sysex filtering with soft thru?

Hello. First post, be gentle!

I've been having some problems with the midi soft thru function on my mpc. I don't know if there is any JJ trickery to fix this or can it be requested somehow? I tried a fairly recent JJOS and it seemed to have the same problem as the akai OS
Here is some details...

I've got the following setup:
midi keyboard and PC midi out connect to MPC midi inputs
akai S5000 sampler and Evolver synth connect to the midi outs.

I've tried soft thru in every mode there is, the outcome is the same...

When I try to use the PC editor software for the evolver, it seems the midi sysex must be getting corrupted/filtered/altered by the MPC, which sits between the PC and the evolver.

If I connect directly from PC midi out to evolver midi in, it is fine.

The problem is when I try and poll the evolver from the editor, the following midi sysex is sent:

F0,7E,7F,6,1,F7

As far as I can tell,
F0 is the sysex start message,
7E is the manufacurer ID, in this case set to generic "non-realtime",
F7 is the sysex stop message and
the middle bytes are the sysex itself. I imagine the 1 and the end may be a parity bit(?)

I can probably do a bit more detective workand determine the exact output sysex from the soft thru if needed....anyway

Has anyone else experienced problems like this?
Do you know how I can fix this?
Would this be considered for fixing in a new JJOS version if applicable?

Many thanks.

I don't have this problem because I don't use soft thrus except for very limited purposes and only to send standard midi -- they are notorious for causing all kinds of problems including latency and sucking down extra processing power that could be put to better use.

Evolver sysex is finicky in it's own way and doesn't like to be passed through certain interfaces. I tried to use an old parallel port interface to upgrade one once and had to give up due to truncation issues. If there is anyway for JJ to fix this he would need an evolver on hand (or maybe a realtime sysex recording from one to play back).

The real solution is a multiport midi interface and/or patchbay to connect everything in parallel. Never worry about sketchy soft thrus again.

for this purpose i am using a midi merge (to get PC + MPC -> evolver).

the phillip rees little 2M works perfectly with the evo and editor. (but others might work also)

Ok, thankyou for your comments. I think I'll make a midi merger to handle this instead. The ones you buy are stupidly overpriced. http://www.ucapps.de/midimerger.html is a good one you can make very cheaply. PS If JJ or anyone else wants to do a bit of midi hacking, there is a great midi analyser/generator/wonder tool, that is midiox. Worth a look if you are having midi problems or want to sort out the soft thrus

Digging up an old thread, cause I have exactly the same problem. Have programmed a midi controller to spit out sysex so that I can tweak some (otherwise menu-buried) synth parameters. It works great when I connect the controller directly to the synth, but when doing it via my mpc1000 (so that I can record and play back the tweaks) the mpc seems to mess up the sysex. I'm running the latest JJOS1 (4.99J).

So, dave_g and others, how did it go? Did you sort out the sysex problem or bypass it (quite literally) with a midi merger?

dave_g wrote:Ok, thankyou for your comments. I think I'll make a midi merger to handle this instead. The ones you buy are stupidly overpriced. http://www.ucapps.de/midimerger.html is a good one you can make very cheaply. PS If JJ or anyone else wants to do a bit of midi hacking, there is a great midi analyser/generator/wonder tool, that is midiox. Worth a look if you are having midi problems or want to sort out the soft thrus