Patch file decoding

UDO Audio Gear Super 6
1

First some general comments:
This is a complicate subject. The Super6 is intend to be a musical instrument for some kind of “hands on experience” to be explored by playing and listening. It has no display by intention!
… but I’m nosy :blush: very nosy :crazy_face: … and there are a lot of factory patches where i had no clue how this is done…
… and some of the patches become even more valuable and easier to tweak if you know which slider is in what position.

So i did some research, recycled some code that i allready had in my treasure for finding out things like that and buildt “something”, that does the job “allmost”.
“Allmost” means:

  • It works in my development environment how it works, far away from the status of an easy to reuse software product.
  • I didn’t find the values for all sliders. Two are really missing (the red ???), two are probably not part of the patch (the red /), for one i was to lazy to decode the numeric value (SEQ REC button).
  • Not all sliders have a linear curve. For the LFO1 PHASE slider i know for sure that the displayed value does not correlate linear, for others maybe.
  • The patch file format seems to be highly redundant, so i’m not sure if i allway got the right “copy” of that value.
  • No graphics! To me it is much more usefull to have numeric value with 1% precisicion, than counting pixels on a screen picture.

All slider or knob values are recalculated to a value 0,0 to 10,0, except DDS2 TUNE which goes -6,0 … 0 … 6,0 and all MOD AMOUNT values going from -8,0 to + 8,0 (for the number of LEDs).
The software displays the DDS1 waveform and the LFO1 waveform (both part of the patch), even if i did not find out how to determine if LFO1 really uses that waveform or not.

Here is an example for Patch G3 … the one that made me nearly crazy :nerd_face:

Patch_G3
Patch_G31394×1152 130 KB

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2

Some additional note:
If you are interested in the settings of a dedicated patch, please ask.
Please don’t ask for ALL. :upside_down_face:

And finally, please don’t ask for a blue design. I know, the blue one sounds better :clown_face: but the gray make higher screen contrast. :face_with_monocle:

3

Any chance for layout of how patch files are structured? I tried to extract some but was too much work. Figured out there are 6 sections which I assume is tied to the voices.

4

Patch overview with some selected patch parameters.
The small icon right of the patch number marks patches that use the EXPR/CV input in the mod matrix.
Patches that differ on the Super6 from the default Patches are marked with yellow background.

PatchOverview
PatchOverview1028×978 49.7 KB

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5

By the way: The patches E2 … G1 seem to be made by Matt Johnson (Jamiroquai) and obviously he likes to use the Expression pedal in combination with the pitch bender,
as you can see in the MOD MATRIX:

Patch_E2
Patch_E21411×1313 26.2 KB

The other patches using the Expression pedal all end with *_DZ (don’t know who that is), but they don’t use it in that excessive way.

Patch_C3
Patch_C31413×1131 25.4 KB

6

I know it’s been a few years, but any way you could make this open source? I would like to try randomizing some patches and sending them to my S6. I have no idea where to start with the patch file decoding though.

7

Would this work with the Super Gemini?

8

I’m quite surprised that you ignore the existence of a PC/Mac editor for S6, the Sunny synth Super 6 editor in addition to managing a patch library shows the positions of the sliders on the loaded patch panel (also numerically) as well as the destinations of the matrix.
It’s not perfect yet but I’ve been using it for a long time…

9

The data-structures in the patchfile currently contains too much internal stuff. Sunny Synth’s editor is currently the most up-to-spec editor that can read them but is hampered by the MIDI spec. Not all controls can be set like modulations or reading/writing patch data. As a result you need intimate knowledge of how the patchfile is written (including internal processes not exposed in the synth’s physical interface). In that regard the MIDI spec is currently lagging behind other vendors like Sequential. I think it would lead to better tooling if it was improved. Particularly for users who want to inspect how patches were made, or just have a system for transfering / backup patches to their computer.

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10

I’m not ignoring it–it’s not what I’m looking for. Having a library tool is a great idea. But I specifically want to interact with the patch files and be able to side-load my own patches to the synth. The use case I was thinking of was to use a program (like a python script) to generate a random set of parameters, mod connections, etc and load it to the synth. I think that would be an awesome way to explore sound design on it.

11

I started working on an intelligent randomizer for my Pro-2 editor but never finished it (well, it was closed to be finished).
I can look to add that to my S6 editor as well as morphing (that I already have in my ML XD and Pro-800 editors).
Thx for the proposal!

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