Sysx view menu

The Sysx view menu contains the following commands.

File menu

Open. Load a .syx file into the selected Sysx bank.

Send. Transmit the current bank’s System Exclusive message. If nothing seems to happen, make sure you have correctly set the output. This command is disabled if the current bank is empty.

Send All. Transmit all non-empty Sysx banks.

Receive. Dump data from a synthesizer into the selected Sysx bank. If the bank contains data, SONAR asks you whether you want the new data to overwrite the existing data or be appended to it.

When receiving dumps, remember to connect both the MIDI In and Out ports of the synthesizer to the MIDI interface. Also, make sure that your instruments are set up to receive and/or transmit Sysx. Synthesizers that you normally use only to play sounds—for example, sound modules that don’t have keyboards—don’t need to be hooked up in both directions except for receiving dumps, so it is easy to forget this. (If you will only be sending Sysx messages to the device, the normal one-direction hookup is sufficient.).

Save. Save the selected Sysx bank as a .syx file. This is a good way to copy a Sysx bank between two SONAR project files. Save the bank into a file, load the other SONAR project file, then load the bank again. This is also a good way to copy one bank to another in the same project file.

Clear. Delete the selected Sysx bank.

Edit menu

Edit Data. Although SONAR’s Sysx features are designed mainly to store System Exclusive data for you, you can edit the bytes of shorter messages in hex format (many of the more popular synthesizers have special patch-editing programs available that let you edit data using sliders and other tools rather than raw hex data).

When you select a bank and choose the Edit Data command, SONAR converts the binary data into a text representation and pops up the Edit System Exclusive Bytes dialog box, in which you can edit the text. If you make changes and click OK to keep them, SONAR tries to convert the text back into binary format. You’ll get an error message if the text does not begin with an F0 and end with an F7, which are the System Exclusive begin and end bytes.

SONAR may not be able to convert the data to text format. The text representation requires three to four times more memory than the data itself, and the Edit System Exclusive Bytes dialog box can contain roughly as much text as Notepad.

Name. Enter a descriptive name for the selected Sysx bank. Names are saved only in .cwp and .cwb files.

Settings menu

Auto Send on/off. Automatically transmit the selected bank every time SONAR loads the project file. You might use this option for banks that contain System Exclusive messages that load a set of sounds for a synthesizer at or before the start of a project.

Before transmitting, SONAR asks your permission. This is a safety feature for loading a file you have received from someone else; if it happens to contain data for your synthesizer(s), you might lose your patches and configuration information. However, if you don’t want to be asked, go to Edit > Preferences > File - Advanced and clear the Ask Before Sending System Exclusive (When Opening Projects) check box.

Output. Specify the MIDI output port to transmit the selected Sysx bank on.

To export a Sysx bank to another project

1.	In the Sysx view, select the bank you want to export.

2.	Click the Sysx view File menu and choose Save to open the Save As dialog box.

3.	Navigate to the folder in which you want to store the file.

4.	Enter a file name and click OK.

SONAR saves the file in the location you specified, with the extension .syx.

5.	Open the project to which you want to import the bank and select an empty bank in the Sysx view (unless you want to add the file to an existing bank).

6.	Click the Sysx view File menu and choose Open to open the Open dialog box.

7.	Navigate to the desired folder, select the .syx file you want to import, and click Open.

SONAR loads the selected bank into the current project.