semi-auto preset change of external gear while playing

I'm working on a live set with runs totally in one project.
There are several tracks and many sequences.
Im working primary with 4 or 8 bar loops and perform with track mutes, pad mutes and performance looping - for that i have 8 XYFX on several submixes which i all mapped to the sliders of a novation launch control.

I want to switch between presets of external gear (Analog Heat and a Microfreak) while looping or at least when switching seqences.
By now i do that on the machines themselves which is a bit annoying.

What i've tried so far:

- 2 blank midi tracks with different program ch and bank settings towards the gear. switching presets by mute / unmute the tracks -> this does not work as expected, first comes, first stays.

- midi automation events per sequence but this resets the preset every loop repeat, so no live tweaking on the gear possible

- midi automation events on a warmup seqence and then switching to the actual sequence -> program resets to track default

- midi learn to fire program change via a pad of a novation launchpad but there's no program change message available for that in midi learn


what i dont want to do is switching manually to the main view of the track and change the program/bank there manually because this is fiddly - im mostly working on track mute page and other tracks with pad mutes. and i want to change both externals simultanuesly anyway.


I'm wrapping my head around this for hours.
thanks in advance for any tips and ideas

You can easily do that with MPC OS 2, In MPC OS 3, since tracks are global, well, the only solution is to insert program changes within the sequence rather that setting a program change directly on the MPC track settings.

AKAI changed how the MPC works without even thinking about these sort of cases, making MPC OS 3 less useful in some situations. this is the first I have owned a device which OS upgrade was also a downgrade in some aspects.

So if sending program changes once per sequence change is important for you, you'll have to downgrade your MPC OS to version 2 .