Hd500 As Midi Controller For Additional Effect Units

[ssmorga78]

OK, as the title implies, I am wanting to jump on the midi wagon and use my HD500 to control a few auxiliary effects units I have running through my FX loop of my HD500. My question is probably basic, but how in the world do I do that? I know nothing about midi programming, but learn rather quickly if there is a resource out there that would help. What I am wanting to do seems simple to me, but may not be in reality. I have a Pitchfactor, Adrenalin3 and Big Sky that all have programmable presets. I want to be able to use the HD500 so that when I change my HD presets, it will also trigger any of the other pedals presets as well. Would save me from having to remember(A) and tap dancing(B) more than. I need to. I am guessing I run a midi out cable from the HD and then chain all the auxiliary pedal together from there. At that point, I am lost on the rest. Is there anyone who can offer a hand or tell me where to go to be able to read up on how to do it?

[Rewolf48]

Line 6 have tried to make this really simple, but actually made it too simple so it becomes hard.  Various suggestions have been made, but nothing has changed yet.

 

First the hardware set-up - connect MIDI cable to HD500 MIDI Out into FX Unit MIDI in.  After that it depends on the unit.  

MIDI is a point to point protocol, you can daisy chain devices together as long as they allow "MIDI Through" (everything coming in is copied to the MIDI Out or MIDI Through socket).  If the device doesn't support MIDI through then you will need to have a MIDI Thru device to connect multiple downstream devices.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI for a general overview; the main thing is that there are "16 Channels" and a logical device will only listen on a single channel.  Complicated devices such as Workstations can listen on all 16, but effect units will only listen on one (or Global which means it ignores the channel and listens to everything).  

 

What you want is that when you change Patch on the HD500 that the downstream device also changes Patch (Preset).  This is done by the HD500 sending a Program Change (PC) Midi Message on a specific MIDI Channel and the Effects Unit listening on that Channel and changing to the require Preset when it receives the PC Message.  Things are not always as obvious as they might be - PC Messages only contain a single data value which is a number between 0 and 127, the Device then maps that Number to a Preset.  The HD500 for example has 16 "Banks" of 4 Presets, which means that it only responds to PC 0 - 63 and ignores higher values.  

 

Then the practicalities with an HD500 which are described in the HD500 Advanced Guide (manual downloads from Line 6).

The HD500 automatically sends on the Global  MIDI Channel any change of Preset, so if you go to Bank 1 Preset 1 it sends "PC-00" if you go to Bank 3 Preset 2 it sends "PC-10".  You can change the MIDI Channel in the Global Settings.  If you connect an Effects Unit that accepts PC messages it will change Preset to its definition of what those numbers mean.

 

Now the bad news - you can't change the PC Message that is sent by the HD500 and you can't turn it off, it is always sent.  One commonly requested enhancement is to be able to define what PC is sent by the HD when a new patch is activated.  What Line 6 have done is to make it simple (no configuration at all) to synch two Line 6 HD units - for example an HD500 and HDPro can be connected by a MIDI cable and without editing anything the two units with change Presets exactly in synch with each other.  Where you have problems is that if you only have 16 presets on your effects unit, then it will only respond to PC 0 to 15, which mean that it will only respond to the first 4 Banks on the HD500 and what it does after that is up to the receiving unit what it does.  Also poor is that if you only want to create say 4 presets on the Effects Unit and re-use these on many HD Patches then you can't except by making copies of those presets (which is a pain for editing those presets)

 

What you can do is to add MIDI Messages to specific buttons on the HD and these can be against any MIDI Channel - so you can set FS1 to send PC 99 on Channel 3, but this requires you to press FS1 to send this message, and you really didn't want to have to do that.

 

Line 6 could enhance the MIDI controller capability massively - for example it could be possible to define up to 16 PC message that are automatically sent, but to date you can't.

 

There are software and hardware devices that can sort this out for you and add a lot of additional flexibility.  For software it means having a computer with a MIDI interface and it will remap incoming messages into completely different outgoing messages.  More practically for live performance there are hardware devices that can be programmed in advance such as MIDI Solutions Event Processor,  http://www.midisolutions.com/EP_Guide.htm

[Jakeallen]

I hope someone in this forum knows how to use a POD HD500(X) to send a patch change to GR-55.  I've looked high and low for a tutorial that shows step by step how to adjust the settings on BOTH units for this application but can not find it.  I've read all about HD500 sending PC's automatically.  I've read about adjusting the mapping on the GR-55.  But nowhere is there a walk through much less a video on how to do it with these two units together.  I've followed instructions on both sides and still can't seem to get a GR-55 patch change from Pod foot-switch.  Clearly I'm grasping at straws now 

[jeffbake40]

Same here,

 

I am also looking for some instruction on the HD500X as a midi controller for the GR-55.

I was able to get it working with the RX PC Mapping inside the GR-55, but it would only select patches from the same bank on the GR-55.

After messing with it more, I cant even get it to do that now.

 

How I have/want things set up is like this:

 

HD500X:

 

FS1 - PC to GR-55 

FS2 - PC to GR-55 

FS3 - PC to GR-55 

FS4 - PC to GR-55 

FS5 - HD500X Patch A - PC to GR-55 

FS6 - HD500X Patch B - PC to GR-55 

FS7 - HD500X Patch C - PC to GR-55 

FS8 - HD500X Patch D - PC to GR-55 

 

 

Inside of the GR-55, you can assign any patch to a PC# under System>Midi>RX PC Map.

I have set these to the GR-55 patches that I would like to reference with the assigned PC#

(This allows you to select patches from anywhere, without having to dupe or build out a logically flowing set list to progress through.)

 

With this in mind, my goal is to select a patch on the HD500X (A, B, C, D) and have it send a PC to select my desired patch on the GR-55.

Also I would like to have FS5-8 send PC changes to the GR-55, but not affecting anything on my HD500X patch.

This would allow you to have 5 GR-55 patches available to each patch on the HD500X.

 

My channel is set to 2 on both units (to avoid the factory PC that are sent when hitting A, B, C, D.

My cables are hooked up correctly, and have selected PC 1, 2, 3, 4 for FS4-8

In the GR-55, I have the Map Select to fix, as this should allow random access to patches, (selecting patches regardless of their bank).

 

So I had it slightly working, but now after trying again today, it isnt working.

If anyone has any insight into this, and would like to share here with us, that would great!

[Rewolf48]

Try asking the person that posted this:

 

http://line6.com/support/topic/1953-anyone-using-guitar-synth-with-variax/?do=findComment&comment=11538