Controlling MIDI patch changes on the Roland GR-55 from POD HD500

[PoolieFritz]

Hi all, I have a POD HD500 and Roland GR-55 synth and trying to understand how to change patches on the GR-55 from my POD HD500.

 

I have them connected via MIDI cable (both set to MIDI channel 2).  With the GR-55's Map Select parameter set to 'Fix', the GR-55 changes patches in sequence with the POD's patches, e.g.:

 

POD patch #     GR-55 patch #

1A              User 01-1

1B              User 01-2

1C              User 01-3

1D              User 02-1

 

However I want to use the GR-55's patch change mapping feature in order to map the Patch Change commands from the POD to non-sequential patches within the GR-55, as the above sequential method is too restrictive.

 

So, from within the GR-55's 'RX PC MAP' tab, I set the Map Select parameter to 'Prg' then configured some Patch Change numbers and corresponding GR-55 patches to be selected, but then the GR-55 doesn't change any patches at all - it just seems to stop responding.

 

The only way I can get it to successfully change to the mapped patches in the way I want is if I then subsequently connect the POD HD500 to my computer via USB, and force a patch change from the POD HD500 Edit application, but that's not something I can use during live performance.

 

If anyone can help me out it'd be very much appreciated, as I've searched high and low online in addition to scanning both POD & GR-55 manuals and it's now driving me crazy!

 

Cheers!

[CipherHost]

I have only dabbled in controlling my GR-55 with my POD and my knowledge of MIDI is weak.

 

The PC changes from the POD are fixed. They can not be changed. It would be nice if you could configure this when changing presets, but you can't. If you want to configure your down line effects boxes with the preset that matches, more power to you, but you will also have to deal with this using different setlists as well. PITA.

 

You can read more here: http://line6.com/support/topic/2179-hd500x-has-the-midi-implementation-been-improved/?p=13708

 

You can do this: The way I did it was with CC messages assigned to a foot switch that I would activate after changing to a new POD preset. Not an ideal solution at all, but I could select almost any GR-55 preset I wanted this way with the default GR-55 assignments, not the mapping. I say almost because if the GR-55 preset was many presets away from the current GR-55 preset (I have not determined exactly how far), it would not switch to the desired preset in the GR-55. I'm not really sure why that is. It's like the GR-55 banks of 3 presets are part of a larger "bank" that you need to already be in to use just CC messages.

[PoolieFritz]

Thanks for your reply CipherHost, my knowledge of MIDI is also weak as this is the first time I've dabbled with it.

I'm happy with the PC changes being fixed on the POD as the GR-55's 'map' feature should cater for this, and I found a YouTube video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s69-PPTzVwE ) where the mappings work fine when the controller sending the fixed PC messages to the GR-55 is a Boss GT-100, so it seems the problem isn't with the Roland unit.

But I guess I'll have to configure it to operate in the same way as yours if I can't figure out how to change all patches conveniently with one footswitch press, but annoyingly, this all works exactly as I need it to but ONLY when initiating POD patch changes via the HD Edit app.

So clearly, there's something else happening when HD Edit initiates the patch change on the POD and the sync process occurs, the question for Line 6 is: can this be replicated when the POD USB to PC link is disconnected, or is this a bug in the firmware that needs to be addressed?