"xx" meaning in MIDI track

Just wondering what these X's mean in the track here. I'm attaching a screenshot.

Does this only happen with MIDI tracks?

What are MIDI System Exclusive events?

My apologies, I'm still fairly new to Logic and DAWs in general.

They are extensions to the standard MIDI set of instructions. An example of such an extension is the one that allows you to transfer an audio sample between devices (for example dump the sample from a sampler to a computer):

https://www.midi.org/specifications-old/item/table-4-universal-system-exclusive-messages

What are MIDI System Exclusive events?

My apologies, I'm still fairly new to Logic and DAWs in general.

MIDI is a language that encodes things into messages - there are different messages depending on the type of event that happened - there are Note events, Control events, Program Change events, timing events and various other ones. System Exclusive messages are one type of MIDI event that manufacturers can use for their own purposes - typically, for editing parameters, sending dumps of voice data and so on.

System Exclusive messages are one type of MIDI event that manufacturers can use for their own purposes - typically, for editing parameters, sending dumps of voice data and so on.

Note that in theory they're supposed to be standard, and not be exclusive to a specific manufacturer (that isn't the case in real life), according to the MIDI spec at least:

Universal System Exclusive Messages are defined as Real Time or Non-Real Time, and are used for extensions to MIDI that are NOT intended to be manufacturer exclusive (despite the name).

Oh goodness, lol.

I think that's a little advanced for me at this point.

Thank you guys so much for answering my question though!

Oh goodness, lol.

I think that's a little advanced for me at this point.

Thank you guys so much for answering my question though!

Do you know how they landed in your MIDI region? Did you record that MIDI region yourself? You can always open the region in the Event List to look for those events, and delete them if you don't want them there:

System Exclusive messages are one type of MIDI event that manufacturers can use for their own purposes - typically, for editing parameters, sending dumps of voice data and so on.

Note that in theory they're supposed to be standard, and not be exclusive to a specific manufacturer (that isn't the case in real life), according to the MIDI spec at least:

 

Universal System Exclusive Messages are defined as Real Time or Non-Real Time, and are used for extensions to MIDI that are NOT intended to be manufacturer exclusive (despite the name).

That's "Universal System Exclusive Messages"; that's different from System Exclusive Messages.

SysEx is right up my alley, so I couldn't let this slide.

(About 20 years ago I was basically eating, drinking and breathing SysEx...)

SysEx is right up my alley, so I couldn't let this slide.

(About 20 years ago I was basically eating, drinking and breathing SysEx...)

Wow, that.. doesn't sound good?

Well on my end, SysEx is where my knowledge of MIDI stops. I supposed that when I decided to really go in depth into MIDI (because once I was in a studio with a musician who had a MIDI synthesizer and needed something set up and I was impressed when I saw the engineer go to the synth which he had never seen and within seconds found the setting, switched it and we were good to go), I decided to draw the line at SysEx.

And later as there were less and less hardware instruments around me I determined that I didn't truly need to learn it. I wish I knew more about it though!

What did you use it for I'm curious now?

And later as there were less and less hardware instruments around me I determined that I didn't truly need to learn it. I wish I knew more about it though!

 

What did you use it for I'm curious now?

Your are completely right about the "less and less hardware instruments" situation. Before practically everything became virtual it was not uncommon to have librarian and/or editor software for hardware synths or effects; this was of course accomplished by using SysEx. Emagic had "SoundDiver" (which was one of the applications that were killed practically immediately after Apple bought the company). I did some outside work in that context, programming modules and adaptations for it for a number of years. This of course ended the very moment Apple took over. Since then I haven't done much in that area.

(Sidenote: Last summer I tried to reverse engineer the SysEx structure of the Behringer xTouch mini because I wanted to incorporate it into my Mainstage setup and there is no Mac editor for it. Had to use an USB analyzer on a Windows machine. What a horrible SysEx implementation! Buggy as hell and sometimes plain wrong! In the end it was easier to use the factory settings of the xTouch mini and whip something up in Scripter.)

Oh wow I wouldn't want to have THAT job (reverse engineering with a USB analyzer on a Windows machine!

Yes I do remember Sound Diver. Just as I was barely getting to know how it worked it was killed and I had forgotten all about it until you mentioned it just now.

SysEx is right up my alley, so I couldn't let this slide.

(About 20 years ago I was basically eating, drinking and breathing SysEx...)

Me too. And I still am now, right at this moment...

I also used to do SoundDiver adaptions as well...

Me too. And I still am now, right at this moment...

 

I also used to do SoundDiver adaptions as well...

Wow. What do you use SysEx for right now des99?

Currently I'm working on data conversion tools, so people can convert patches for hardware synths easily into their software versions that don't offer such import/export features - eg here, where you can convert between D50 Sysex files and the D50 plugin's native patch format:

http://www.difficultaudio.com/roland.php

But there's also sysex involved in things like the MCU spec, which I have software built around - for instance, the display updates for MCU controllers are sysex messages.

And back in the day I wrote MIDI editors for various synths, editors for SoundDiver and Logic's environment and even wrote pretty cool SysEx dump software, so really from the day I started to connect two MIDI devices I was hacking sysex (I remember trying to get handshaking sysex dumps by hand inputting bytes into an MMT8 sequencer to get it to request a patch dump in my CZ-101 (a device which has one of the most bizarre sysex implementations I've ever seen...)

So yeah, I'm intimately familiar with decoding and using the sysex specifications from those parts of gear manuals that most people just see as tables of incomprehensible gobbledegook!

I too have the scars to show from fighting my way through bizarre sysex implementations and/or even more bizarre documentations thereof, in the sometimes surprisingly successful attempt of making all machines play nicely together.

But yeah, just as things have been much simplified in the past three decades by pulling everything together into ever more powerful computers, the need for sysex extravaganza has pretty much vanished here.

CZ-101 (a device which has one of the most bizarre sysex implementations I've ever seen...)

Ain't that the truth! If my memory doesn't fail me it had different dumps for sending and receiving data.

Behringer, not to be outdone, managed to do something similar with the xTouch mini as well, but even worse: The requests are comparatively well formatted; but the dumps contain a wrong manufacturer ID (Kawai instead of Behringer). They probably thought: Why bother, no one is going to see this anyway...

BTW, I did (among others) the CZ and VZ modules in SoundDiver.

At the moment I'm trying to approach this from "the other side": implementing SysEx in the firmware of a groovebox-like hardware device.

CZ-101 (a device which has one of the most bizarre sysex implementations I've ever seen...)

Ain't that the truth! If my memory doesn't fail me it had different dumps for sending and receiving data.

Handshakes without terminating sysex strings with F7, sending raw bytes as handshakes, reverse nibble encoding for parameters, some weird non-linear envelope scalling parameters, and many more. Seriously, those Casio engineers were drinking *way* too much sake when designing that one!

Behringer, not to be outdone, managed to do something similar with the xTouch mini as well, but even worse: The requests are comparatively well formatted; but the dumps contain a wrong manufacturer ID (Kawai instead of Behringer). They probably thought: Why bother, no one is going to see this anyway...

Hehe. We could write a fun blog for nerds with sysex implementation & documentation crimes. We'd get at least ten people who'd really love it!

BTW, I did (among others) the CZ and VZ modules in SoundDiver.

Ah - you must be Malte! (I had a feeling that was you from your forum name.)

Yes, I remember your stuff well!

Nice! I made my own adaption for the CZ-101 before the Universal Module supported the non-standard formats (took a bit of ingenuity that one!), so that would have been before your official module was available, probably in SD 1.x. Ah, remember the days of the SoundDiverBox?

Well for some reason your MIDI keyboard must have sent it. Most likely not a big deal, nothing to worry about, I would just delete it to clean up the MIDI region.

Yeah as long as it doesn't do something weird with the actual sound, I'm ok with it.

Thank you!

Handshakes without terminating sysex strings with F7, sending raw bytes as handshakes, reverse nibble encoding for parameters, some weird non-linear envelope scalling parameters, and many more. Seriously, those Casio engineers were drinking *way* too much sake when designing that one!

So it's worse than I remembered.

But I'm fully willing to cut the Casio engineers some slack. Many devices from the early MIDI days were notoriously buggy so they weren't the only ones.

The missing F7 can also be found with the Prophet 5 (and interestingly is basically incompatible with one of my MIDI interfaces while another one can handle it). Early Prophet 600 firmware didn't know Note On with velocity 0. I think I once laid hands on a DX7 sending aftertouch as Controller 6.

But one of my favorites was one of the Crumar synths (can't recall if it was the Bit 01 or Bit One): "We only send Note data, so let's send a dummy Note status byte on powerup and from then on only data bytes forever." Good luck using this behind a MIDI patch bay or something similar...

Hehe. We could write a fun blog for nerds with sysex implementation & documentation crimes. We'd get at least ten people who'd really love it!

Now you're being overly optimistic.

Ah - you must be Malte! (I had a feeling that was you from your forum name.)

Busted.

Nice! I made my own adaption for the CZ-101 before the Universal Module supported the non-standard formats (took a bit of ingenuity that one!), so that would have been before your official module was available, probably in SD 1.x. Ah, remember the days of the SoundDiverBox?

Ah, the FirstClass software with dialup...

It was a great time. With the benefit of hindsight though it was obvious that things were coming to an end for this type of software. The devices were becoming smaller and smaller (half-rack modules...) which of course meant they became less and less editable from their front panels. At the same time they became less "hardware" and more "software" anyway so it was somewhat natural to move them into plugins with a real user interface instead once processing power was sufficient.

Still, I have fond memories. During the first lockdown last year I dug out my old SoundDiver installation CD and installed it on an old MacOS 9 machine. This brought back a lot of things (and it actually helped me restore the presets to an old Lexicon LXP-1).

I had to do the same - as my old CZ patches were in that proprietary CZ adaption I wrote, so I had to find backups of my old Atari system (which is a story in itself), find that custom CZ adaption I wrote, get that working in a more recent version of SD (I no longer have my Atari ST), then retrieve and convert those patches into standard sysex.

I also found a bunch of patches in another Atari CZ software, and for that I had to reverse engineer the file format to convert those back out into standard sysex to get them back, as the Mac Atari ST emulators at the time did not support any MIDI output - all good fun!

It's a shame SD was killed though - it wasn't actually owned my emagic, just distributed by them, so Apple didn't buy it and kill it - it was effectively killed by Michael going to Apple in the buyout, because Apple developer employees can't make and distribute other software products in the terms of employment...

It was still the best app of it's type, and I still find it useful to manage, convert and help work on sysex conversion tools etc...

Anyway - nice to have you around!