Software configuration
Some software options must be made before compiling, others should be made after the application is loaded and running. These are the pre-compile options:
The MIDIBox mixer supports named channels. You will find that reading “Yamaha MU90-R” is a lot more descriptive than “Channel Four”. These names are set in file “USER_LCD.inc”, beginning near line 101. You should find a group of sixteen lines that look something like this:
TEXT_CHAN_0 STRING 11,0x04,“Thunderbird”
This is the name for the first channel (channel 0). You may change the quoted part to whatever you want, and then you must count the characters in the name and enter that just before the 0x04. In the example, the channel name “Thunderbird” is eleven characters long. The “0x04” means that it will skip the first four characters of the line, to make room for the (space)1:(space) that is printed before the name given.
Repeat this edit for each of the channels you are using.
We have two types of volume meters we can choose from. Pilo provided code for a “dB” meter, which will display the gain for the left and right channels in a numeric form. This is not only the most accurate meter display, but also the one that should work with all LCD display types. I believe it is the default display when the code shipped. I noticed that my own display had vertical bars available at character positions16 to 24 (decimal). 16 has a single vertical bar on the left side, 17 has two on the left side, etc.. 20 is a solid ON block, 21 has four bars on the right, 22 has three bars on the right etc. IF your display has the same vertical bars in the same positions, you may change to the “bargraph” display if you'd like. The choice is made in USER_LCD.inc near line39 and 40. Both display types are called, but the one you'd rather not see should be commented out with a semicolon.
You may limit the number of channels if you'd like. It's not necessary, but these two changes are available if you want. In file “PGA.inc” line 26 we define channels at 16. If you lower this number, then the encoder pushbutton will only service the lower number of channels. Pushing the encoder steps you to the next channel, but it will not step above this “channels” define. Not a big deal. On the following line we define “PGA_NUMBER_OF CHANNELS”. This is currently set to 64. if you set this to the number of PGA chips you have * 4, you will get a slightly faster updates. We are talking fractions of a millisecond here, I doubt anyone would notice the difference, but if you want to, change it.
Finally, I have noticed in testing that some MIDI players, and some MIDI hardware, insert an All Sound Off whenever a setting is changed, or a stop button is pressed, or a file is loaded or whenever they think it's a good idea. This is fine if all the world was a sound module, but this command will reset the mixing board to whatever you have saved in patch zero. If you want to change this, you can go to file “main.asm” near line 252, and delete all the lines between label “ck120” and label “ck7”. DO not delete either of those labels, just the lines in between them. This will make the mixer ignore any “All Sound Off” commands.
