Preset Editor - Tools - JSON, Upload -> change Preset Editor?

Ideas / Feature requests
1

Love the product, I’m finding sounds in my VSTs twiddling knobs that I wouldn’t have found otherwise, so thanks!
I really liked a preset someone else made, and wanted to change the Port and Channel. Manually editing 111 controls wasn’t very appealing, so I used find/replace in the JSON screen to quickly change the port and channel. After clicking Upload, the E1 actually started using this new port and channel. However, the controls in the regular edit pane didn’t reflect these changes.
Now I had to leave the Preset Editor, remove the Preset from My Presets, go to Controller, Preset Slots to import from the E1. Phew, that took a while to find out. Next time it will be quicker, but why not immediately reflect it in the Preset Editor. If people make big mistakes, they can always fall back on a revision, not?

1 Like
2

please note, the controls are never directly assigned to the port and channel. Instead, they use so-called Device that defines what MIDI port and channel will be used. Unless the preset uses some kind of hardcoded MIDI messages implemented in Lua, it is sufficient to simply adjust the configuration of the Device, see Devices.

3

Hello @martin and @bramdvries ,

I’m trying to do much the same thing as Bram. I want the preset to send to channel 2 instead of channel 1. Following Martin’s advice, I should just have to change one line of the JSON, from this

  "devices": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "name": "Generic MIDI",
      "instrumentId": "generic-midi",
      "port": 1,
      "channel": 1
    },

to this

  "devices": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "name": "Generic MIDI",
      "instrumentId": "generic-midi",
      "port": 1,
      "channel": 3
    },

However, I have not got as far as encountering the problem Bram has described. I think I need a basic primer in how to edit preset JSON. I expect this is in the documentation, but I cannot find it. Here’s what I’ve tried.

I viewed the JSON in the Lua & Tools section of the Preset Editor. I don’t know whether changing the JSON here is supported. I tried anyway. It was hard because I could not find a way to search for “devices”. But I did mange to scroll down to the required line and change it on screen. However, sending to my Electra had no effect. And the Preset Editor did not recognise that anything had changed, so saving was disabled. I tentatively conclude that editing the JSON in the Lua & Tools section of the Preset Editor is not a way to update a preset.

I investigated downloading the JSON to my PC to edit it there and then upload my amended JSON file. On the Preset page within My Presets in Electra One App, I tried Download Preset. That appears to give me a JSON file, except that all the text is on one line. So it’s not suitable for editing.

So I went back to the JSON in the Lua & Tools section of the Preset Editor. I was able to select all, copy and paste into a JSON editor on my PC. That provided the proper line breaks. I was easily able to find devices, make the required change to the channel and save a file. But I cannot see a way to upload the preset from my saved file.

Simon

4

Hi Simon, I am not sure which of my advices you are referring too :slight_smile:

The situations when you need to edit the preset JSON are extremenly. If you want to change the MIDI channel of a MIDI device (in the preset) there are two ways to go about that:

  1. Make the edits in the web editor. See Web Editor - Editing devices. It the preset is not yours, you will need to get a copy first.
  2. Use the Devices section in the Main manu on the controller. See Controller - Main Menu - Devices. This allows you to change the Device settings on the fly and on the controller. Even if the preset you uploaded is not your own copy.

I hope one of the above options will do the job for you. If not, let me know.

5

Thanks, @martin! Your advice that I was followng was was as above in this topic:

please note, the controls are never directly assigned to the port and channel. Instead, they use so-called Device that defines what MIDI port and channel will be used. Unless the preset uses some kind of hardcoded MIDI messages implemented in Lua, it is sufficient to simply adjust the configuration of the Device, see Devices.

But I now realise you did not mean the JSON would have to be edited. What works best for me is

Use the Devices section in the Main menu on the controller. See Controller - Main Menu - Devices. This allows you to change the Device settings on the fly and on the controller. Even if the preset you uploaded is not your own copy.

So I don’t need to edit the JSON.