[PD] Patch for Akai EWI (was "Reading and writing binary files")

[David]

See below.

On Wed, Mar 9, 2011 at 1:36 PM, Ingo <ingo at miamiwave.com> wrote:
> Hi David,
>
>> I looked at your code, and I think I understand it, more or less. But
>> I couldn't see where you're sending the 6-byte NRPN message before and
>> after the SysEx message. Isn't it necessary?
>
> No! SysEx doesn't require any NRPN message to get enabled. I have no idea
> what the Aria software is sending out but it is definitely not necessary.
>
> There are a lot of strange things with the Garritan / Plogue software.
>

Thanks. I agree, the software is a little weird. For example, when you
save the settings, why does it save them in two different files? I
assumed at first that all the settings would be saved in a single
file. It doesn't explain that anywhere, I just discovered it by poking
around and opening the files in a text editor that can handle binary
files.

>> I got this information from a web site created by someone who
>> reverse-engineered the SysEx messages for the EWI USB:
>>
>> http://www.ewiusb.com/
>>
>> According to him, you have to send the '63 01 62 04 06 20' before each
>> SysEx, and '63 01 62 04 06 10' after the last one. You're not doing
>> that? I haven't tested any of this stuff yet, I'm a little paranoid
>> about screwing up my EWI. I can probably recover just by pressing the
>> reset button if something goes wrong, but I'd rather not take the
>> chance.
>
> I had double checked my information with that website. It turned out that
> there are several things that are wrong in this article. I wrote the guy
> from ewiusb.com an email and told him about the errors but never got any
> answer. He never corrected anything either. It doesn't look like the site is
> active anymore.
>

I think you're right, I sent him an email a couple of weeks ago and
never got a reply.

> BTW, you cannot break anything by sending sysex messages to an instrument.
> I am using this editor daily with no problem.
>
> I don't know which reason you have to trust one guy more than any other one?
>

Sorry, I didn't mean any offense. I was only erring on the side of
caution. I was just afraid of "bricking" my EWI.

> However I did discover an error in the patch this morning when I transferred
> a modified version into my hardware machine. "Pitchbend down" doesn't get
> restored correctly from the file. So there is a fixed version attached. It
> also writes the 6th value of the shorter sysex strings into the file which
> was ignored before. Just in case it would have any undocumented (ha, ha, ha)
> meaning.
>

Thanks again.

> Ingo
>
>