M Series Computer Software Editor

[salty09]

I am the proud owner of tow M13 units and recently just sold my M9. I bought it because I thought I could replace one of the M13 units with it to decrease the size of my pedalboard. I just never really liked the editing portion of it as compared to the M13, so I got rid of it. My current set up is running my guitar into the input of the M13 that is on my pedalboard and then in the loop I am running to the other M13 and a Wobo Midi Looper4. I use the Wobo to seamlessly switch dirt boxes in and out of my signal path.

 

The second M13 I got as a backup, because I depend on the M13 for a lot of sounds in songs. I now use it in the loop of the M13 on my board so that I do not have to climb under my desk where my board is neatly placed to change settings on the M13 during the experimentation stage of coming up with sounds. The extra M13 sets on the top of my desk and when I want to work with a set of effects on the M13 I use it to work them out and then transfer those settings to the one on my board.

 

Because of these couple of things and a few others, I have been really thinking about having a PC based application to create scenes on to then send via midi into the M13\M9\M5 devices. 

I am a programmer for a software company and we are still working with .Net 2005, so on my own I want to get up to speed with .Net 2012 and am thinking this may be a good project to do it with. What I envision is am application that has a GUI designed after the layout of the M13 allowing the user to drop down each effects unit and select the type of effect and parameters for the effect that they want to save. The user would have the ability to save groups of scenes, individual scenes and individual effects in order to put them together however they wanted later on. One of the things that really appeals to me about this is the ability to more easily manage the setup of expression pedals for multiple effects in a scene.

 

I am in the process of getting research together now to start on this project. The place I am lacking is working with SyxEx files. From what I have read so far they are HEX based. I opened up a file from a M13 that someone put online and saw the HEX data in it, but also saw some other characters hung off the end of each line. If anyone wants to help with this project and knows anything about reading and writing that file it would really help me get moving forward. If not my next step would be making small changes to the file and comparing them before and after to decode how the file works.

 

[negativefx]

I started working on an editor some years back.  Line 6 was absolutely no help and wouldn't provide any details into the format of the sysex dump.  I found that exporting the same dump twice in a row would not produce two identical files.  I also tested adjusting certain parameters and diffing the dumps and found that modifying one param would change multiple non-adjacent bits in the file, so I gave up trying to reverse engineer it.  Give it a shot though, hopefully you're more skilled than I.   :)

 

Also, make sure you have a good working dump backed up because you'll likely brick the device without one.

 

Here's some links that will help you get started:

 

http://www.blitter.com/~russtopia/MIDI/~jglatt/tech/midispec/sysex.htm

http://www.2writers.com/eddie/TutSysEx.htm

http://avp.stackexchange.com/questions/2630/what-is-the-most-effective-way-to-reverse-engineer-sysex-format-for-my-old-yamah

[salty09]

Thanks for the links!

 

My guess would be that Line 6 does not want to support people calling in after trying to edit the Sysex file and therfore do not want to do anything to help create a situation for that to occur.

 

It is not a good sign that two dumps of the same config were different. Maybe some sort of indentifer is added to the dump. I will take a look at that right away.

 

Lol, I appreciate the advice on having the good backup saved. Working for a software company I have seen the results of people not doing so time and time again. :) When will they ever learn?

 

Thanks again for the help.

[es336td]

I own an M9...   when I first bought one, withing a week, I had to take it in for repair because the expression pedal didn't work, no matter what.  Ended up having it replaced under warranty because the original one was toast.   I had it in my pedal board and had my racks on a keyboard stand.  The keyboard stand fell on the pedal board and screwed up a bunch of stuff.  Back to repair.  Now, the damn crappy foot switches they use are causing me headaches.   With all these trips to repair, it would really be wonderful to have an editor that can dump everything, and load that dump back to the unit via MIDI.   I'd also love to be able to edit the patches, scenes, as you do with GearBox.  I have an X3 Live and use GearBox to edit it and back it up.  Since they are supposedly similar (have the same effects), why can't an add-on to Gearbox be made?  Something?  anything?  Ferris?

[TheRealZap]

you can easily dump the settings and send them back with different software such as sysex librarian (mac) or midiox (win) but i don't think there is an editor out there that would be any better than just editing on the device.

 

oh yeah... and gearbox does not have the same effects... gearbox has x-series effects not m series.

[es336td]

I am assuming the originator of this thread got frustrated and gave up.  Damn shame.  An editor would make the damn things more useful.

[toonsms]

On the M's it is so easy to edit on the device, I can see why there is no computer editor.

 

Interesting that the tweak a parameter, and compare didn't work. I made a patch print utility years ago for the x3l bundle file and did that exact thing to find the params. You had to do both ends of the range of values. I guess it's because it's a dump and not a structured file.