New utility for the AxeChange

tgunn

tgunn

Experienced
I just added a new utility that makes previewing and storing presets from the AxeChange a bit easier.
The way it works is that you just run it with a path to a preset file. It will:

* Load the preset file into memory.
* Override the ID of the preset so that it won't overwrite a preset on the AxeFx. Instead the preset will only be loaded into the edit buffer of the AxeFx.
* Send the results to the AxeFx.

This means that the preset will show up as you'd expect, but it won't be stored.
You can preview it this way and optionally store it wherever you'd like.

If you want, you can set axeloader up as the default handler of .syx files and then it'll be as easy as double clicking on a .syx file to send it to the AxeFx.

Works on Windows and Mac:
https://afx2lg.googlecode.com/files/axe_utilities.zip

Enjoy!

PS: The zip file also includes the axebackup and afx2lg utilities. The readme file has more details.
 
I clicked on the Mac version of Axebackup and my Terminal opens without doing anything.
I only see this in a window:
Last login: Wed Dec 26 19:39:27 on ttys000
MacBook:~ MacBook$ /Users/MacBook/Documents/Fractal\ Audio/axe_utilities/Mac/axebackup ; exit;
dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/lib/libc++.1.dylib
Referenced from: /Users/MacBook/Documents/Fractal Audio/axe_utilities/Mac/axebackup
Reason: image not found
Trace/BPT trap
logout

[Opération terminée]

Any idea?
 
Hi Tgunn, thanks for your quick answer.
I'm on OSX 10.6.8 and I must admit I'm not used to the terminal at all.

Should I type in the terminal what's suggested in the link you posted:

sudo ln -sf /Applications/TextMate.app//Contents/Resources/mate /usr/local/bin/mate

I know that playing with the terminal can be very dangerous.
 
Error 'received out of band preset checksum'. And sometimes 'Unrecognized function: 20'.
Cause unknown.

But the process continues. Then it quits at preset 33 each time, reporting 'Preset checksum verification failed'.
 
yek said:
Error 'received out of band preset checksum'. And sometimes 'Unrecognized function: 20'.
Cause unknown.

But the process continues. Then it quits at preset 33 each time, reporting 'Preset checksum verification failed'.
Click to expand...

Wait a minute ... preset 33 is my only preset with a TM block.
 
Hey Yek - great to see that you're trying this out. :)

Here's what could be happening for the errors you've seen:

''received out of band preset checksum":
This means that the AxeFx was already sending a preset or bank dump over the USB connection when axebackup was started.
You can run into this for example if you start doing a backup and verification fails for whatever reason (usually due to corrupt sysex being reported by the driver) and you run axebackup again while the AxeFx is still dumping data for the previous, failed, backup.
If this is what you ran into, just wait for the AxeFx to finish dumping the data and then try again.

"Unrecognized function: 20"
Function 20 is a message that the AxeFx will send when a preset change occurs. Is there any chance that you changed presets while doing a backup?
The thing is that a backup is a stream of sysex messages and there's a chance that other, unrelated, sysex messages sneak in between and inadvertently become a part of the backup file, hence the backup utility will abort whenever it sees anything that isn't strictly a preset id (function 119), parameter data (function 120) or preset checksum (function 121). Anything else will be reported as an error if it occurs during a backup and ignored if it occurs before the first bytes of the backup data arrive.

Are you using a Mac by any chance? I've noticed that the driver on mac is particularly sensitive
to other applications using the CPU. This was the primary motive for adding the verification
mechanism.

If none of the above is what you ran into, then it would be great if there's a chance
you could share with me preset 33 or a similar one so that I can troubleshoot.
Please send any test files to my personal email (see readme file).
I have tested the utilities with presets that have a TM block, user cabs etc, but
it looks like there's something in your preset that I haven't tested against.

I'm actually taking off for a couple of weeks so I won't be near my axefx, but I've got utilities that I can use instead, so doing simple fixes is not that hard.
 
lp59 said:
Hi Tgunn, thanks for your quick answer.
I'm on OSX 10.6.8 and I must admit I'm not used to the terminal at all.

Should I type in the terminal what's suggested in the link you posted:

sudo ln -sf /Applications/TextMate.app//Contents/Resources/mate /usr/local/bin/mate

I know that playing with the terminal can be very dangerous.
Click to expand...

Ah, sorry for not being clear, no that's not what you should do and I'll rather fix the tool to work on your system than trying to "fix" your system.
The thing is that there should be a file on your system in the /usr/lib/ directory named "libc++.1.dylib", but it isn't there in your version of the OS.
I'm going to see if I can't make a version that doesn't require it.

EDIT: I just looked quickly into this and it looks like version 10.7 is the minimum version to have the dependencies that are required. It might take some time to get this working since I'm going to be away from my Mac for a couple of weeks.
 
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No problem for me, I'll wait and keep in touch. Hope you can find a fix without too much hassles. Thanks for caring.
 
I'm trying to run this on a Win XP netbook and I'm getting an error that it is not a valid Win32 application. Midi-Ox works fine on the same netbook. Is there something I'm supposed to be doing other than what's in the OP?
-
Austin

EDIT: Looks like this doesn't work in XP, because the program seems to open fine on my Win7 laptop. Just so happens I'll be getting a new Win7 laptop I'll be using with the Axe tomorrow, so I'll just wait until then to give the app a spin. Thanks for the work OP!
 
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O.k., so I'm able to use this to easily load patches, which is great, but doesn't seem to work for patches with a TMA block in them? The patch loads, but there's no sound unless I disable the TMA block. I'm trying patches from Adam and Cliff, so I assume the patch is fine. I've never tried loading a TMA patch before, so I suppose it could be user error, but as far as I know, there's nothing special I should have to do on my end, just load the patch.
-
Austin
 
Hey guys, great to see some activity :)

OS support:

The background is that I allowed myself a fun "luxury" in this little project to use C++ 11 as an incentive for myself to keep working on it. This means OS X Lion or later and Windows 7 or later should work out of the box but older versions of the OS will need some additional steps to get things working. On Mac, see if you can install XCode 4.1, that should solve it. For Windows XP I made a little change that addresses the problem.

Presets with the TMA block:

These presets have some encoding that I haven't had much time to dig into but I have asked Fractal support for some hints and they haven't yet gotten back to me. What I've done in the meantime is work around it in the current set of tools. Right now, that doesn't matter, but for future features it would mean reduced functionality for those presets. None of the stock presets have this problem and curiously neither do any of my personal TMA presets. One conceivable reason for this is that the problematic presets were initially created with an older FW version and that the format has changed since. Nevertheless, I'm hoping that Fractal will shed some light on this.

I don't have access to my Mac right now, but I'll do another build later tonight or tomorrow where the tools should work with presets with TMA blocks and they should run on Windows XP.
 
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