Help me on the midi front

[Skrln]

Hey friendly guys of the diezel family.

I need some help in understanding midi. The only experience I have with it now is with my H&K Switchblade. It works great, every button on my footswitch can recall any channel on the amp with any EQ. So I could have a 3 different sounding clean channels just by pushing 3 buttons that recall the presets.

Now please forgive my multitude of questions below :

Is there a difference between the way the Herbert Midi works and the VH4 midi works?
What is the difference between Program Chances and Command Changes?
Could I control a Diezel amp by using the midi of a TC Electronic nova system (I mean by presets, so button 1 has a clean channel with chorus, button 2 has a clean channel with delay/mid cut/different eq, button 3 has channel 3 with delay)?

Any help and insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

[i.ak]

Is there a difference between the way the Herbert Midi works and the VH4 midi works?
What is the difference between Program Chances and Command Changes?
Could I control a Diezel amp by using the midi of a TC Electronic nova system (I mean by presets, so button 1 has a clean channel with chorus, button 2 has a clean channel with delay/mid cut/different eq, button 3 has channel 3 with delay)?
:

1.
No, VH4 and Herbert work the same way, but there are some differences what functions/features are controllable through MIDI and what are not.


2.
PC = loading a set of predefined settings, e.g. Channel 1 with Loop on. Roughly said, PC is a number that is sent through a certain MIDI channel to the device which then loads a saved preset according to this number.

CC = often referred as Continuous Control. It provides you an ability to control a function in real time - E.g. Delay on or off in your FX unit. Diezels do not currently support CC-commands, but it looks like there will be change in this situation. There is an own thread for this.

Usually it is also possible to combine PCs and CCs in one preset, so that it will send PC + CC commands by one press of a button, but this is dependant on the MIDI-controller you use.


3.
Yes, Nova system will work if it sends out MIDI PC-controls. I would be surprised if it would not. It has MIDI-out which should mean that a device is creating and sending MIDI-messages. The MIDI Through is used to pass-through MIDI created by another device.

Cannot comment how practical the Nova system is for this purpose, but I believe you can get started with it.

 

[Skrln]

Thanks, things are more clear now.

Just to make sure: The midi in vh4/Herbert is capable of storing/recalling different EQ settings for each channel?

 

[i.ak]

Unfortunately no. I think this is more or less impossible to achieve without digital interface or motorized pots + memory logic.

In VH4 you have the Channel inserts for all 4 channels though. You can insert separate EQ-pedal in those if you need that much different sounds stored. In both amps you of course have the FX-loops and you can set programmable EQ in the serial loop if needed.