MIDI Support

To use summit.factory MIDI Export support, your copy of summit.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 Peak/Summit is set to  ALL then it will accept data for any Device.

You can check that these settings work by pressing the Test Peak/Summit MIDI Settings button. When you press this button a test message is sent to the Peak/Summit 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 define how summit.factory sends data to the Peak/Summit by dividing the data into packets the size of which are specified by the Transmit Buffer Size value. When summit.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: In 2006 I upgraded to a MOTU interface and ran into problems with MIDI export until I altered the x.factory MIDI functions to send messages in small chunks defined by the above parameters!

Copying/Moving Programs and Play Lists

In operation, using MIDI is quite straightforward.

You can get all the Peak/Summit Programs/Play Lists into any Child Window (including the Peak/Summit Synthesizer Window) by selecting the Import from MIDI option on the MIDI Menu, or the     button on the Tool Bar.

This imports all Programs, and all Play Lists if you have set the MIDI Preferences options to include Play Lists during the bulk transfers.

Similarly you can also export all Programs and Play Lists 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 Peak/Summit Synthesizer Window is also updated with the Programs/Play Lists being imported/exported.

And you can also move/copy Programs/Play Lists between the Peak/Summit Synthesizer Window and Child Window using drag and drop.

You can also import/export a Program or Play List to/from the Peak/Summit Edit Buffer by selecting a single Program/Play List and selecting the import/export to/from Peak/Summit Edit Buffer options from the Program's or Play List's Context Sensitive Menu. You can also use the keyboard shortcuts for doing this

Exporting Programs from summit.factory to the Peak/Summit Edit Buffer is really handy, for example, when trying to find a particular Program in a file and you don't wish to load it into the Peak/Summit.

Finally you can also perform all the operations on Programs/Play Lists in the Peak/Summit Synthesizer Window that you can upon Programs/Play Lists in a normal Child Window.

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

So you may wish to turn the  Automatically Update Peak/Summit 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 summit.factory with changes still present in the Peak/Summit Synthesizer Window that have not been exported, then you will be asked if you wish to export the data or not.

MIDI Keyboard Routing

summit.factory has a facility to allow MIDI data from an additional MIDI input port, defined in the MIDI Preferences dialog, to be routed to the port you have selected for summit.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 Peak/Summit sounds that you've sent from summit.factory to the Peak/Summit edit buffer.

You access this feature by selecting the Peak/Summit 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.