Patch Bay Page (Settings Dialog)

WARNING! While Midi Quest continues to provide specific support for patch bays, Sound Quest does not recommend using them. Modern MIDI interfaces transmit SysEx much more densely when compared with interfaces from 20 or 30 years ago. Patch bays from the 80's and 90's are no longer capable of reliably transferring SysEx from an input to an output. Sound Quest strong recommends that any patch bay be replaced with a multi-port MIDI interface. If this warning is ignored, be prepared to deal with improperly transferred SysEx messages.

This page is displayed when opened from the Studio window or for SysEx components where the MIDI device is not loaded in the Studio. The page is only displayed if the option Preferences / MIDI / MIDI Patch Bay Support is enabled.

Patch Bay Control is used to automate control of your Patch bay. If Patch Bay Control is enabled, then before each SysEx transmission, the software will send a program change to the Patch bay. The program change will be sent on the selected MIDI channel with the "Cntrl #" being the actual patch number sent.

For example, if your Patch bay is responding to Patch changes on MIDI channel 15 and Patch 10 connects the MIDI OUT of the computer to the MIDI IN of the instrument AND the MIDI In of the instrument to the MIDI OUT of the computer then in this section, the MIDI channel should be set to 15 and the Cntrl # for this driver should be set to 10. Port should be set to the MIDI port to which the patch bay is connected.

Enable: when enable is checked, patch bay control is enabled. The control number, described above is then used to control the patch bay.

Port: the MIDI port that the patch change command is sent to in order to properly configure the patch bay

MIDI Ch: the MIDI channel that the patch bay is monitoring for patch changes.

Cntrl#: enter the number of the patch that will connect the computer to the instrument via the patch bay

Revert to: when checked, the associated patch change is sent after doing a bulk dump. This allows the patch bay to be configured so that an instrument can receive SysEx and then returned to a default configuration.

Manual: in some cases, the patch bay is not capable of responding to patch change commands. In this case, you can check this option. Instead of sending a patch change command, Midi Quest will display a message prompting you to manually configure the patch bay so that the computer can communicate with the appropriate instrument.

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