do!  Well, if you could do it, I can't think how it would be harmful in any way...  You'd have to read each byte as it comes in and ask, "do we have any sliders whose output byte #n is the same as this nth byte?"  Eventually all but one slider will have been ruled out...  I suppose the difficulty is that one byte will contain the variable v, and that byte in general will not be a match with the current setting...

---

Hi stevengchristensen,

  I have just been re-reading the detail I gave in the answer you mention above and would like to add one detail if I may.

 If you have a SysEx knob on MIDI Designer that sends data to hardware and also, hardware that sends the same complete SysEx information out, then the knob on MIDI designer will be fully 2 way.  i.e. Move any one slider on either and the other will respond.  

  It's a shame then that many hardware products will instead send out a chunk of data known as a 'bulk dump' when requested (either by MIDI or by menu on the hardware).  This contains some kind of header followed with just the data values in order to save memory and time.  Because in these circumstances, just the values are being sent, MD has no way of knowing which one goes where.  In these situations,  you will get no joy I am afraid.  

  If however an item of hardware could receive a MIDI message to send a patch as a long list of complete SysEx strings then, in theory, MD would 'grab a preset'.

  I have found it best to create a common ground between the two to start with by way of a patch or two on MD.  You can always save the patch on the hardware and on MD to return at a later data.

  At some point, I believe the author will add the means to save presets too.  That would be really cool.

---

Thanks!  Just knowing that they ought to behave that way allowed me to find my bug.  So now I have bidirectional sysex messages.  When I move the fader in MD, a sysex is sent.  When a send the same sysex to MD, the fader moves!  Perfect.  So all I need now is a button to send essentially a read request to the product, and the product will respond with a series of sysex messages to move the faders and buttons to the values last sent.  That way if I have more than one unit to program, I can first ask it to send MD its current parameter settings, and the user can edit from there.

Thanks again!

Answer 1

Answered in comments on question, thanks!

Answer 2

Answered in comments on question, thanks!