MIDI dump of Yamaha TX816
Abstract
I own two Yamaha TX816 and I need to dump and reorganize the patches. My computer runs on Ubuntu 24.04, the MIDI interface is E-MU XMIDI 1X1.
Part 1 - dumping
Using Bladesk Librarian
A fantastic librarian working directly in your browser: https://bladesk.github.io/DX7II-Librarian/.
It works well with my Yamaha DX7 MK1, but failed to receive dumps from the TX816.
Using ALSA command amidi
This simple command comes with ALSA and runs into a terminal (CTRL+ALT+T to open a terminal). QJackCtl must be installed first:
$ sudo apt install qjackctl $ amidi -l Dir Device Name IO hw:2,0,0 E-MU XMidi1X1 Midi In $ amidi --port=hw:2,0,0 --receive=TX816B-module1.syx cannot open port "hw:2,0,0": Device or resource busyWhat's going on?
First, let's check the system calls:
$ sudo strace amidi --port=hw:2,0,0 --receive=TX816B-module1.syx ... openat(AT_FDCWD, "/dev/snd/controlC2", O_RDWR|O_CLOEXEC) = 4 ioctl(4, SNDRV_CTL_IOCTL_PVERSION, 0x7ffec02944fc) = 0 ioctl(4, SNDRV_CTL_IOCTL_RAWMIDI_PREFER_SUBDEVICE, 0x7ffec029455c) = 0 openat(AT_FDCWD, "/dev/snd/midiC2D0", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 EBUSY (Device or resource busy) openat(AT_FDCWD, "/dev/snd/controlC2", O_RDONLY|O_CLOEXEC) = 5 ioctl(5, SNDRV_CTL_IOCTL_CARD_INFO, 0x7ffec0294350) = 0 close(5) = 0 openat(AT_FDCWD, "/dev/snd/midiC2D0", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_CLOEXEC) = -1 EBUSY (Device or resource busy) close(4) = 0 ...The issue raises when
amidi tries to open the device /dev/snd/midiC2D0.
$ ls -l /dev/snd total 0 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 80 Jan 11 15:01 by-id drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 140 Jan 11 15:01 by-path crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 11 Jan 10 21:01 controlC0 crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 4 Jan 10 21:01 controlC1 crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 6 Jan 11 15:01 controlC2 crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 10 Jan 10 21:01 hwC0D0 crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 5 Jan 11 15:01 midiC2D0 crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 8 Jan 11 14:47 pcmC0D0c crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 7 Jan 11 14:47 pcmC0D0p crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 9 Jan 11 14:47 pcmC0D2c crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 3 Jan 10 21:01 pcmC1D0c crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 2 Jan 11 14:46 pcmC1D0p crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 1 Jan 10 21:01 seq crw-rw----+ 1 root audio 116, 33 Jan 10 21:01 timerIs there any process using this device?
$ sudo lsof /dev/snd/midiC2D0
lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.portal file system /run/user/1000/doc
Output information may be incomplete.
lsof: WARNING: can't stat() fuse.gvfsd-fuse file system /run/user/1000/gvfs
Output information may be incomplete.
What are these warnings? Well basically, lsof scans all filesystems and has no privilege on the fuse (Filesystem in Userspace) filesystem. Fuse and gvfs are used by Gnome. So we can safely ignore the warnings and deduce no process is currently using midiC2D0.
I spent hours tracing and digging in the sources without any success. I gave up on this.
Using ALSA command aseqdump
I had more success by slighly modifying the function dump_event in aseqdump.c to output binary instead of text:
286 case SND_SEQ_EVENT_SYSEX:
287 {
288 unsigned int i;
289 // printf("System exclusive ");
290 for (i = 0; i < ev->data.ext.len; ++i)
291 // printf(" %02X", ((unsigned char*)ev->data.ext.ptr)[i]);
292 printf("%c", ((unsigned char*)ev->data.ext.ptr)[i]);
293 // printf("\n");
294 }
295 break;
296 default:
297 printf("Event type %d\n", ev->type);
298 }
With this mod, I simply had to redirect the output of aseqdump to a file
$ ./aseqdump -p port > tx816A.module1.dump
Then, on each unit, select the module with Out slot and dump with UT(ILITY) → DU(MP) → Yes
Part 2 - Writing a librarian
Currenlty under development
I did a quick and dirty version in C, but I decided to write a better version in C++ based on RtMidi.
- Install
libasound2-dev - Download and extract
RtMidi
#include "RtMidi.h"
int main() {
try {
RtMidiIn midiin;
} catch (RtMidiError &error) {
// Handle the exception here
error.printMessage();
}
return 0;
}
g++ -Wall -D__LINUX_ALSA__ -o example example1.cpp rtmidi-6.0.0/RtMidi.cpp -lasound -lpthread
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