Hello...I have XGgold, I have a QS300 and... I have doubts...

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JPG
JPG's picture
Hello...I have XGgold, I have a QS300 and... I have doubts...

Good morning XG/Yamaha people...

Before anything, I wish you all a good and happy year 2024...!

I know today is not the best day of the year to come here with my doubts and questions...but I have no rush and if you wish to help me, please do it at your best convenience...!

I will introduce myself as a keyboard and computer moron... I am interested in learning piano at my advanced age (today is my 59th birthday by the way...!). I started my piano adventure last year with a Korg T1 that I repaired after more than 20 years of silence...and I was very happy with it. During the repair of the Korg, I had to disconnect the LCD display and for some reason ALL FACTORY SOUNDS were lost. I had then to reload the machine using MIDI-OX and and a SysEx file I found on the web...It was pretty straightforward to do, since the Korg T1 firmware offers the possibility to do so... I then used the Korg to start my piano lessons... Then I had to get rid of the T1 for (ugly) familly reasons...snif... that's life.

Now things being more quiet, I have started my piano adventure again, using the Yamaha QS300 this time. Before starting, this baby was in great need of repair as well...the electro-luminescent panel underneath the LCD was dead and I had to change it. Funny thing is, that upon disconnection of the LCD, NOTHING was lost this time on the QS300, and I still have access to the factory sounds and can play without problems. 

With the LCD working again, I can now start learning the machine properly...I have made giant leaps during the past week and can see how interesting is the machine. I see that the QS300 was sold with a huge bank of more than 900 voices (correct me if I am wrong, please)...when I scroll my voice catalogue I obviously find a lot of voices but certainly NOT 900+ voices...some voices might have been lost or deleted during the former life of my machine. 

I have been visiting and reading the few web pages still dedicated to the QS300 and I think I have now most files available for download. 

I do not remember where the following file comes from, but I now have a SysEx folder whose name is: Yamaha_QS300_1_ExpertLine and in this folder I can find 3 files: 

-Autoload.q3a (194 Kb)

-Factory.q3a (33 Kb)

-Factory.q3v (32 Kb)

I have a STRONG FEELING that those files can be used to "inject" the full set of voices again in the keyboard probably using XG gold or MIDI-ox (again...correct me if I am wrong please).

I am all set to try this BUT, after reading the QS300 user manual I DO NOT FIND how to get to the menu in the firmware that prepares the QS300 for this kind of voice dump.

----------Am I TOTALLY wrong when I think I can do with QS300 the exact same thing I did with the Korg T1...? Perhaps, factory sounds can only be uploaded in the machine using the floppy disk...? ( Of course I do not have any floppy disk...the floppy reader seems OK though).

---------- Before I try any data transfer using my Berhinger BCA 2000 (By the way...how come this forum only deals with other Berhinger models: BCR2000 and BCF 2000...is my BCA 2000 a different kind of external sound card...????), I think it would be wise FIRST to make a back-up file of the voices that are now safely stored in my keyboard...just in case something goes wrong when trying to inject additional voices...how do I do that...please...?

 

Well.....that is about it for today, I know this is an old machine and that you guys have a life and perhaps you have lost interest/memory for this survivor... without asking you too much efforts and time, in case you have some remembrance of this kind of operations, thanks in advance for any kind of kind advice you might for me...

Once again...finish 2023 in the most wonderful way and start 2024 even better...! Keep the music up...!

Mark van den Berg
Mark van den Berg's picture

how come this forum only deals with other Berhinger models: BCR2000 and BCF 2000...is my BCA 2000 a different kind of external sound card...????)

The Behringer BCF2000 and BCR2000 are MIDI Controllers.
So unlike the BCA2000 they don't receive/transmit any audio signals, but only have a lot of buttons, knobs ("encoders") and faders, which can receive/send MIDI messages to control external MIDI hardware/software.

I'm afraid I can't help you in any way with configuring your QS300, but maybe other people reading this forum can.

Happy New Year!

JPG
JPG's picture

Hey Mark, thank you very much for your reply. At last some information regarding my BCA 2000...! Except for the lack of driver for Windows 10 (I have to use it connected to a Win 7 laptop) I reckon that BCA 2000 was a pretty good investment and that not all Berhinger devices are external sound cards compatible with DAWs...I feel lucky then. 

I will wait for additional comments regarding SysEx traffic for my QS300...indeed, with the LCD panel coming back to life I am making huge progresses when it comes to manipulating sounds...for the time being it is more than sufficient for me and I have the feeling that, when I find more time to invest, I will enjoy this keyboard a lot...! For the time, my priority is practicing piano and this keeps busy. But please partners, feel free to comment and advise if you see fit.

Happy new year you all, with plenty of sounds and music...Have fun.

Mark van den Berg
Mark van den Berg's picture

Except for the lack of driver for Windows 10 (I have to use it connected to a Win 7 laptop)

So there is no Windows 10 driver for the BCA2000? That's disappointing, particularly considering that there are Windows 10 drivers for its cousins the BCF2000 and BCR2000. (The big difference between these devices is of course that the BCA has audio and MIDI via USB, the BCF and BCR only MIDI. So presumably the BCA's audio is the bottleneck here.)

But hasn't anybody found a way to make the BCA2000's Windows 7 driver work in Windows 10?
There is no official Windows 10 driver either for the BOSS GS-10 (also a device with audio and MIDI via USB), but you can tweak the GS-10's Windows 7 driver so that it does work in Windows 10: see this topic. Yeah, I know, Behringer isn't BOSS/Roland, but it might be possible to tweak the BCA2000's Windows 7 driver in a similar way.
 

GluBloB
GluBloB's picture

Maybe a stupid idea:  Open the BCA and findout what Audio Chips its using , then find there drivers from other manufactories

Just an idea

 

 

Greg Holwell
Greg Holwell's picture

Dear JPG,

I suggest you subscribe to the website https://groups.io/g/QS300 on which I and my predecessors collected a lot of info about the QS300 and its descendants the DB50XG , SW60XG and MU10.  I still have XG-Gold running a MU10.

The QS300's disk save and load options are on pages 195 and following in the QS300 Owner's manual (QS300E1.pdf in the FIles section). You will see the purposes of .q3a and .q3v files there. In XG-Gold's top right corner there is a QS Bankloader icon, from which the Receive button followed by the Save QS300 Bank menu option can supposedly be used to create a new .QVB file from a .q3v or maybe .q3a file loaded into your QS300. (For DB/SW/MU owners, a more complex procedure is in the file "QS300 6 Voice Banks for XG-Gold.zip" noting that XGC cannot be run under 64-bit Windows.)

Those 900 voices might be divided by XG-Gold as follows: 480 from Yamaha's XG standard, 128 each from QS300 Preset and QS300 User banks, and the rest  shipped with the XG-Gold executable and unpacked into its QS_Bank subfolder.
 

Greg Holwell
Greg Holwell's picture

Dear JPG,
One of my group's contributors future-proofed his QS300 by replacing the floppy drive with a Gotek emulator which partitions a USB flash drive.    If you don't want to go down that route, you can turn control of voices (QS Bankloader Transmit function) and song data (Save Set as .MID) over to XG-Gold.  To dump the rest, you woild have to use MIDI-Ox or suchlike to send a Bulk Dump Request - F0 43 20 4B aa aa aa F7, where aa aa aa are as defined somewhere in an "sttached list" in the  QS300 Sound List and MIDI Data manual (QS300E2.pdf in my group's Files section).  I am too bleary-eyed to go further on this for now.

As the voices, it's 128 QS300 Preset, 128 QS300 User, 480 XG mode and 579 TG300B mode (unofficially Roland GS).