Instruments Without Edit Buffers

This section discusses instruments that don't have edit buffers and the differences in how Midi Quest handles these instruments.

Most instruments have an edit/performance buffer that is accessible to Midi Quest. This is a memory area that the instrument uses to play and edit patches. This memory area can be replaced with other patches from a computer without affecting the patches that are stored in the instrument. Most, but not all, MIDI devices fall into this category. This allows Midi Quest to edit patches, audition patches and perform many operations safely and not alter the instrument.

There are instruments which don't have directly accessible edit buffers. There are many but notable examples would be the Kurzweil K-series (K2000, K2500, K2600), Clavia Nord Lead instruments, most E-mu instruments, Studio Electronics instruments, and many others. Because Midi Quest must use actual memory locations to perform program functions, it is far more important to understand how Midi Quest is working so that patches are stored in locations which will frequently be overwritten.

Since these instruments don't have an accessible edit buffer, it is not possible to send a program (or any other type of SysEx) to the instrument without writing it to a specific location in memory. In order to minimize the possibility of accidentally overwriting large portions of memory, Midi Quest writes temporary and working programs to a specific location in memory. The same applies other types of SysEx as well. This is intentional and not a bug. Consider, if patches were always written to the assigned memory location in the bank, then after using a patch randomization tool like “Mix” or “Mix All”, auditioning each of the new patches would result in the entire bank in the instrument being overwritten. Writing to a single memory location avoids this problem.

When auditioning patches from a bank, Midi Quest almost always uses one specific memory location. This is usually the first or last RAM patch in the instrument. This location is fixed and can't be changed. For older instruments, it is usually the first patch. For more recently supported instruments, it is usually the last RAM location. You shouldn't store a critical patch in this memory because of the frequency that the location is overwritten.

When editing from a bank, the situation is different and there can be more control over the memory location used by Midi Quest. For more recently released editors, Midi Quest uses a fixed memory location for editing instruments without edit buffers. As with auditioning, it is best not to store a critical patch in this location. This is a fairly simple rule to remember.

For older instruments, the situation is more complicated. Many years ago, Sound Quest often attempted to offer as much flexibility as possible. This included allowing you to select the memory location yourself. This degree of flexibility often ended up just causing confusion, which is why we stopped. We have chosen not to "lock down" these older editors because there are Midi Quest users who now rely on these capabilities so we don't want to remove them. For an instrument without edit buffers, click the Settings button in the Studio window and then click the “Custom” tab. There will be a list of components that have a "custom value" which usually represents a memory location (Fast Tips will usually confirm what the custom value is used for). Selecting and editing this value allows you to choose which memory location is used for editing..You can change this to any desired memory location, and this will be used for editing (after pressing the OK button). This change applies to any newly created Sets. For Sets that already exist, select the SysEx data in the left column of the Set, press the “Settings” button in the Set’s button bar. Click the “Custom” tab in the Settings dialog, Select the SysEx in the Custom list and, again, you can select which memory location is used to edit programs (after pressing the OK button).

Hopefully this information will aid in editing programs in Midi Quest. If you have any questions, feel free to contact Sound Quest's tech support.