Subsystem Search

This page is read from MIDI Instrument Definitions, a Python library used in the author's other projects, in which every number is traced to a document its maker published. Its source is on GitHub.

Behringer UB-Xa MIDI implementation

The MIDI implementation of the Behringer UB-Xa: what it answers to.

At a glance

Firmware
Not recorded.
MIDI channel
Any one of 1 to 16.
Voices
16.
Note range
Not recorded.
Velocity
Not recorded.
Aftertouch
Not recorded.
Pitch bend
Not recorded.
Program change
512 presets. Whether a program change is received or sent is not recorded.
MIDI clock
Not recorded.
Start and stop
Not recorded.
Control change
Not recorded.
NRPN
Not recorded.
System exclusive
Not recorded.

Where these facts come from

Source documents

How they were read

Quick Start Guide, V 3.0, which is the only document Behringer publishes about this instrument: 35 sheets printed two pages to a sheet, 68 printed pages, in nine languages of which English is one. The product page is cited for two things the guide does not state at all, and the UB-Xa D's own guide for one question that could only be settled by reading it.

THE MAKER CLAIMS A MIDI IMPLEMENTATION AND PUBLISHES NO PART OF IT. The product page says this synthesiser is "filled to the brim with modern features such as velocity and after-touch, 512 user program memories and comprehensive MIDI implementation" (product_page). No document behind that sentence names a single controller number. Across both guides the words Control Change, controller, NRPN, RPN, Program Change, SysEx, System Exclusive, implementation, Chart and Appendix occur nought times each, in a pair of documents that say "MIDI" 158 and 179 times; CC comes nought times in this guide and 18 in the desktop guide, each in "MIDI CC" with no number, the English reading "via MIDI CC" (desktop_guide p. 15).

Checked eight ways by two readers, the second asked to break the finding rather than confirm it and using a different extractor on a different interpreter. Between them: every sheet of both documents extracted in two modes; a 48-term sweep of the words for table, implementation, appendix and mapping in all nine languages; 839 windows where an integer 0 to 127 falls within 45 characters of a MIDI word, every one of them a panel callout, a folio, a voltage, a tempo or a dimension; the tagged structure tree of both files, which holds exactly one table per document and it is the specifications; outlines, named destinations, form fields, attachments, annotations, URIs and optional content groups, all absent; and no embedded image in either file, so nothing is hiding as a scan.

The one thing a text search cannot see is drawn art, so it was rendered and looked at. Sheets 7 to 21 are the hook-up diagram and the panel drawings with their numbered callouts. No sheet is a chart.

AND THE GUIDE RESERVES TWO PRINTED PAGES AT THE BACK AND LEAVES THEM EMPTY. Printed 66 and 67 carry a running head, two folios and nothing else. That is where an implementation chart would have gone.

WHAT IT DOES PUBLISH, AND IT IS FOUR SENTENCES. The specifications give "16-voice bi-timbral" (guide p. 60) and "MIDI In/out/thru 5-pin DIN / 16 channels" (guide p. 60) and "USB (MIDI) USB 2.0, type B" (guide p. 60) and "61 full-size keys with velocity and polyphonic aftertouch" (guide p. 61). The sockets are described one by one, the MIDI IN being "to input MIDI from an external MIDI device such as a sequencer or DAW" (guide p. 17).

THE MENUS ARE DESCRIBED AND NEVER OPENED. "Set MIDI channels for the USB and MIDI ports. Normal/Upper, Split or Double. Also switch the keyboard off with the Local Off mode" (guide p. 43) is the whole of what the guide says about its USB/MIDI settings, and the velocity and aftertouch menu gets "This menu contains settings for the various velocity and aftertouch modes" (guide p. 43). So a reader learns that MIDI channels are settable and never which, that velocity modes exist and never what they are. That is this document's shape throughout: a setting exists, and what it can be set to is not written down.

THE TWO LAYERS EACH TAKE A MIDI CHANNEL, AND NO NUMBER IS GIVEN FOR EITHER. In Split "Each section can be set to the same or different MIDI channel" (guide p. 42), and in Dual the two layers "can have the same or independent MIDI channels which allows external MIDI-enabled devices to trigger the UB-Xa" (guide p. 42). So this instrument has parts and this file records none, because a part needs a channel or an offset from one and the maker states neither: both are the player's to choose, in a menu whose contents are not published. Recording a part with an invented channel would be the one thing worse than recording nothing.

THE DOCUMENT DISAGREES WITH ITSELF ABOUT HOW MANY THINGS IT IS AT ONCE. Its cover calls it a "16-Voice Multi-Timbral Polyphonic Synthesizer" (guide p. 1) and its specifications call it "16-voice bi-timbral" (guide p. 60). Both readings are recorded and neither is corrected anywhere in the guide. The layering account above is bi-timbral in substance - two patches, two layers, two channels - so nothing here depends on resolving it.

AND THE TWO PRODUCTS' GUIDES DISAGREE WITH EACH OTHER ABOUT THE TWO SWITCHES THAT MENTION A CONTROL CHANGE. This guide says OSC 1 MOD "turns on control of OSC 1 pitch via the performance LFO" (guide p. 17), and OSC 2 MOD the same of OSC 2. The desktop UB-Xa D's guide says OSC 1 MOD "turns on control of OSC 1 via MIDI CC" (desktop_guide p. 15), and OSC 2 MOD the same of OSC 2, repeated in all nine of its languages. This guide's reading is the coherent one, because the switches sit in the performance LFO block beside the pitch bend lever; the desktop's two sentences would otherwise be the only statements in 69 sheets that a control change reaches anything, and they name no number. They are recorded because the two products' documents disagree, and nothing rests on them.

THE DESKTOP IS A SEPARATE PRODUCT AND IS NOT FOLDED IN. Behringer serves a UB-Xa D under its own product code with its own Quick Start Guide, in its own WW, CN and JP editions. The two files differ by 6.7 MB and one sheet, and the difference is draughtsmanship rather than content: the desktop's panel art is traced about two and a half times as finely. It has no keyboard, so the keys, the wheels and the keys' polyphonic aftertouch are not its, though its guide prints the same velocity and aftertouch menu. It is cited for three things: that two products, two documents, and the same silence in both is stronger evidence about this maker than one document could be; the OSC 1 and OSC 2 MOD sentences above; and that menu, at aftertouch.

NOT RECORDED: mode. There is no MIDI implementation chart in either document.

NOT RECORDED: control_change. Neither word this format has is true here. "none" says somebody checked and the instrument answers to no controller, which the maker's own claim contradicts; "learned" says there is no factory map by design, which is a different instrument's situation entirely. What is true is that a map is claimed and not published, and that is a third case. Left unset rather than filled with the less wrong of two false answers.

NOT RECORDED: nrpn, sysex, transport, clock. The guides say nothing about any of them. The product page does claim "NRPN/CC control of all parameters and bulk load/save" - but that sentence lives inside a script element in the page's markup and does not appear on the page a reader sees, so it cannot be cited and nothing here rests on it.

NOT RECORDED: per_voice_channels. The survey's entry for this instrument records MPE support; "MPE" appears in neither guide nor in the citable text of the product page, so there is nothing to record it from.

NOT RECORDED: a bend range. The PITCH BEND lever "has a range of up or down one whole step" (guide p. 17), or an octave, by its AMOUNT switch, and no page says what range the UB-Xa gives received pitch bend. The UB-Xa D's guide repeats the two ranges, under its AMOUNT switch, which its text calls NARROW (desktop_guide p. 15), for a unit whose panel has no lever (desktop_guide p. 14), and says no more.