MIDI Support

To use fs.factory MIDI Export support, your copy of fs.factory needs to be registered.

Configuring MIDI Support

To configure MIDI support, go to the MIDI Preferences tab in the Preferences Dialog, and set up the following:

If the Device Number on the FS1R is set to  ALL then it will accept data for any SYSEX Device.

You can check that these settings work by pressing the Test FS1R MIDI Settings button. When you press this button a test message is sent to the FS1R and the subsequent Dialog will tell you if communication was successful or if there was a problem.

The above steps set up the basic communication mechanism for MIDI support, and you then can set up the remaining options according to your preferences:

The Transmit Buffer Size, Transmit Delay Between Buffers and Transmit Delay Between Objects values should not require adjustment. fs.factory sends data to the FS1R by dividing the data into packets the size of which are specified by the Transmit Buffer Size value. When fs.factory sends a packet it waits for the time period specified by Transmit Delay Between Buffers before sending the next packet, and it waits for the time period specified by Transmit Delay Between Objects after the last packet is sent. The delay parameters are specified in milliseconds. You may need to adjust these values (smaller buffers, longer delays) if communications is not reliable, and you may if you wish adjust these values (larger buffers, smaller delays) to maximise data transfer performance. If you adjust these values, please ensure that you test the transfer to ensure it is reliable, otherwise you may risk losing data. Note: Some MIDI interfaces do not like large packet sizes: I recently upgraded to a MOTU interface and ran into problems with MIDI export until I altered fs.factory to send messages in small chunks defined by the above parameters!

Copying/Moving Voices and Performances

In operation, using MIDI is quite straightforward.

You can get all the FS1R Voices/Performances into any Child Window (including the FS1R Synthesizer Window) by selecting the Import from MIDI option on the MIDI Menu, or the     button on the Tool Bar.

This imports all Voices, and all Performances if you have set the MIDI Preferences options to include Performances during the bulk transfers into the selected window.

Similarly you can also export all Voices and Performances using the Export MIDI option on the MIDI Menu, or the     button on the Tool Bar.

Note if you import or export MIDI data to/from a Child Window which is opened from a data file, then the FS1R Synthesizer Window is also updated with the Voices/Performances being imported/exported.

And you can also move/copy Voices/Performances between the FS1R Synthesizer Window and Child Window using drag and drop.

You can also import/export a Voice or Performance to/from the FS1R Edit Buffer by selecting a single Voice/Performance and selecting the import/export to/from FS1R Edit Buffer options from the Voice's or Performance's Context Sensitive Menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcuts for doing this.

If you wish to import a Voice from the FS1R edit buffers then the following dialog will appear, allowing you to specify which Voice Edit Buffer to import from:

Similarly, if you wish to export a Voice to the FS1R Edit Buffers then the following dialog will appear, allowing you to specify which Voice Edit Buffer to export to:

Exporting Performances from fs.factory to the FS1R Edit Buffer is really handy, for example, when trying to find a particular Performance in a file and you don't wish to load the whole file into the FS1R.

If you send a Performance to the FS1R then any user Voices required by the Performance are also copied over to the FS1R Voice Edit Buffers.

Finally you can also perform all the operations on Voices/Performances in the FS1R Synthesizer Window that you can upon Voices/Performances in a normal Child Window.

If you have the Automatically Update FS1R after Synth Window Edit option active, when you change data the FS1R Synthesizer Window then the changes are automatically exported to the FS1R.

So you may wish to turn the Automatically Update FS1R after Synth Window Edit option off during intensive editing sessions. Once you've made all your changes you then select the Export MIDI option on the MIDI Menu, or the     button on the Tool Bar Export option to manually export the changes.

If you quit fs.factory with changes still present in the FS1R Synthesizer Window that have not been exported, then you will be asked if you wish to export the data or not.

MIDI Keyboard Routing

fs.factory has a facility to allow MIDI data from an additional MIDI input port, defined in the MIDI Preferences options dialog, to be routed to the port you have selected for fs.factory to output MIDI data on. This allows, for example, you to use a master keyboard (which may be closer to your computer) to be used when auditioning FS1r sounds that you've sent from fs.factory to the FS1r edit buffer.

You access this feature by selecting the FS1R MIDI Router ... option in the  MIDI Menu or by pressing the F12 function key whenever you need it, which activates the following dialog.

The router uses the MIDI channel defined in the MIDI Preferences dialog This can either be the channel transmitted by the source device, or the specified channel.

The routing is active until you close the dialog by selecting the Close Channel button or by pressing the ESC key.