After much experimenting I have found that Midifiles appear to the best way of creating and moving Mirage sound and program dumps. This document is designed to help those who wish to create midi dumps from their Mirage and should be included with the zip file , mirdmpr.zip , containing the midifile MIR_DMPR.MID.
I have created a new midifile containing two new tracks of instructions. The first will change from the current program to the opposite. In other words if the Mirage is set to Lower Program 1 and the track is played the Mirage will change to Upper Program 1 or vice versa. The second control track is used to do the Program re-set trick. After receiving a midi dump the Mirage can act a little strange and so this track will fix the problem. It is placed at the end of the track so the Mirage can play the sounds straight away.
A warning/disclaimer is in order here. There are certain settings that must be used for this procedure to work. While I have tried to ensure that all points and possibilities are covered things could still go very wrong. Be it on your own head if they do !
Of course for any of this to work you must boot up the Mirage with MASOS , the Mirage Advanced Operating System.
The Midifile MIR_DMPR.MID should contain 4 tracks.
Track 1 - contains the part that will activate a dump of the Lower Programs.
Track 2 - contains the part that will activate a dump of the Upper Programs.
Track 3 - contains the part that will activate a dump of the Current wavesample as specified by Param 26.
Track 4 - contains the part that will increase the value of Parameter 26 by one.
There is no real way of automating this process without writing some form of program, and that would defeat the whole point of this excersize to create a completely cross platform method of sound transfer. With that in mind there are a few steps to take before hitting record on the sequencer. Of course you will need a sequencer booted up , the Mirage booted up on masos and the Mirage midi In and Out connected to the sequencer. Make sure Param 83 ( Midi Thru ) is turned Off. For the sake of a standard approach set Param 82 ( Midi Channel ) to 1 and set Param 81 ( Omni ) to Off. There are a couple of Midi settings that must be made to the sequencer as well. If the sequencer has a Midi Thru function , ie everything coming into the Midi Input goes out the Midi Output , then either turn this Off or turn it Off on Channel 1. Next if there are any Midi Filters for recording you may find that System Exclusive is being filtered. Set that to Off aswell. Many sequencers have a nice feature that allows looping between two locators. Turn this Off. Last thing is tempo. Now I haven't played around with the tempo settings much but I settled on 100 bpm so set the sequencer to 100 bpm. With a little luck there shouldn't be any more settings to make. Ignoring these setting will result in both the Mirage and maybe the Sequencer becoming locked up. If this should occur, Dont Panic ! Simply unplug one of the Midi connections and everything should unlock. If that doesnt work then you will have to turn some stuff off. You have been warned !!!
Next go to the Mirage and load in the sounds you want to dump from disk. If you are using the Lower half then make sure the Lower section is active by clicking the 0/Prog button and selecting the correct setting and program 1 of that setting. The same applies for Upper sounds.
Now open the MIR_DMPR.MID file into the sequencer. You should see the four tracks and maybe the names of the tracks. You may like to break each track into it's own midifile if that is a more useful way to deal with them. Either create a new arrangement or mute the tracks in the current one containing the dump triggers. You dont want all the dump triggers playing at once. Now create a new track, call it DataDumps or what ever. This is the track that the data will be recorded into. Double check that everything is set as it should be and dial up Param 26 on the Mirage as this will need changing during the process.
There is a certain order the dumps must be sent back to the Mirage and just to be tidy it's good to get them in the same order.
First un-mute the appropriate Program Dump trigger part. Make sure that the track to be recorded to is the active track. If you need to create a part for the track then make it pretty long, you can always trim it back latter. Now put the sequencer into Record. If there is some form of Midi In/Out indicators in the sequencer you should see the trigger part transmit and then the dump start coming in. The LED on the Mirage should be flashing away nicely too.
When the Mirage LED stops flashing then Stop the sequencer and label the part you just recorded. You may also wish to trim the size of the part back at this stage. Move this part to another track so that it can be muted. If it isnt muted then it will dump back into the Mirage. You should also mute the Program dump trigger part .
Next check Param 26 is set to one. Unmute the Current Wave dump trigger part. Go to the recording track and create a part if needed. Again put the sequencer into Record and watch the light show. The wavesample dumps may take a bit of time, depending on the size of the sample. Once the Mirage LED stops flashing Stop the sequencer and label the newly recorded part 1. Move it to somewhere it can be muted.
For the remaining wavesamples just repeat the previous step making sure that Param 26 is set to the correct number. Do this for as many wavesamples in the sound bank.
There should now be a program dump and some wavesample dumps in the sequencer. To create a dump that will play straight into the Mirage place each dump in the correct order , in the same track. You will also need to place a copy of the param 26 incrementing part between each wave dump. Something like this -
Prog-Dmp, Wav-1, +1 , Wav-2 , +1 , Wav-3 , +1 , Wav-4
Get rid of everything else in the sequence except this track and save it as a Midifile. Now when this file is loaded back and played to the Mirage the sound will dump without fuss. The only thing the end user should have to do is make sure that The correct Half of the Mirage is selected and that Param 26 is set to 1.
It's a little complicated at first but it saves on finding and learning a new piece of software and allows for the ultimate in cross platform dumps. Even some hardware sequencers can read Midifiles from DOS disks and the like.
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