[linux-audio-dev] MIDI bank select MSB + LSB

[Jens M Andreasen]

Ahh ... sorry!

I missed that ctrl 0 (MSB) is mirrored as ctrl 32 (LSB), perhaps because
I get by with 8 sounds (or something ...) when I doodle at home.

Who needs such a vast sample library? I can see the usefulness of having
various dogs, cats, craws, crickets, seagulls or traffic-jams to set the
the tone of a scene filmed off-site. but 127^3 is kind of a huge number.

Is it even implemented on the receiving side? 
Inquiring minds wants to know :-)


On Sat, 2006-12-09 at 03:01 +0100, Alexandre Ratchov wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 08, 2006 at 01:28:23PM +0100, Christian Schoenebeck wrote:
> > Hi everybody!
> > 
> > I wonder what's the common behavior for a synth/sampler regarding MIDI bank 
> > select messages. You might know that MIDI has splitted bank indeces into two 
> > values MSB (coarse) and LSB (fine) value. So the "optimal" behavior would be 
> > a device / sequencer to send a MSB and a LSB bank select message to change 
> > the current bank. But many older keyboards for example won't do that. I've 
> > heard most of them only send MSB bank selects, while few others send only LSB 
> > bank selects. Is that true?
> > 
> 
> hello,
> 
> i haven't seen such a keyboard sice around 1995. I dont think that
> any recent midi keyboard uses MSB only (or LSB only) bank
> controllers.
> 
> > If yes, how should you handle that on synth/sampler side? Because you know, 
> > using just MSB messages would only allow to switch between the following set 
> > of banks:
> > 
> > 	{ 0, 128, 256, ... , 16256 }
> > 
> > while using just LSB messages would only allow to switch between the following 
> > set of banks:
> > 
> > 	{ 0, 1, 2, ... , 127 }
> > 
> > So should a synth stick with that behavior or should it detect if a device 
> > either only sends MSB bank selects or only sends LSB bank selects and then 
> > actually remap MSB-only selects to a set of:
> > 
> > 	{ 0, 1, 2, ... , 127 }
> > 
> 
> Keyboards that only support "MSB only" mode (or "LSB only" mode)
> are just too limited and there is no workaround that will "just
> work" with both modes. AFAIK, there is no standard way to detect if
> a device will use MSB, LSB or both. According to midi standard the
> bank number is (LSB + 128 * MSB), so the "Both" mode is the correct
> one to use. That's also what most users would expect.
> 
> cheers,
> 
> -- Alexandre
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