Question Regarding Loading Samples and Related Programs

Shaw

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Question Regarding Loading Samples and Related Programs
« on: January 16, 2019, 02:15:34 PM »
With there being 4 Add-On and 8 User Groups for samples, I have some questions that I hope someone will know the answer to.  I did look in the manual, but I didn't see the answer to my questions...


1.  Assume you have some User Samples (let's say, for example, Lady Gaia's Neutron/OB-6 sample set) imported into User Group 3 (which would be "u02"), and then you want to add some Prophet 6 samples to that user group.  Would you need to create a new sample set that contains all of your samples (Neutron, Ob-6 and P6), or could you just "add" the P6 samples to User Group 3?  By "add", I mean just importing the P6 samples without the Neutron and OB-6 samples.    Asked another way, If I tried importing P6 samples to the User Group 3 that already contains the Neutron / OB-6 Sample Set, would the User Group be over-written with just the P6 samples, or would the P6 samples be added to the user group in the next available sample slots?


2. How do you erase / delete a User Group?


3.  Assume I create a program (User Bank 1, Program 1) using samples from this Neutron / OB-6 sample set in u02.  Then I overwrite that sample set with something completely different.   What happens when I go back to User Bank 1 Program 1?  The PX is expecting to see Neutron/OB-6 samples there... will the program fail to load? Will it load with the new samples I installed overwriting the Neutron/OB-6 Bank?  Will it crash my PX?


I know I could test a lot of this stuff myself, but with recent PX crashes and whatnot, I figured it was safer to ask to see if the answers were already known.


Thanks in advance.
« Last Edit: January 16, 2019, 02:18:29 PM by Shaw »
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Re: Question Regarding Loading Samples and Related Programs
« Reply #1 on: January 16, 2019, 02:30:21 PM »
I've been wondering too how you would keep adding ZIPs to a User Group without conflicting numbers or overwriting existing sample sets.   

I know if you have your own samples in the mapper you can export them to a folder with others and it'll increment the number higher than the others there.

But if you download a Group zips 1-10 and another Group 1-5 you can't currently put them in the same User slot.

Lady Gaia mentioned she was working on a ZIP number converter for Mac that could handle this problem.  It'll need a conversion to PC for me if it gets done.

Then there's the question of what if 1-5 Zips are in the PX and you want to add number 6-10; will it erase 1-5 when it puts in 6-10 or add to the end?

I learned from replacing hard drives to unbrick that patches that call for samples not installed seem to substitute some sound from the library but no errors.

Dan
« Last Edit: January 16, 2019, 02:50:38 PM by REwire »

Re: Question Regarding Loading Samples and Related Programs
« Reply #2 on: January 16, 2019, 03:44:41 PM »
With there being 4 Add-On and 8 User Groups for samples, I have some questions that I hope someone will know the answer to.  I did look in the manual, but I didn't see the answer to my questions...

I believe there are 8 User Groups and 32 Add-On Groups for samples.  There are four banks for add-on presets, which is where the confusion probably arises.  Each Add-On Group would come with 16 presets (16 * 32 = 512 presets, exactly enough to fill four banks.)

Quote
1.  Assume you have some User Samples (let's say, for example, Lady Gaia's Neutron/OB-6 sample set) imported into User Group 3 (which would be "u02"), and then you want to add some Prophet 6 samples to that user group.  Would you need to create a new sample set that contains all of your samples (Neutron, Ob-6 and P6), or could you just "add" the P6 samples to User Group 3?  By "add", I mean just importing the P6 samples without the Neutron and OB-6 samples.  Asked another way, If I tried importing P6 samples to the User Group 3 that already contains the Neutron / OB-6 Sample Set, would the User Group be over-written with just the P6 samples, or would the P6 samples be added to the user group in the next available sample slots?

Good question, which I’d have to verify experimentally, but I believe importing a user bank completely replaces the current contents of the bank.  You’d want to append your content to an existing uXX directory on the USB device and re-load the whole collection.

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2. How do you erase / delete a User Group?

There’s an option in the Global menu for this.  I’m not near my PX at the moment, but I believe it’s called something like Sample Management.

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3.  Assume I create a program (User Bank 1, Program 1) using samples from this Neutron / OB-6 sample set in u02.  Then I overwrite that sample set with something completely different.   What happens when I go back to User Bank 1 Program 1?  The PX is expecting to see Neutron/OB-6 samples there... will the program fail to load? Will it load with the new samples I installed overwriting the Neutron/OB-6 Bank?  Will it crash my PX?

Programs appear to reference Instruments by their bank + category + sample number, as I’ve installed new versions of the pack during development with radically different naming schemes and it still points to the same content presumably because it occupies the same numbering scheme.  I can’t imagine anything you could do here would crash your PX, but it can certainly result in unintentional changes to the sound of a preset.

I've been wondering too how you would keep adding ZIPs to a User Group without conflicting numbers or overwriting existing sample sets.   

I know if you have your own samples in the mapper you can export them to a folder with others and it'll increment the number higher than the others there.

But if you download a Group zips 1-10 and another Group 1-5 you can't currently put them in the same User slot.

Lady Gaia mentioned she was working on a ZIP number converter for Mac that could handle this problem.  It'll need a conversion to PC for me if it gets done.

The utility is complete, written in what should be fairly portable C++, and I’ve made it thoroughly paranoid so as to do no harm if it can’t 100% reliably find the right set of changes to make.  If there’s someone with basic development skills who lives in a Windows world that wants to try building it, I’ll gladly give them access to the private GitHub repository.

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Then there's the question of what if 1-5 Zips are in the PX and you want to add number 6-10; will it erase 1-5 when it puts in 6-10 or add to the end?

It appears to completely replace a User Group at installation, so I believe it will erase the existing samples if you’re installing to the same group.  I’ve not experimented to see if non-contiguous numbering works reliably, either, so I’d be curious if you can wind up with #6-10 if there’s nothing in 2-5 (numbering starts with 2 as 1 is always reserved to mean “no selection.”)

Re: Question Regarding Loading Samples and Related Programs
« Reply #3 on: February 01, 2019, 03:32:47 PM »
Quote
Then there's the question of what if 1-5 Zips are in the PX and you want to add number 6-10; will it erase 1-5 when it puts in 6-10 or add to the end?

It appears to completely replace a User Group at installation, so I believe it will erase the existing samples if you’re installing to the same group.  I’ve not experimented to see if non-contiguous numbering works reliably, either, so I’d be curious if you can wind up with #6-10 if there’s nothing in 2-5 (numbering starts with 2 as 1 is always reserved to mean “no selection.”)

I keep meaning to follow up on this.  Even though the instrument indicates that newly loaded samples will overwrite an existing User Group, in reality it will only overwrite where the same numbers are used in the same categories.  So you can safely add samples to an existing group if there are no numbering conflicts.  Today a Sequential employee confirmed that this is intentional, so I think it’s safe to assume it will keep working this way.

I’ve also experimentally confirmed that gaps in the numbering sequence aren’t a problem.  Our VCO Pack exploits this by reserving the range from 2-9 for the first instrument, 10-19 for the second, 20-29 for the third, and so on even if there aren’t enough oscillators to fill the complete range.  It means you can pick and choose which ones to install and when.

The only thing you can’t do, as far as I can tell, is selectively delete part of a User Group.  You have to delete the whole thing and build back up to the set you want.  This is only a minor inconvenience in practice.