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Old 04-26-2015, 07:45 AM   #2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fundorin View Post
So, here's the idea. What do you think about it? Is it possible to achieve what I want, using SL MK II, Reaper and OSCII-Bot?
Yes, your basic idea is completely valid - you can create a pretty powerful and heavily customized configuration using REAPER's OSC Control Surface feature coupled with an OSCII-bot script. As you wrote, the (only) technical hurdle seems to be configuring the SL MK II to display feedback on the LEDs and LCD. The rest is just trial, error, and coffee.

Btw, thumbs up for your ambition. I might add that even if you somehow would not get the feedback to the LEDs and LCD working, that would of course be a bummer, but it may still be worth the effort to create a custom setup even without feedback.
Quote:
Originally Posted by fundorin View Post
I think that someone could write and alternative editor for .syx templates of just find, which SYSEX messages are used to enable LED feedback to the controller. Then we can use it to make custom templates for our controllers.

Since .syx template is a plain SYSEX commands, this task shouldn't be hard for an experienced programmer, which I'm not.
Well, here's the thing: SysEx messages may be readable as raw data, but what "plain commands" they represent is entirely up to the manufacturer, and not necessarily publicly documented. If they're not publicly documented, we have to either ask the manufacturer for more specifics (you could certainly try asking Novation for this), or try to reverse engineer them ourselves.

I would suggest to load some templates (including that Ableton template) into the template editor application, and start changing things one step at a time (e.g. change one controller from type 'Disabled' to type 'CC'; change its CC number; change its MIDI channel; change its default value; change its minimum value, etc.), incrementally saving the .sysex file at each step, and carefully analyzing which byte(s) change as a result of each edit. That should probably give you some clues about the structure of the .sysex file. Next, when you're somewhat confident that you've identified what parts of the SysEx message represent the configuration of (a range of) individual controllers, you can try copy/pasting entire sections into that Ableton template, to adjust the configuration to your preferences, while (hopefully) leaving the part intact that (according to your earlier analysis) seems to be responsible for the LED (and LCD) feedback functionality.

I've had a quick look at a few .sysex files created in the template editor app, and this approach seems to be feasible - much of the data is complete gibberish to me, but the configuration of individual control elements is easy enough to identify. Btw, is the .sysex file for that Ableton template (and perhaps some others, such as the Access Virus one, for comparison) available somewhere, so I can also take a look?

(I think you already know this, since you mention noticing a difference in the file headers, but perhaps it's useful for others who read this: )
There are various applications that can show you the individual bytes of SysEx files; on OS X I like to use SysEx Librarian (a simple but handy tool focused on SysEx messages), and 0xED (a more generic binary file viewer / editor) for more advanced tasks like search/replace in .sysex files.

Hope this helps!
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