bump. In December of 2013 the editor was on the “to do” list…
Yes Please make an offline editor! The ME1’s are still the best personal monitor mixers out there. An offline editor would make them even better.
This is actually getting annoying. After almost 2 years, there is no word on this editor. I’m sure a lot of people could actually use this, but Allen and Heath doesn’t care about all of their products. So I am going to start making my own. I have a good amount of experience working with Java. I could probably make a simple GUI editor in a few days (probably longer because I work and am still in college). I just have to find out how to pull apart the configuration file that the ME mixer outputs. If I can manage to do this, I will successfully make my own editor. If any other developers have any input on how the config file is written, feel free to let me know what you find.
I think the answer is easy. The development team of a&h, digico & calrec is hard working.
- The ipad remote for the dlive and the s21/s31
- The offline editor for the s21/s31
- The new add-on card’s for the dlive
- Trouble shouting all the app’s for ios 10
Afther this list is done and all the features of the dlive are implemented other mixer’s become maybe something new.
We are also asking for external sidechain for the gld, this is also someting there is no reaction from a&h from.
Richar
Bump. Since they are still actively pushing the ME-1. I had to mess with a drummers ME-1 last night and I thought I would bring this up again.
Another ping for offline ME-1 editor, since this thread has been dormant for > 2 years. If you can’t do the editor, can you publish the file format for importing/exporting, so I can write my own editor?
I’ve built my own GUI for the editor and then started working on the configuration file portion. It seems to be a binary file, which is difficult to decompress and get into a readable format. The ME units don’t run a Linux OS or similar. They are embedded devices, so working with their firmware or config files is much more complicated. I feel like I would almost need to somehow emulate the firmware in order to read and write the config.
It really sucks that Allen & Heath doesn’t care about their users. The stopped supporting the GLD after about 3 years of it being on the market. They don’t release upgrades for their products or add new features. I don’t see myself buying another A&H product again. Sure I will probably pay more for a Yamaha or other product, but at least I will get what I pay for.
I invariably prefer the sound of AH and the workflow, programming, support and even the detailed printed Owner Manuals of Yamaha consoles but that’s me.
Want to share your GUI? What did you write it in? Which platform (Mac, PC, etc)?
I looked at it in a hex viewer that has an ASCII decode off to the side. There were only a few characters that were recognizable from my setup, but most looked stuff from the standard setup. Maybe 6 out of 16 of my channel names showed up and some seem corrupted. For example, I have a channel name of sKeys, which appears, but another name I have is Lead, but it appears as @b3ead. Of course, the hard part is deciphering the binary data and how it stores things like volume levels, groupings, EQ, etc.
"U8�-S����-T�DEMO AUTO 1TO16 CLEAR P5 P6 P7 P8 P9 P10 P11 P12 P3 P14 P15 P16
That’s the exact problem I ran into and why my project stopped. If the config was a standard text file, then anyone could build an editor. Heck, I could have built a super simple menu based editor using CMD Prompt in about 30 minutes.
I wrote my GUI in Java. Its the quickest way I could build a pretty GUI. It has all 16 buttons and a screen (which is actually kinda useless). I would have to find it and see exactly where I was in my project. It was about 1 year ago and a lot has changed since then. But like I said, before I can go any further, I would need to figure out how to write a config file. Else the entire project is useless.
I may take one of these devices apart and see what kind of hardware it uses. It’s probably some custom made circuit boards in there, but it’s worth a shot. Maybe I get lucky and there is a Texas Instruments logic controller or something like that! I still have my books on working with logic controllers, so I would at least be able to attempt to work with it.
The approach I would take is to change 1 tiny thing at a time and do a compare of the binary files. Probably start with one of my channel labels that doesn’t show up in ASCII. But who has time for that?
I doubt it has an msp430 in it. There is too much audio processing going on. It is likely an Arm core with a bunch of external DRam.
Too bad Allen& Heath won’t respond to this.
Send me an executable of your GUI. I’d love to see which parameters you are trying to store. If it is just labels, it may not be too hard to decipher.
I have also been working with ME-1 for several months now and would like to have an editor for the preparation.
An editor would be really great, with whom you can also intervene online in configurations. Sometimes it is necessary to change something quickly, e. g. when a guest musician is added and this channel is not used in the ME-1. You have to run to the stage and adjust the ME-1 quickly.
so: +1 also from me
+1 for an ME-1 offline editor.
+1!
+1!!!
File format looks simple enough. Given that I have a day job that takes most of my time, could probably work it out given a week or two with an ME-1. However, I don’t have access to any places with a ME-1 or a reason to drop $650 and buy one – not much use for it other than making an editor, so I can’t justify the cost. If anyone is in the area roughly around the Bay Area that is willing to loan one, or is feeling generous and has one lying around that they don’t need (psst A&H?), feel free to send me a message.
@Ryan I work in Sunnyvale. Where are you? My church owns the ME-1 system, so not sure if I could loan one out, but could make some changes and dump the config files. How do you propose to monitor the protocol? Over the RJ45 connection? It is not actually Ethernet, right? Not something you can just plug into a computer. The USB port is a host port intended only for a memory device. I have a config file, but can’t decipher it yet. It appears to be in binary, i.e. very few recognizable ASCII characters when I look at it in a text editor. But some (only some) of my channel names are there. Know a god hex editor on a mac? I could email you some files.
@ Tyler Martin - hey thanks for the GUI code. Unfortunately, I’m Java illiterate. If we can figure out the config file, maybe I’ll try to crack Java next. I’m more of a VB guy.
Glenn
@Ryan Found a hex editor with a 30 day trial, Synanalyze It. The file is 82KB, but only about half of it has real data with my current config. It looks like about 100 bytes per channel. The weird thing is some of the channel names are corrupted, i.e. missing characters. Drums and Click come through OK, bit Keys is corrupted and tr I don’t recall. Will dig further with some known channel settings.
Drums %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%ó±(Click (%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%tr %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%Ùeys
Tyler, you could try this too. Assuming you have an ME-1.
@glennmsmith58 Right close by, Mountain View; I go on the 237-101 junction most days. I think an offline editor for the config files makes the most sense; for what it is worth, the RJ45 connection uses Ethernet frames with broadcast packets, but the only thing I could see to do there is slipping in a packet with channel names and stereo link information so that the ME-1 units auto-name the channels, but then the computer sending that information would be competing with names and stereo link information sent by the mixer.
The only thing I’ve seen with the binary file is the default config; most of which looks like the 16 stored presets, the current settings, and a section with preset names (18 “sections”, each taking up 4K bytes). The repetition for each channel/group looks like default values for trim (2 bytes), something/mute(?) (1 byte), and pan (1 byte); aside from the repetition, each channel has a few bytes for the name and maybe 7 additional bytes of information (3 of which might be an overall trim/pan). I think there are about 50 bytes of extra information in each preset that come before/after the channel/group information – no idea what they are without trying different things on an ME-1.
+1, a “virtual” ME software that could be setup alongside one of the desk control softwares like dlive director would be very handy! a total standalone editor may be a problem as it will have no visibility of what each channel is coming in as. could cause conflicts where the ME is taking the channel names directly from the desk.