Miniak Sonar Patch Bank

How to dynamically gain content from your Miniak
Steve Hookings

So a few folks mentioned about this Sonar product. As I use Cubase, I could only speculate what they meant, but I dutifly created a program to generate said output, then asked folks to test it for me. I was deafened by the silence. I also could not find a demo version of Cakewalk's Sonar, so I kind of forgot about it. Until tonight. See, I was doing more Miniaktools research using a combination of my latest prototype and Midi-Ox. I wanted to find a way of sending note on/off data to the Miniak (yes I could use my controller keyboard ... but I wanted to test a theory). And that is when I found an innocent looking menu item in Midi-ox. I got excited. Hopefully you will too.

Here are the steps ... you are welcome!

1 -- Connect your synth up
Midi In from PC to Midi Out of Miniak

Midi Out from PC to Midi In of Miniak

2 -- Load up Midi Ox
Choose the USB In/Out's. Configure buffers if necessary

3 -- Send TOC request from MidiOx to Miniak
Do this via the "send and receive" option ... ie type in the string "F0 00 00 0E 26 41 00 04 00 F7", then right click and "Send and receive sysex". Once complete, save the output. In my case I saved it as toc.syx -- if you change the name to protect the innocent, then change the name to protect the innocent consistenly from now on!!



4 -- Download the TOCSysex_Sonar.exe from Miniaktools
Run the following command from the "DOS" prompt. TOCSysex_Sonar.exe toc.syx > newMiniak.ins

This simply allows TOCSysex_Sonar.exe to process the toc.syx file you just dumped (from the Miniak) and puts the output into a new file newMiniak.ins -- this is _almost_ ready to load into your DAW. Almost.

6 -- Copy this ins file to your cakewalk directory
What you havent got cakewalk? Nope .. me neither. Ah wait this tutorial is about using the cakewalk format file in MidiOX. Copy it to c:\Program Files\MIDIOX\Instr



7 -- Use it .. and enjoy
Yes you will be able to EASILY regen this anytime. So copy all those fave files from our site onto your synth. And regen the TOC as many times as you like! What you want to move the Patches on the synth? I can do that ... later!!





8 Eventually I will release this in Miniaktools
I am working on more prototypes, the aim being to throw that away and design a properly piece of software .. free of charge. I am getting into Design Patterns (old school hacker I am afraid) but hopefully I will get there soon. In the meantime, consider doing it as above.



Enjoy

Regards

Steve Hookings