Steinberg Cubase SX/SL 3 MIDI Devices And Features Manual

							CUBASE SX/SLMIDI devices 1 – 51
43.Now click the User Panel tab at the bottom of the Inspector. 
Click the button to open the Device structure and choose the appropriate panel.
Done! Now the device panel is displayed in the Inspector and ready 
for automation recording.   
						

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Exporting and importing device setups 
(Cubase SX only)
Clicking the Export Setup button allows you to export your complete 
MIDI device setup as a separate XML file. The file can then be im-
ported using the Import Setup button. This is useful if you move to an-
other studio, install the program on a new computer, etc.
•When you import a stored setup with the Import Setup function, a dialog 
will appear, listing all devices included in the stored setup.
Select the device(s) you wish to import and click OK.
•Importing will not overwrite any currently installed devices.
If the current list contains a device with the same name as a device to be imported, a 
number will be added to the name of the imported device. 
						

							CUBASE SX/SLMIDI devices 1 – 53
Defining a SysEx device – a tutorial (Cubase SX 
only)
On the following pages, the basic concepts of the MIDI devices are 
described, so that you will be able to create your own ones later.
If you want to define a SysEx device, it is absolutely vital that you have 
the manual for the hardware device, which describes its MIDI defini-
tions. Usually, these settings are described on the last few pages of 
the manual: watch out for small letters and lots of tables referencing 
each other. If the MIDI definitions are not provided in the manual for 
your device, you should search on the manufacturer’s website for the 
necessary documentation.
It is often necessary to convert hexadecimal numbers to decimals and 
vice versa, so you’d better have a translation-table or a calculator (that 
is able to make this conversion) ready. Under Windows, you can use 
the calculator found under Start/Programs/Accessories.
In the following example, we will define a MIDI device that provides 
access to the parameters of a Roland JV-1080.
1.To create a new MIDI device, pull down the Devices menu, open the 
MIDI Device Manager and click on “Install Device”.
2.In the dialog that appears, select “Define New…” and click OK. 
						

							CUBASE SX/SL1 – 54 MIDI devices
3.The Create New MIDI Device dialog appears. Set it up as shown in 
the following picture:
4.Click OK. 
Now, the device editor will open with an empty Roland JV-1080 device displayed to 
the left.
This is the “root” 
of the device, which 
stands for the device 
as a whole.   
						

							CUBASE SX/SLMIDI devices 1 – 55
5.Now, you need to create subsections (Device Nodes) for the device. 
Click the “Add Subnodes” button and in the dialog that appears, type 
in “System” in the Name field.
•“System” can be found as a separate table in the MIDI definition part 
of the JV-1080 manual. It’s almost always a good idea to create a 
separate device node for each table in the MIDI definition of a device.
6.When you click OK, the new subnode is added in the device editor.
7.Repeat the two steps above to create the subnode “System Com-
mon”, which is also a separate table in the MIDI Definition section in 
the JV-1080 manual and is referenced by the “System” table.    
						

							CUBASE SX/SL1 – 56 MIDI devices
The “System” table contains 17 references to another table called 
“Scale Tune”. So we need to add 17 more subnodes, but this time, 
we will proceed differently: we’ll create 17 similar subnodes at once.
8.Click the “Add Subnodes” button again.
In the dialog that appears, enter Scale Tune as name, check the Create Multiple 
checkbox, enter “Part” as Variable name and set the Variable range to 1-17. When you 
click OK, 17 new subnodes are created:
The added subnodes all have a Variable called “Part”, set to different “Values”.
9.Rename the subnode Scale Tune 17 to “Scale Tune Patch Mode” 
(according to the System table), by selecting the node and entering 
the new name in the Name field.
All of these “Scale Tune” nodes behave like alias copies in many aspects (this is 
described later).
10.Now you’ll create parameters for the “Scale Tune” nodes. Click the 
“Add Parameters” button.
The “Add Parameters” dialog appears.  
						

							CUBASE SX/SLMIDI devices 1 – 57
11.According to the MIDI definition, the “Scale Tune” table contains 12 
parameters. All of them are named “Scale Tune for XX”, where XX 
stands for the different notes in an octave. The parameter range of 
these parameters is from 0 to 127 and all are set to the default value 
64. Fill in the Name, Min, Max and Default fields accordingly. Next, ac-
tivate the “Create Multiple” checkbox and set the Variable Range to 
“0-11”, which is the address range of the 12 parameters.
•Some devices can be edited by MIDI channel messages like Control 
Change, RPNs or NRPNs. In that case you’d only have to select the 
desired message by clicking in the MIDI message field next to the Cre-
ate Sysex button and browse for it. But that is not true for the JV-1080. 
You need to define the MIDI sysex message that allows you to access 
these parameters, therefore:  
						

							CUBASE SX/SL1 – 58 MIDI devices
12.Click the Create Sysex button…
…and be prepared for a dive into the deep waters of ancient MIDI mythology. You’d 
better take a deep breath before…
…the “Create Sysex” dialog appears.
•In the MIDI definition part of the MIDI device’s manual, you should be 
able to find sysex message definitions. Look out for messages that al-
low you to set individual parameters according to the tables mentioned 
earlier. In case of the JV-1080, you’ll find this definition 1 or 2 pages 
before the tables. The message is called “Data Set1 (DT1)”, which is a 
message that is used by many, if not all, of Roland’s MIDI devices. 
The next step is to translate this definition to the Create Sysex dialog.
13.Type in “Roland JV-1080 DataSet1 7Bit” in the Name field and select 
the checksum from the Checksum pop-up menu.
Now the number of bytes necessary for this message have to be eval-
uated. Looking at the table in the JV-1080 manual, do not be confused 
by the entry “...”. It means that it is possible to transfer more than one 
MIDI byte (7bit) in the message in one go, by sending multiple data 
bytes. But right now you don’t need this because about 99% of the 
device’s parameters are in the range of up to 128 states, which can be 
transmitted with one data byte. So if you count the bytes, when using 
only one data byte you get a count of 12.  
						

							CUBASE SX/SLMIDI devices 1 – 59
14.Enter “12” in the Length value box.
•It is important to set “Length” and “Checksum” at the beginning, other-
wise you may need to do the additional steps again.
If you look at the sysex definition table, you’ll notice upper and lower 
case letters in the “Status” column. Upper case letters stand for static 
hexadecimal numbers (indicated by the “H” suffix). Lower case letters 
stand for variable numbers that depend on the context. In the “Create 
Sysex” dialog, “Values” are used for these variable numbers. For the 
static ones, there is no need for “values”, you can simply enter the re-
spective number.
All System exclusive messages always begin with F0H and end with 
F7H, with an arbitrary number of bytes in between. This cannot be 
changed.
15.In our example, the first byte after that is “41H”, which is static. There-
fore, delete “Value 1” by selecting it and clicking on “Remove Value” 
and click in the position 1 field in the “Hex” row.
16.Enter “41”.
You see that the number is automatically converted to decimal and binary format. You 
can also enter decimal or binary numbers by clicking into the appropriate rows.
17.Next is the “device ID” which is a dynamic value (depending on what 
is set as the “device ID” in the receiving JV-1080). Double-click on 
“Value 2” in the Values list and rename it to “DevID”.   
						

							CUBASE SX/SL1 – 60 MIDI devices
18.Reduce the number of bits to “4” and enter “10” in the Hex row at po-
sition 2, because the device ID ranges from 10H to 1FH.
19.Next, remove Value 3 and Value 4 and enter the right Values (6A and 
12) in the Hex row.
20.Finally, rename Values 5 to 9 according to the Sysex definition table.
The dialog should now be set up like this:
21.Now, click OK, to return to the world of the living…