A total makeover of the MIDI Device Manager the next logical step after MIDI remote?

MIDI remote is a swearing master piece !!! I will now stop talking about it since it’s a) off topic b) drool inducing and I’m running out of napkins!

Sooo … anybody remember the MIDI Device Manager? What was it, for those who are not in the know? It was a good intended attempt to create a tool to give users a way to create a GUI inside Cubase to control their MIDI hardware mostly synths, but also some FX units. Sounds nice? It will get worse.

The thing that arrived in a Cubase SX3 costume and then was left out in the rain and never worked anywhere near useful level. Great tool, great concept but the final product was a brutal failure, nothing else. It was so hard to get data into it, it was so hard to place knobs and faders where and how you wanted them, it was so hard and anti intuitive to connect data and knobs that anybody who tried just screamed and never looked at it again with a few exceptions. Let’s just forget the implementation and focus on the future

Back in the future of 2022 it’s time to perform a totalm makeover and use modern technology with click and learn editing in a smooth looking GUI and programming the thing with LUA script and a text file with MIDI SysEx data for the script to read and display in the GUI. The MIDI SysEx strings looks much harder to decipher than they are and it’s a LOT of repetition. Only a few bytes at the end of the stringe are really used and the rest is describing the hardware unit’s manufacturer and model and stuff like that. But if we have a template for how to write the SysEx data it’s boring but easy to copy the data one way or the other from the back of the User Manual of the hardware unit and format it in a way that the LUA script can read. Like a tab semi colon delimitered file with the name description and data like … this [pseudo code]:


"Roland D50"
"Filter Hz"; F0 41 00 14 12 02 00 00 18 37 0B 01 00 01 XX 00 F7;
"Filter Q"; F0 41 00 14 12 02 00 00 18 37 0B 01 00 02 XX 00 F7;
... 200 lines later ...
"Filter Rez"; F0 41 00 14 12 02 00 00 18 37 0B 01 00 03 XX 00 F7;
"Filter Wtf"; F0 41 00 14 12 02 00 00 18 37 0B 01 00 04 XX 00 F7;

It’s really not hard once you get the hang of it. However it’s severly boring and … no fun! You only have to do it once, though! :sunglasses:

Then in the GUI or script editor all you see is the description and you can connect that to something similar to the newly released MIDI Remote in Cubase 12. Oh joy!

That would be infinitely faster and less tedious than enter one number at a time in a GUI from hell with no ergonomics, work flow or ability to save regularly without screwing up, and the constant threats of crashing soaring like vultures in the sky.

A new MIDI device manager that actually works and is up to date with script support and GUI editor with click and learn features would be the ultimate X-mas present for me even if it arrives between november/december.


If this sounds like something Steinberg would want to do … PLEASE … include a means to connect more than one string per knob and … no, leave it up to the end user to write the script that will be excecuted from each button. There was A LOT of weirdness going on in the early days of MIDI SysEx implementation, including disconntious or partial series of values going from 0-127, or some companies had dual SysEx messages like first the specific message and then an genric message to execute the first message etc !!! Don’t ask, they will deny everything! :scream: :rofl:

That’s what I call a feature request! :grinning:

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