MOTUnation.com

I came across this product while looking to archive some DW8000 patches.

http://www.squest.com/Windows/MidiQuest ... About.html

I like where he's going with this. He has VST's that provide patch management/editing for real synths - which means there's no difference between a virtual instrument and a real one using his scheme. Audio Unit support is expected next year sometime.

I think it is kind of pricey, but if you have a lot of hardware, it is probably worth the money to get control of all your patches and have tweakability right in the plug window just like everything else.

Good luck trying to get it to work....I could never get the demo to run on my machine. Also, "buzz" about the mac version of the product in various forums (forii?) doesn't seem to be very good.

I think the concept is a nice one though. If you get it to work, please let me know.

Also, if you scout about, you can probably find the last version of SoundDiver 3 which was released officially as a sort of "permanent" beta ... making it essentially free for use until the beta expires. (There is no expiration date.)

Cheers,
G

You'd load the controlling-plug into an insert slot on a relevant MIDI track, no? I could be down with that should MOTU not come up with something.

Having written UniSyn though, you'd think that MOTU could make this happen in a jiffy, especially as we've had MIDI plugs practically from the get-go.

nk_e wrote:Good luck trying to get it to work....I could never get the demo to run on my machine. Also, "buzz" about the mac version of the product in various forums (forii?) doesn't seem to be very good.

I think the concept is a nice one though. If you get it to work, please let me know.

Also, if you scout about, you can probably find the last version of SoundDiver 3 which was released officially as a sort of "permanent" beta ... making it essentially free for use until the beta expires. (There is no expiration date.)

Cheers,
G

yeah agreed... good idea, but it's buggy as hell. Even the windows version, I've tried it on lots of gear with different MIDI bays... continually blaming myself for not doing something right.... Well I'm done with that. IT doesn't work well enough to deserve my money.

The SoundDiver 3 Beta requires a USB XS Key, which I have from Logic 6, but the software has definite issues, such as all of the checksum methods are hardcoded and there is no way to change them. This is rather annoying when their Kawai K1 adaptation uses a 2s-compliment checksum and my K1 does not (I even added up a sysex voice file to verify. No clue as to why SoundDiver is wrong on this account. And, ironically, the K1 is the instrument they use as an example for building your own adaptation in the documentation!)

Regarding MidiQuest, some instruments seem to do fine, but others seem crashy, but it's hard to tell since the demo is so annoyingly hobbled. I do like that you can program any instrument yourself with their macro language. Since Unisyn is moribund and does not offer this feature, MidiQuest may be what I will have to use.

syntonica wrote:The SoundDiver 3 Beta requires a USB XS Key, which I have from Logic 6, but the software has definite issues, such as all of the checksum methods are hardcoded and there is no way to change them. This is rather annoying when their Kawai K1 adaptation uses a 2s-compliment checksum and my K1 does not (I even added up a sysex voice file to verify. No clue as to why SoundDiver is wrong on this account. And, ironically, the K1 is the instrument they use as an example for building your own adaptation in the documentation!)

Regarding MidiQuest, some instruments seem to do fine, but others seem crashy, but it's hard to tell since the demo is so annoyingly hobbled. I do like that you can program any instrument yourself with their macro language. Since Unisyn is moribund and does not offer this feature, MidiQuest may be what I will have to use.

I've talked to the gent who is MidiQuest... and he seems like a nice fellow. Perhaps if we request improvements on gear that he has listed so that it actually works he would fix it. Bit of a catch 22 I think; 'dear sir... fix this and I will buy it,' whereas I'm certain he's thinking... buy and and give me incentive to develop it. Rightly so though, it should work or you shouldn't list synth modules that are flaky.

Steve

SixStringGeek wrote:I came across this product while looking to archive some DW8000 patches.

http://www.squest.com/Windows/MidiQuest" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I like where he's going with this.

Mmmm... Maybe MOTU should get Unisyn up to speed and do something similar. I mean, they've designed software so we can integrate analog gear in the digital environment with the help of Volta. So why not make a "sister sysex application" for the MIDI hardware generation... and call it "Systa"

And offer it at a special introductory price to existing owners of Unisyn, of course...

PS: They could actually sell the Systa software as a "shell application", and users could then download and pay only for the "synth/device profile" they want - no use in owning all the Korg profiles if I only need the Wavestation...

monkey man wrote:Having written UniSyn though, you'd think that MOTU could make this happen in a jiffy, especially as we've had MIDI plugs practically from the get-go.

IIRC, Dr T wrote it, called it X-oR (which I have in the museum), and sold it to MOTU who ported it from the Atari.

Now and then I fantasize about firing up the Atari Falcon and adding it to the MIDI set up to use X-oR. But how often am I really going to tweak a patch on a K2000, M1, Proteus 2, etc.? There are at most 3 patches I still use on the K2000, and if I could match them in a VI, it would be in the museum too.

I haven't bought a new hardware kb for a long time, but my impression is that their editors are much better than they were 20 years ago. Surely that and a sysex librarian do what most need?

bayswater wrote:There are at most 3 patches I still use on the K2000, and if I could match them in a VI, it would be in the museum too.

I'm just going to leave this here for you.

SixStringGeek wrote:

bayswater wrote:There are at most 3 patches I still use on the K2000, and if I could match them in a VI, it would be in the museum too.

I'm just going to leave this here for you.

Thanks for that. I'll have a close look for general purposes, but don't think it will replace the K2K patches. It's not the samples that matter. They're just basic strings, sawtooth waves and tines. It's the K2K algorithms, and the way they can be used to control filters and pitch shifting etc. that I haven't found.

I had an extremely negative experience with MidiQuest since OS 9.xx from 2005
When I realized that it would have been impossible running Opcode's Galaxy plus under Classic mode (although I succeeded running other simple applications such as AN1x Edit and Yamaha AN Expert Editor on a single USB cable), I had to switch.
I don't know whether it was my system based on two MTPII serial interfaces hooked to the Mac through Stealth serial port or it was MidiQuest faulty it remains a fact that I was never able to make it work. On the other hand Performer 6, the sequencer I was using at the time, had no problems with serial MIDI interfaces.
Thus I upgraded to a new version of MidiQuest (ver. 10) but handshake problems remained the same.
Lately I changed my old and faithful MTP-II interfaces with 3 MidiExpress 128 and I began seeing little results: MidiQuest talks with my synthesizers, but is buggy and instable - at least under OSX 10.4.11, on a G4 1,25DP Mac.
For instance the Korg Wavestation module is lacking a good wavesequence editor, and everytime I open it I cry thinking how well done was the Opcode's one; Emu Proteus2000 module is buggy and works just with certain releases of the instrument... that's why I had to downgrade P2K OS in order MidiQuest and the latter coud talk...
Yamaha TG77 and Korg Wavestation A/D modules are buggy and 9/10 at start initialize completely the internal memory of the aforementioned instruments.

And SoundQuest tech support is quite elusive. Perhaps if I was english speaking/writing as a second nature, it would be a lot easier to interact with SoundQuest, but being not it's always an effort to write down about software issues and being understood in full.
In a word, I don't recommend MidiQuest.