Complete Beginners’ Guide to MIDI and the M13 for PC Users

I thought I’d quickly write this to give all you newbies a bit of a headstart as I trawled through lots and lots of forum posts before I could get my M13 to start behaving properly! If you’ve just got hold of an M13 and are new to MIDI, as I am, this may be useful. I was using a fairly elderly (2002) PC running Windows XP SP3.

Oh, and SysEx stands for system exclusive – from what I understand this means that it relates to the operating system of a MIDI device rather than anything to do with MIDI music. I’d be happy to accept correction on this though ;)

So, here we go – the very basic beginner’s guide that I wish I’d had a week ago...

1.)    If you don’t already have some kind of MIDI connection to your computer, get hold of an “M-Audio MIDISport Uno” interface. This will connect your M13 to your computer via USB and comes with the correct drivers to avoid faffing about. My recommendation is to NOT buy a cheap MIDI-USB cable as these can be very unreliable with the M13. I bought one and immediately regretted it after I managed to suck all the firmware out of my M13 and then be unable to put the new firmware back in! So be warned! I recommend you buy the M-Audio one and you shouldn’t have any problems :)

2.)    DON’T PLUG THE USB INTERFACE IN TO YOUR PC!!! Read the instructions on the M-Audio documentation and follow these to the letter. It’s really important that the M-Audio installer is used rather then the default Windows installer.

3.)    Once the installer has run, plug in the device. You may have to accept various defaults, but as long as the M-Audio CD is still in the CD drive you should be ok.

4.)    Once installed, the green USB light should gently pulse. Don’t stare at it too long or you may become hypnotised...

5.)    Now plug in the M13.

6.)    Launch your MIDI program of choice. I tried MIDI-Ox and SendSX and found the latter to be much much easier to use with the M13. Both are free to download.

7.)    To load and backup scenes with MIDI-Ox, check out the very good guides from Line 6:

a.       http://line6.com/community/docs/DOC-1450

b.      http://line6.com/community/docs/DOC-1395

8.)    To backup scenes with SendSX:

a.       Open SendSX, and under both ‘Midi Out’ and ‘Midi In’ make sure USB Uno MIDI is selected.

b.      Hold down the Looper switch on the M13 to enter the setup menu. Rotate the model select knob on FX4 to select between ‘Dump all’ and ‘Dump scene’ (and possibly ‘Dump fldr’ if you have firmware v2.01), then press the model select knob to send the MIDI data. The lights will flash on the MIDISport Uno, and lots of numbers and letters will appear in the right hand side of the screen in SendSX.

c.       Select File/Save MIDI in as then choose a filename and make sure you select the .syx extension. This will save whatever data you just sent to the computer (scene or all scenes) as a SysEx file that can be sent back to the M13 at a later date.

9.)    To load scenes with SendSX:

a.       Select File/Open and navigate to the SysEx (.sys extension) file you want to load to the M13.

b.      When you select the file, a lot of numbers and letters should appear on the left hand side of the SendSX screen.

c.       Click on the ‘Send’ button, and the scene data will be sent to the M13. The FX4 display should indicate that the unit is receiving MIDI data. If there is a problem with the data transfer, try reducing the data transfer rate by clicking on Options/Settings and moving the slider bar to the left. On my computer the default rate worked fine but according to the comments on various forums this may not always be the case!

10.)                        To update firmware with SendSX:

a.       Select File/Open and navigate to the new firmware file (.syx extension).

b.      Select this file and you should see loads of numbers and letters on the left hand side of the screen in SendSX.

c.       Turn off the M13, hold down model select knob on FX1, then turn back on. The screen of FX1 should be shaded out and you should be able to barely make out the words “Flash update mode – waiting command”

d.      Click on the ‘Send’ button in SendSX and the M13 should indicate that it’s receiving MIDI data. The screen in the top left (FX1) should be green. If it’s red, maybe try lowering the transfer speed as described above in 9c.

e.       The flash update will take a while – so make a cup of tea or find something else to do for 20 mins or so.

f.        When the update is over, the unit will go blank, then reboot with the new firmware.

I hope that’s a bit of a help to brand new users – apologies if this information is nothing new to anyone.

Best regards,

Simon