MIDI PC implementation flawed?

Lab AstroLab
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#1

The way Arturia had implemented MIDI program change in the Astrolab is that the program change values just step through all the presets in the selected Playlist rather than just the first in each song. While this sounds reasonable, if, after you program in PC values for your entire Playlist and there are a lot of them, say over 60, any additions or deletions of presets in a Song will invalidate the entire PC numbering for all of the following presets.

Anybody using these to remotely select Songs in your Astrolab Playlist?

#2

AstroLab (like Analog Lab) uses Bank Select MSB and LSB to select a Song in a Playlist.
Then PC numbers are used to select the Preset inside the current Song.
Indeed, the PC numbers correspond to the presets order in the Song. So, if you change the order of the presets in the Song, it will change the PC number for those presets.

Typically, one would not put all the presets of a Playlist in a single Song, but break the Playlist in multiple Songs with only a few presets in each Song.

#3

I’m not seeing that behavior at all. The bank selection values I’m using are all set to zero and the PC messages select the presets in the Playlist, in order, irrespective of the song they may be in.

There’s no reference to any of this in the manual I’ve received.

#4

AstroLab receives Bank Select and Program Change messages as follows:

  • Bank MSB (CC#0) selects the Playlist
  • Bank LSB (CC#32) select the Song inside the Playlist
  • Program Change selects the Preset inside the Song

Program Change and Bank Select messages are received by AstroLab on the Secondary MIDI Channel (All, or 1-16).

Note: numbering starts from 0.
I.e. MSB = 0 selects the first Playlist in AstroLab’s memory, LSB = 0 selects the first Song in the Playlist, and PC=0 selects the first Preset in the Song.
So, if you want to select the 5th preset in the 3rd Song of the 2nd Playlist:
MSB = 1, LSB = 2, Program Change = 4

Once you have selected a Playlist, you can send only Song and Program number.
And inside a Song you can send only Program number, until you want to select another Song.

This is explained in the FAQs for Analog Lab V in V-Collection X:

I agree that this information is a bit hard to find.

#5

There are also MIDI CCs (received on MIDI Ch1 if Secondary MIDI Channel is set to All or 1) that can be used to select Previous/Next Presets:

  • CC#102: Previous Preset
  • CC#103: Next Preset
  • CC#104: Previous Song
  • CC#105: Next Song

Next/Previous Preset work both in Playlist mode and in non-Playlist mode
Next/Previous Song work only in Playlist mode
You only need to send 1 message with the CC value above 64 to activate the function (no need to reset the CC to 0 between messages) to go to the next preset or next song.

#6

Hard to find is quite the understatement. Somehow I’m able to just use an incrementing PC number to access each subsequent preset.

I’ll try using the supported method and see what happens.

Thanks for all of that!

Stuart.

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