Catalyst Editor and FCB1010 Apps for Linux - Has FCB1010 Catalyst SysEx Presets

[JDMarch]

I've been working on a Linux editor for the Line 6 Catalyst amps and a setup tool for the FCB1010 MIDI Foot Controller. Both apps feature a text-based, menu-driven interface that’s user-friendly and accessible from any device, whether connected locally or remotely. You can connect a Raspberry Pi or similar microcomputer to your rig and easily modify settings from anywhere over Wi-Fi or the internet.

 

**Catalyst Editor**: The app currently supports MIDI CCs (in manual), and I'm looking for the official SysEx data for the Catalyst. If anyone has access to this data, please share it to save me from reverse engineering!

 

**FCB1010 App**: I’ve also included Catalyst SysEx presets in the dumps folder, so you can make the FCB1010 work seamlessly with the Catalyst amp. Any app that can send SysEx data will work; you don't need mine.

 

**Check them out:**

Both have binaries built for x64 Linux included if you don't want to compile source code

 

- **Catalyst Editor (Work in Progress)**: 

GitHub - catalyst-editor

- **FCB1010 App** (with Catalyst SysEx presets): 

GitHub - fcbtool

 

I'm considering after I'm finished developing a web-based GUI version in the future to ensure it’s accessible on any device with a browser. Your feedback and suggestions are welcome!

---

Let me know if you need further changes!

[josander]

Hi Jason,

I've planned to make a Qt based editor for Linux for a long time ,and finally, I made (a kind of) test framework in C++ and RTMidi yesterday, where I made all the functionality to send CC's and Program Changes. But I soon realized that I have to send sysex (FX parameters and so on) messages  to the Catalyst in order to make the editor usable. And now, I stumbled to this posting where I see you probably have done what's possible without sysex. I just want to share some comments and thoughts here that will probably not be helpful for you at all, but it might be good do see that you are not the only Linux user here.

 

Even when I used less than a hour to figure how to make some code to test if CC's and program changes work from Linux with C++, I'm by all mean not an C++ expert, and I had a lot of luck. I did my chops in Perl and that was more than 15 years ago, so you can imagine I'm quite rusty.

Today I Installed a midi monitor on my Android tablet and fired up my Catalyst and Line 6's Catalyst Editor. It seems to me that both sides are using sysex entirely and it's just a matter of registering the messages when one use either the amp or the editor and turn knobs and play around.  But I'm not sure that's worth the effort. That said, I'm quite disappointed that Line 6 and others do not provide real cross platform editors for their products. I'm quite sure they are using toolkits such as Qt and so on. The share of Linux users on the desktop is around 5% at the moment, not a big number in %, but it's easy to imagine that means a lot of users. Harrison Audio, who makes the Mixbus DAW, said some years ago that their share of Linux users was more that 15%, and now, more and more vendors are doing Linux stuff as well. I really hope Line 6 will do the same.

 

I tried your editor and I guess that's as good as it gets with an ncurses interface.

I ran into some linking trouble when i ran the make command to compile your code. However, everything worked for me with this command:

    gcc-15 -Wall -Wextra -std=c99 -lncurses -lasound ./src/ui.c ./src/midi.c ./src/main.c -o ./build/bin/catalyst
-editor

Thanks for your effort, but I can't help thinking if it's worth it. On the other hand, this issue is itching me all the time and maybe I will do an full blown GUI editor anyway in the future. That said, I'm a Line 6 fanboy and will buy the Helix Stadium within one year, and might be occupied with that one for a long time!  :-)

Jostein

[JDMarch]

It's missing a few changes for the amp. It'd be great if someone could record all the undocumented MIDI changes while making them. I wanted something simple I could control remotely with my phone or any computer that has shell access. Honestly, I think it'd be best to have it accessible by a web server with a nice JavaScript frontend (just copy the line6 app); then any machine could access it. Recently, I haven't had much time to play with it.

as for building I used Debian 12 stable that has gcc version 12.2.0

 

I assumed the built in binaries would run on many Debian based systems. What os do you run?

 

I never program in C. I just figured I should since sound and latency. 

[josander]

On 9/8/2025 at 8:44 PM, JDMarch said:

I assumed the built in binaries would run on many Debian based systems. What os do you run?

I use Kubuntu 22.04.5 LTS and compiled GCC 15 from source (for learning and experimenting with C++23). Your binary works on this system as well, it's just me who compiled your source just for the fun of it!  :-)