Any Way to Confirm Sysex Backup is Complete?

[iluvchiclets]

Hi everyone,

I want to start messing around with my user banks (is there a free librarian out there!?) but before I do, I did a dump of each of my user banks to my PC via MIDI-ox.

The process is sooooo fast doing an export of the banks.  It makes me nrevous - did I get everything backed up properly?
  Now I want to confirm they're all backed up properly before I start moving them around/deleting some, etc...

Can I use the edit buffers to slow down my Bank Dump so there is nothing missing?  Or, does the backup always happen so quickly as opposed to when I import banks (which always takes a bit longer...I can see each individual program flashing on the screen as it's loaded into my REV2...)

[creativespiral]

Hi everyone,

I want to start messing around with my user banks (is there a free librarian out there!?) but before I do, I did a dump of each of my user banks to my PC via MIDI-ox.

The process is sooooo fast doing an export of the banks.  It makes me nrevous - did I get everything backed up properly?
  Now I want to confirm they're all backed up properly before I start moving them around/deleting some, etc...

Can I use the edit buffers to slow down my Bank Dump so there is nothing missing?  Or, does the backup always happen so quickly as opposed to when I import banks (which always takes a bit longer...I can see each individual program flashing on the screen as it's loaded into my REV2...)

Check the file size.   For a bank of 128 patches on Rev2, your .syx should be 300288 bytes.   The backup process is fairly quick.   If you're sending banks of patches back to the Rev2 (or other instruments), you should set a "Delay After F7" in MIDI-Ox or other software... I usually keep mine in the 300ms to 500ms range, though you may want shorter or longer delay depending on instrument.   Some instruments will have corrupted patches if you send them too quick. 

I recently added some more advanced sysex backup utilities on the PresetPatch.com website too, if you want to double check.   The PresetPatch backup also checks the FOF7 count of packets to ensure you have backed up the amount of packets/patches you expected to, and it does some byte analysis to make sure that the sysex format appears correct for the instrument.  https://www.presetpatch.com/sysextools/backup

[iluvchiclets]

Wow,

Amazing information, and great details.  Thanks so much for your answer.

By the way, I always enjoy your thoughtful posts and replies.  You are a positive force in the Sequential community...

(So, I just checked the four user banks I backed up - two of them are 300288 and two are 300596 bytes.  Anything to worry about?)

[creativespiral]

You bet - happy to help out and share info!

You might backup those two banks that were larger, and just see if they are the same size. 

Perhaps when you opened up the "Receive Sysex" window in MIDI-Ox, there was another sysex message that was sent before (or after) the bank message, and appended onto the bank?   Not sure.   But, yeah, I would probably do a second backup just to be sure.   Never hurts to have another copy just in case.   

The math is:  128 F0F7 packets, each 2346 bytes = 300288 bytes total.
2346 is the size of a patch with bank number and patch number specified.

(2344 is the size of a patch that is just targeted to the live edit buffer)

[iluvchiclets]

Well, I tried backing up each bank several times, and I seemed to be getting different numbers each time.   Always a bit higher !?

I tried 2 or 4 times with each bank, until I finally would hit the magic target number (300288) and then I saved that sysex file.

I have no idea what's going on, but with three different back ups saved of each bank I feel confident I've saved something