Hello!
I use the external instrument feature to control & record my external synths. I am trying to improve my set-up by mapping and naming the synths presets in the Midi Device in Cubase.
Here is what i see in the inspector:
I have started to name the presets in the midi device manager, but i still don’t see the patch names in the inspector.
What am I missing?
Ok I think i have foudn why…
And nobody really mentioned it in their youtube tutorials about external instruments…
When you create the midi device you have to tick the ‘Preset Reference’ box…
And you cannot retroactively do this, you have to delete your midi device and create it again.
Really annoying & unecessary headache!
oh and another pitfall, you need to select the right midi channel right off the bat.
So in my screenshots it’s midi channel 1 (on the ‘indentical channels’ section)
If you change midi channel in the inspector, the presets will disappear, so your bank of patches is linked to the midi channel you indicated when you created the midi device.
If you picked the wrong one, delete the midi device and create a new one…
But i’m hitting a wall.
Can you really only have 127 presets per bank, even when adding folders inside the ‘bank’?
It seems to be the case, but then i don’t understand how you can have more than 127 presets per Midi Device?
When i create a 2nd bank, i cannot see it in the inspector, how can you change bank in the inspector?
Once i have the preset names in the inspector i don’t have the usual 2 drop down menu (one for bank, one for preset number).
Thank you if anyone knows this!
Hi,
This is the MIDI standard limitation.
Use multiple Banks.
Hey Martin, thanks for jumping here.
Yes i do understand the midi limitation of 127 and that using bank is the solution.
So if I create multiple banks in the midi device set-up, how can i access them from the inspector?
Here is what i see:
Hi,
You don’t have to access the specific Bank. Try to inspect how is the XG Device made. You can see every Patch contains the Bank and the Program Change. Then you can just choose the Patch from the list (you can use search). All the MIDI Messages (Bank and Program) is going to be sent out.
The Bank Selection happens inside the script, ie. you have to add BankSelect commands to the ProgramChange command in the script. Of course, the exact format depends on the synth that you try to communicate with. The synth should have a MIDI Implementation Chart included in its manual.
If you like to visualize these different banks you can use the Groups. I can see from your screenshots that you already found out how to create Groups.
Update: after 3 or 4 days of headache and trial & error, i sorted it out.
Cubase inspector can indeed show only one and only one "bank’, so you have to:
Midi device window:
Results in the inspector:
Find on this google drive a spreadsheet with the mapping as well as Cubase midi device xml files for:
2 years ago i was trying to do so and couldn’t find much info or the xml files, so happy to share them if that can help someone.
You’re welcome!
There is some documentation in the file “script documentation.txt”, which is located (on Windows) in:
%APPDATA%\Steinberg\Cubase 12_64\Scripts\Patchnames
A year and a half later and you did help me! I found this thread because I too was going crazy trying to do all the same things you were doing in this thread, step for step. In fact, I have 3 of the same synths from your XML list (Peak, Subsequent 37, and Minologue XD). So thank you so much for explaining how you found the solution and for providing those XML files as a starting point! I had to to do some tweaking to the midi channels you had but once I connected everything it works great.
I do have one question though, for you or anyone else who might know – how do you go about getting the names from the synth? I keep seeing mentions around the internet and google that you are able to pull the patch names from a synth and sync it but I cannot for the life of me find out exactly how it’s done. I’ve re-arranged many of the patches on the synths we both have, creating my own presets with their unique names, so while your XML files have been a blessing in getting me jump started, all the names are wrong for me. I was hoping maybe there is some way of re-syncing over midi so it pulls the names I have for each of those same preset slots… Or did you have to manually name them (gasp)?
Finally have you figured out a way to automate a patch change on the track?
Thank you for your service kind stranger! 
I dont want to hijack the thread… but everytime I see a thread that touches the midi device editor I get a strange feeling in my stomach… this is for sure the most neglected rubbish editor on the planet - you cant actually “edit”, you only can create step by step. No way to edit anything at a later point in time.
I always suspected that this “editor” was developed by a bunch of 12 year old beginner-coders… a shame basically.
Yeah, It’s incredibly difficult and convoluted. And I’m guessing just really old. I have experienced a handful of times where I needed to change one setting I created at the outset and discovered the only way to “edit” that setting was to start the entire thing from scratch and lose all my work, which I would agree as far as “editors” are concerned is pretty much the opposite of what you’d expect.
I’d love to see an entire overhaul of that editor in a future version of Cubase, though I am not going to hold my breath on that. But once you get a midi device working, it definitely does breathe new life into old hardware, so it’s been worth it to me - and then I can save and back these up, hoping to never open the editor again. Just a real pain to get there.
