Unwanted bank change sent from P6 to T6

[markwilkins]

I’m not sure if this a Prophet 6 question or a Trigon 6 question or a “read the manual” question. I’m sure this falls into the “user doesn’t know what he is doing” category, but I’m not sure how to search for the answer. Or perhaps I’m just too lazy to figure out the correct search.

I have a Trigon 6 desktop module that I am controlling from a Prophet 6 keyboard. When I change a patch on the Prophet 6, it changes the bank on the Trigon to the same bank that the Prophet is on. For example, if the Trigon is on patch 222, and the Prophet 6 is on patch 333, then if I press the “4” key on the prophet to change it to 334, the Trigon is changed to bank 300 and, thus, patch 322.

The optimal situation, from my point of view, would be to have the patch change not transmit (or receive) at all. Or if it must, at least be something that makes sense (e.g., selecting patch 123 on the P6 results in patch 123 selected on the T6).

Any thoughts on what setting I need to change?

[The Real MC]

I have the T6 module but not the P6.

Sounds like the P6 is transmitting two MIDI messages when a preset button is pressed.  One message is MIDI Program Change, which is sending program #22.  The second is a MIDI control change message which selects the bank.

I don't see an option on the T6 to turn off bank selection when a preset button is pressed - there may not be an option on the P6.

I think the best solution is assign T6 and P6 to different MIDI channels, and play both from a MIDI controller.

[markwilkins]

I ended up contacting Sequential support mostly because I was curious about the behavior. Not really any real problem in the big picture, but why only bank changes? Why not 10s and 1s?

For starters, according to the support person I was in contact with, there is no built-in way to prevent the patch changes from being sent (and received) in this situation where the Prophet is sending MIDI directly to the Trigon. The explanation being that the expected use case is to have two of the same units polychained together. In that situation, it makes sense to have the receiver follow along exactly.

The support person had me set up the simplest routing. One midi cable from the P6 to the Trigon. Being a software dev, I should have done that on my own from the start ... basic debugging skills apply to the real world as well. But I often forget. Nonetheless, after doing that, then it became clear that all patch changes (bank, 10s, 1s) affect the receiving unit.

He suggested, as a possible solution, an inline MIDI filter and provided a possible vendor. I then remembered that I had set up filtering in my current setup which led to the puzzling situation. And then I said to myself, "Sheesh, Mark, you gotta learn to think for yourself if ya wanna survive in this world!" And then I responded to myself ... but ... I digress uselessly.

My current setup to connect my various hardware synths is an mioXM from iConnectivity. It's pretty cool and allows me to run a USB cable from each synth to that unit. And then I can set the routing however I want (synthA can send midi to B and C, and C can send midi to D, the DAW can send midi to one or more synths from multiple tracks, etc.)

The other bit of functionality in the mioXM, however, is some filtering options. And I had (a long time ago) set it to filter program changes from the Prophet 6 on all midi channels. That is why the 10s and 1s on program changes did not reach the Trigon-6. I don't know 100% for sure, but I'm guessing the bank changes are in a different MIDI category (at least by mioXM standards). In order to prevent the bank changes (e.g., bank 3xx to 4xx), I had to filter out control changes. Once I filtered those as well in the mioXM, I could changes patches on the P6 and have no affect on the Trigon. Of course, that also filters out things like sustain messages, so that is not a useful option for me. But at least the mystery was solved. I don't think the mioXM has filtering at a lower granularity ... at least not that I have found. Probably need to apply some more software debugging methods.