Patch Zone (Utilities Menu)

The Patch Zone gives you access to over 270,000 unique patches for MIDI devices supported by Midi Quest.

The Patch Zone Window accesses Sound Quest's online Patch Zone library of SysEx. It is context sensitive so as you move from MIDI device to MIDI device and between editors for any device, the contents of the window will change to reflect the resources available for the type of SysEx you are working with. The title bar of the window will always reflect the type of SysEx listed in the window.

Available resources vary dramatically by MIDI device. For some units there will be nothing. For others such as Korg Kronos Programs or Yamaha DX7 Voices, there are collections of over 28,000 Programs and Voices respectively.

You can help us to continually enlarge the Patch Zone resource by submitting your own patches or, if you are aware of a collection of public domain patches on the internet that is not currently part of our collection, please notify Sound Quest so that they can be included. Submitting your own Patches to the Patch Zone is as simple as dragging and dropping them into the Patch Zone Window.

Display

The Patch Zone window lists a patch per line. Each patch is unique, there should be no duplicates. The information that the window displays is very similar to the Library window. It includes the patch name, 8 tags, and all of the additional properties which can be assigned to each patch including: Song, Band, Musician, Author, Copyright, and so on.

The listing can be sorted simply by clicking on the title or any of the columns in the window.

The title bar of the Patch Zone window shows the type of SysEx currently displayed in the window. It also shows the total number of patches that are available for the currently selected SysEx.

Tag Filtering

Similar to Libraries, the contents of the Patch Zone can be filtered to show only a portion of the patches available for a given MIDI device.. Filtering is based on the tags assigned to each patch in the Patch Zone.

To enable the tag filter, activate the Patch Zone window and choose "Patch Zone / Show Filter" from the main menus or right click in the window and choose the same option from the pop-up menu. When enabled, the bar pictured above is displayed at the top of the window.

There are three options available on the Tag Filter bar.

Tag Filter Select

Click the black down arrow to display a list of the available filters. The displayed list, similar to the one below is built using the tags assigned to the patches in the patch zone and is sorted alphabetically. This provides a list of tags that will provide a meaningful result for the current patches.

Once selected, only the patches having the selected tag are displayed. To filter the patches with a different tag, simply repeat the process and select a different tag.

Cancel Filter

To cancel the tag filter, press the button just to the right of the tag select button. Alternately, press the tag filter close icon or choose "Show Filter" from the Patch Zone menu to toggle the bar closed

Close Filter Bar

Click this button to close the Tag Filter Bar and remove any filter currently applied to the patch zone

Operations

Left Click - Click on any Patch in the Patch Zone window and that Patch will be downloaded and auditioned to the instrument. This behavior is identical to auditioning from a Bank or Library.

The Patch Zone uses the instrument settings in the Studio to determine the MIDI ports and channels to use for auditioning. In the rare case where two or more devices are using the same SysEx data format (eg DX7, TX7, TX816, TX812 access the same Patch Zone library), the settings for the device currently selected in the Studio window followed by the first device in the list.

Drag and Drop from the Patch Zone - a patch selected in the Patch Zone can be dragged and dropped into the following windows: Set, Patch Editor, Bank Editor, Library, and Collection. With the exception of the Collection which accepts any type of SysEx, this operation will only be successful if the destination window contains SysEx that is compatible with the patches from the zone.

Macintosh: Drag and drop from the Patch Zone into another window is a two step process. First select the Patch to drag and drop, release the mouse then click, drag, and drop the patches to their desired location.

Drag and Drop into the Patch Zone - to submit patches to the Patch Zone, drag and drop the patch from any of Midi Quest's SysEx windows (Patch Editor, Bank Editor, Set, Collection, or Library) and release the mouse over the Patch Zone Window. This will upload the patch(es) to a special part of the zone where they are collected and Sound Quest manually ensures that they are unique submissions and not already available as part of the collection. Once verified they will be included as part of the collection.

If you are going to make Patch submissions that are your creations, we would encourage you to take credit for this. Before making the submission, ensure that you enter your name in the Author property for the patch and include as much additional information as possible.

All Midi Quest users thank you for your submissions.

Menu Commands

Refresh - rebuilds the list of Patches for the currently selected Patch type

Show Filter - Toggles the display of the filter bar. For more information on filtering, see above

Technical

This collection of patches, to our knowledge, is comprised entirely of public domain SysEx that is freely available on the internet. Anyone could build this collection of patches on their own however Sound Quest has invested significant time and resources to collect the patches, filter them for duplicates, and organize them.

If any items are found which are considered to be under copyright. Please notify us and we will remove them from the Patch Zone collection.

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