Reference Guide

1140 System exclusive data
What is System Exclusive?
What is System Exclusive?
System Exclusive data is MIDI’s way of letting each synthesizer manufacturer transmit private data
about its products. A System Exclusive message has a manufacturer ID; the rest of the message is
completely proprietary and varies for each manufacturer, even for each of its products. SONAR does
not understand what this data means; it simply can hold onto it for you. You can take snapshots of
your equipment’s configuration and store them in SONAR’s System Exclusive banks for transmitting
back to the equipment. You may want to do this simply to back up your equipment’s patches and/or
settings, much like backing up your computer’s hard drive in case something goes wrong. Or you
may configure your equipment differently for each project’s requirements, which is why storing
System Exclusive banks with each SONAR project file can be useful. Of course, for merely backing
up your equipment, you can have a project containing only System Exclusive data and no notes.
See:
“Sysx events” on page 1140
“Using the System Exclusive view” on page 1141
“Sending Sysx banks at startup” on page 1142
“Transmitting banks during playback” on page 1148
“Real-time recording of System Exclusive messages” on page 1149
“Sysx echo” on page 1149
“Sysx .ini file settings” on page 1150
“Troubleshooting” on page 1151
Sysx events
SONAR provides two distinct kinds of Sysx events: Sysx Bank and Sysx Data.
• Sysx Bank: You can use Sysx Bank events to transmit one of the project’s 8192 banks of System
Exclusive data. These banks can be recorded, viewed, and edited in the Sysx view, and each
bank can contain one or more very large System Exclusive messages. Sysx Banks may also be
marked Auto, so that they are sent when the file is loaded rather than during the start of playback.
• Sysx Data: You can also use Sysx Data events, which can each contain a single System
Exclusive message up to 255 bytes long. You can view the message bytes in the Event List view.
Sysx Data events can be recorded in real time. See “Real-time recording of System Exclusive
messages” on page 1149 for more information.
See:
“Using the System Exclusive view” on page 1141
“Transmitting banks during playback” on page 1148