[linux-audio-dev] MIDI bank select MSB + LSB

Hi everybody!

I wonder what's the common behavior for a synth/sampler regarding MIDI bank
select messages. You might know that MIDI has splitted bank indeces into two
values MSB (coarse) and LSB (fine) value. So the "optimal" behavior would be
a device / sequencer to send a MSB and a LSB bank select message to change
the current bank. But many older keyboards for example won't do that. I've
heard most of them only send MSB bank selects, while few others send only LSB
bank selects. Is that true?

If yes, how should you handle that on synth/sampler side? Because you know,
using just MSB messages would only allow to switch between the following set
of banks:

        { 0, 128, 256, ... , 16256 }

while using just LSB messages would only allow to switch between the following
set of banks:

        { 0, 1, 2, ... , 127 }

So should a synth stick with that behavior or should it detect if a device
either only sends MSB bank selects or only sends LSB bank selects and then
actually remap MSB-only selects to a set of:

        { 0, 1, 2, ... , 127 }

CU
Christian
Received on Tue Dec 12 00:15:06 2006