SQ-80 — Musician's Manual
STORING SYSTEM EXCLUSIVE MESSAGES TO DISK
What are System Exclusives?
Some MIDI information—such as Key events, Controllers, Program Changes, etc.— is understood by
virtually all MIDI devices, regardless of manufacturer. The common ability to send and receive these
messages is what allows you to play any MIDI synth from any other, to change Programs and Volume
remotely, to start and stop sequencers and drum machines together, and the many other performance
miracles we have come to expect from MIDI.
There are other messages which each manufacturer has reserved for communicating specific information
with a specific machine (or family of machines). These machine-specific messages are called
System
Exclusive (or Sys-Ex) messages, since they are meant to be recognized only by a particular device and
ignored by all others (i.e, they are exclusive to a particular
system).
The
SQ-80, for example, can transfer Sequences or Programs via MIDI to another SQ-80, to an ESQ1
or to a computer. It is a process not unlike sending a file from one computer to another via modem. The
l's and 0's that make up the data in memory are sent out the MIDI port. This data can be received and
understood by another
SQ-80, by an ESQ-1 (for many types of SQ-80 data), or by a computer
running the proper librarian software.
"Generic" System Exclusive Storage
It is not strictly necessary, however, for the receiving system to understand the data it receives, if the
urpose is to store it for later reloading into the original system Oust as it's not necessary for a file cabinet
to understand the pieces of paper you file there), The
SQ-80 can receive any MIDI System Exclusive
message up to 64k (65,536) bytes and save it to disk without having the foggiest notion what it means
or what type of device it came from. When you want to send the data back to the original device, you
ust load the data from disk back into the SQ-80, which will then re-transmit the message exactly as it
was received.
Here are a few examples of the kinds of information which you can use the
SQ-80 to store in this way:
− > The Program (patch) memory of virtually any MIDI synthesizer
− > The pattern memory of a drum machine
− > The sequence memory of a MIDI sequencer
Wavesample dumps (up to 64k) from samplers and drum machines
− > The preset memory of any MIDI reverb or other effects device which can send and receive it
In short, any MIDI data (up to 64k in length) which can be transmitted from one device to another can
be received and stored by the
SQ-80. With the SQ-80 at the heart of your system you now have disk
storage for the data in all your MIDI instruments.
It uses the Sequencer Memory
The
SQ-80 uses the 64k of RAM (Random Access Memory) that is normally devoted to the Sequencer
to "buffer" incoming System Exclusive messages before saving them to disk. A buffer is an area o
memory where data is held temporarily. When the
SQ-80 receives a System Exclusive data dump, or
loads it from disk for sending out via MIDI, it stores it in the Sequencer memory until you either save
the data to disk or transmit it. This has one extremely important implication:
ou must save all Sequences and Songs before using the System Exclusive Save and Load
functions.
Section 6 — Data Storage 171
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