Virus MID file surgery

    Hi all,
    I am wondering about one thing and thought this would be the ideal place to ask.


    When Virus exports the MID file, what is actually inside of that file? I guess, info about settings of all the patches and banks at the time of exporting, no? Or something else?


    Second question is related to this...is it possible to somehow see those settings? Dive into that MID and see info like "OSC1:Saw Filter:Comb" etc? I know this will not help me to build Virus from any soft synth , but could be interesting to see how Virus actually "makes" some of the sounds.


    Or even, could someone with Virus help me in this? I mean, send a short MP3 sample of one of the sounds and then info about what settings were set in the Virus.


    Probably stupid idea altogether, but it sits in my mind this whole day, so I thought I would give it a shot a get it out.


    Thanks for all the possible comments in advance.

    Zitat von eugenebalt

    why is it called .MID?

    These are in fact MIDI files. It's just that they don't contain any notes, Just sysEx data.

    Zitat von janchlupacek

    what I would need to do is "dump" the settings from Virus and then I would be able it read that (even if in HEX format)?

    Basically yes. You'll first have to tell what is part of the MIDI file format and what is the actual sysEx dump, but you can import it as a MIDI clip into a DAW and open the clip in a MIDI event editor window (Not the usual note editor. You can also use a simple MIDI editor program if you find one) this way it should make more sense.

    Not really. Right click works like a filter. I can choose which kind of events I want to see. I can edit the "kind" of event and change it to say "SysxData" or "Note" or anything like this, but that doesnt help either. The data field in the slope Data goes blank. And when I keep it as it is, I can change this number, but that doesnt tell me anything either. The data just goes from 0 to 127.


    I guess it is a dead end.

    Zitat von janchlupacek


    When Virus exports the MID file, what is actually inside of that file?


    The .MID files contain patch information for the exported bank. Potentially there is other information there, I'd have to look into it to determine what else might be there.


    Zitat von janchlupacek


    Second question is related to this...is it possible to somehow see those settings?


    Sure it is, after all, it contains all the information the Virus needs to load a patch.
    However, Access knows how they store the data in the .MID files, what each part of the file means to the Virus, and we do not.
    At some point, I may return to a project of mine, where I was attempting to reverse engineer this very information. However, unless somebody suggests a better method to do so, it's a very tedious task.
    My methodology was to make a patch, change one parameter on the Virus, and compare the old .MID file with the modified one. Well, there are a lot of parameters in a Virus patch!