Reference Guide

1148 System exclusive data
Transmitting banks during playback
Transmitting banks during playback
SONAR has a special meta-event, Sysx Bank, that lets you play a System Exclusive bank at a
specified time in your project. You can use a Sysx meta-event to send any of the 8192 available
Sysx banks at any time in a sequence. To do this, you have to insert a new event in the Event List
using the INSERT key on the computer keyboard. Next you have to double-click Event Kind and
change it to System Exclusive. In the Values column, select the bank (0-8191) that you want to
send.
MIDI is a serial data transmission, meaning it can do only one thing at a time. If you try to upload a
huge sampler dump during a fast drum solo, playback will noticeably lurch. MIDI must complete the
System Exclusive message before it can resume playback. The Sysx meta-event is appropriate only
for very short System Exclusive messages. The exact length depends on various factors, such as
the speed of your computer but as a rule of thumb, 100 bytes is a likely maximum, and even that
may often be too large.
You don’t need to use Sysx meta-events for sending System Exclusive information at the beginning
of your project. Instead, use the Auto option for System Exclusive banks. Banks that are marked
Auto are transmitted automatically by SONAR when it loads the project file they are stored in. Use
the Sysx meta-event only when you need to send a Sysx Bank during the middle of the project.
See:
“Real-time recording of System Exclusive messages” on page 1149
“What is System Exclusive?” on page 1140