What do you mean with "no other way .... EXCEPT"? What do you mean with "can't be accessed directly from a USB connection"?

- I don't and can't use the Reface capture app because I don't own an iPad or iPhone

- I have no problem at all sending the SYX files to my Reface DX. What you need is:
1. A USB cable to connect the Reface to your computer. (The type of cable that is also used to connect a USB printer for example)

2. You may need to install the USB-MIDI driver from Yamaha for the Reface DX for Windows.
This is also where you can download the latest firmware updater for your Reface (with nice new phrase sequencer quantizing functionality. Recommended!) and all the manuals.

3. You need a universal SysEx dump utility like Midi-Ox (Windows) or amidi (Linux commandline). Read this:
Recommended software for MIDI dumps
One more remark: The Reface does not have a manual way to send SysEx patchdumps TO your computer. The computer will have to send this SysEx dump request message to the Reface DX to fetch the currently selected patch: f0 43 20 7f 1c 05 0e 0f 00 f7
Those dumputilities should have functionality to do this.

4. Select the correct USB/MIDI port in your dump utility.

5. Select a Reface DX SysEx file from disk and send it to your Reface DX.

I do agree with you that the Reface deserves more space to store more patches internally. I overwrite the 32 factory patches with 32 patches of my own choice. But I can store an unlimited amount of patches on my computer, with or without a SD card, USB stick, external HD, CD/DVD-rom or cloudstorage.

What I personally would wish: The Reface DX can only send/receive SINGLE patches via MIDI SysEx dump. Each single patch has to be stored on the Reface DX one after the other, pushing the "STORE" button, select location, confirm "are you sure?", etc. I would like an option to be able to send/receive a complete bank of all 32 voices. This has always been a possibilty on all the classic FM synths ever since the original DX7. Also the cheaper FB01 and DX100 had this possibility. And SD cards did not exist yet in those days. 😀

You can also send or receive patches via Soundmondo. It has now open, but I can't download the sounds who are in the cloud.

Yeah, Soundmondo is there, finally! What are peoples first impressions? I will open the discussion and will give you mine:

PRO:
- Webinterface, using Web-MIDI on a Chrome browser provides OS independent availability. Well, at least I have succesfully used it on Linux and Windows.
- Graphical patchedit screen looks good and works nicely
- Many patches for the Reface DX and CS are already shared by people and ready to be used
- Innovative concept with room for improvement ....

.... so here are the CONS (or you might call it: feature requests!)
- Completely useless without Web-MIDI, with another browser, or when no Reface keyboard is attached. I can understand that I will not have the complete Web-MIDI functionality is such cases, but at least give us access to the patches for viewing in the editor, and for download.
- You can up/download patches from/to your Reface but NOT directly from/to local harddisk. Now I need to use SysEx dump request to save new patches from my Reface DX to my local harddisk. (Please don't answer with: "There is no need for that, all patches are avaiiable in the Soundmondo Cloud".)
- Instead of hundreds, soon thousands, of little pictures of the Reface Keyboards for each patch, why don't you show a QR code of the patch? That would in a smart way connect the iOS app with the Soundmondo world!

update: There might be hope for Firefox users somewhere in the future:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=836897

hm - is it working for anybody ?
I have connected my reface DX and the upper infobox says "reface connected" and "DX" - but that's all.
I can't access any patches, i see no editor or anything similar - and there seems to be nothing than a few tagged user-patches, that i cannot access. . What am I doing wrong ? I'm signed in, i use chrome, and i have a reface connected ?
What did i miss ?
Is this still a non-working beta ?

You need to sign up for a personal account, agree with the conditions, and log in.
Then the fun can begin and you will be part of the Soundmondo community

It's working - how else could I have written my first review?

Here's an update:

Respectfully, it is way too early for a review... This is a working beta (and will remain so for about a month). What the value is of the SOUNDMONDO over, say, the QR-Code is: You cannot read a QR-Code, it's not really talking to you. Yes, it is communicating with your instrument - cool? If like Martin, you are all about assembling a huge library of sounds and converting every old FM 4-Op to your new reface DX, then the QR-Code method is quick and easy. (Explains the request for bulking 32 sounds at once... quicker, easier) The QR-CODE is Great. But don't miss the bigger picture (pun intended).

For those of you interested in learning about how sounds are made... how the designer/programmer went about getting that great / horrible / scary / crazy / wacky / useful / totally awesome sound, that is where the Soundmondo site will be of use. Particularly for those of you with YC, CS, and CP (real time front panels and no on-board storage) - the graphic interfaces for those is used to "show you" the sound. That's why a picture of the FRONT PANEL - You can read a Front Panel, you cannot read a QR-Code. You see your Front Panel (live) and you see what you must adjust to make your front panel match the sound you accessed from Soundmondo... make sense? If you own a DX - naturally, it has a screen... So you cannot see this bigger picture (pun explained).

One of the things that was apparent, from the first go round of FM synthesis (talking about the background of the reface DX here, the DX7) was that, in spite of being incredible complicated it became the best selling synthesizer up until that time - by a factor that was ridiculous. Mostly people did what Martin is all about (and I'm not saying it is a bad thing, it's all good and it's all very positive) they "collected" sounds; amassing a huge library of sounds for every occasion. I met a guy who had over 10,000 DX7 sounds (Wow, was all I could say... I rather have 100 I use, but c'est la vie).

So why was FM synthesis seen as so complicated? That is not a trivial (how's the soup) question... it is one that has been discussed, even in the halls of academia!

Well, let's forget about the math factor... Sure there is plenty of math involved in FM synthesis... but there is math in Voltage Controlled Analog synthesis too, there is math in Music theory, as well... musicians say they fear math but they use it all the time (and intuitively too). You don't have to know how to mathematically explain Bernoulli's Principle in order to play the saxophone. You don't even have to know there are 440Hz between the "A" above middle C and the "A" above that and only 220Hz between that same "A440" and the "A" below middle C...

So what made FM synthesis in the DX so difficult. I had a ringside seat at this part of the history. It was 1983... we were one year into the beginning of the "age of the computer". Those old enough to remember will get a smile out of this... Accessing data on a musical instrument (hardware synthesizer) screen was brand new! Brand new! Up until that time you had never looked in the screen of a synthesizer and read words in English! At best you had LEDs or a screen with multiple red segments that made numbers out of sticks..

The whole menu access thing was new, completely new on the scene, especially for musical instruments. Nowadays, diving into a device that is menu driven is literally "child's play" - I mean literally. You do it all the time and are not even surprised by systems that require several button presses to get you where you want to be. The personal computer - very few people had one in 1983 - computer's where new! Hard to believe.

Spreading technology is about getting the customer base used to navigating the features. If you have to find one brilliant thing helped the computer get established - it was the computer card game version of SOLITARE. Everyone knew how to play the game with real cards, (mindless time passer) and that helped them learn to Drag 'n' Drop... the game taught you skill, it taught you to use a mouse. Brilliant... often overlooked cog in learning to operate/navigate the computer interface!

If the features are necessary- you find it. Your smartphone probably does not have dedicated buttons for entering phone numbers. You navigate without a thought to the screen that gives you virtual buttons. That's if the number is not already stored in memory ('Stored in memory'... that was fairly new, too... "stored in memory")

Well in 1983, we were all "newbies" when it came to navigation of an operating system through pressing buttons.. it was NEW>
We were all pretty new to the concept of storing a sound in memory (that was not quite as new but not everyone had a device that did).
It is no longer new. Imagine operating a Motif XF or MOXF back in 1983 - NEVER HAPPEN. We had to evolve to get there...

Well, one of the design concepts when it comes to reface DX is to help folks rediscover one of the most powerful synthesis formats ever!
Sure, you can just play the sounds, but as you will discover (if you look beyond the QR-Code) there's much to enjoy about sound designing!

We do want your feedback (positive feedback is always very helpful). "Reviews" should be left for finished products, this is very much a work-in-progress.
We'll open the "Complaint Department" early next year. Thanks for your patience and support!

Can't get it to work. Maybe because I am using Chrome on a MAC (OSX 10.9.5 Mavericks) - does it only work on Windows ?

Helfried wrote:

Can't get it to work. Maybe because I am using Chrome on a MAC (OSX 10.9.5 Mavericks) - does it only work on Windows ?

Helfried,
Make sure your Chrome browser is updated.

Works on both Windows and Macintosh...

There seems to be a liitle misunderstanding here. Let me explain: When I wrote about "little pictures of Reface keyboards" I was not referring to the Front Panel patchedit screens! It's the best part of Soundmondo. Very well designed and if this is "only Beta preview" ... thumbs up!

I was referring to the overview pages, where we can see all patches submitted by users, and where we can select patches based on different categories, see the patchnames, and see the names of the creators. Each patch is presented as a little picture of one of the 4 Reface models, so that you can see at one glance for which keyboard the patch was created. Clicking on such a picture opens the Front Panel editor page with the selected patch. Great.

My idea is to replace the little picture of a Reface keyboard with a QR code picture representing the patch in the format of the Reface Capture iOS App. Now if you click on the picture you will open the Soundmondo patch editor, just like you do now, or you can scan the QR picture and open the patch in your iPhone/iPad Reface capture app. That would be a nice bridge between the two applications. But it's just an idea, not a complaint.

You say I am too early with my review? Call it a "Preview" if you wish, what's in a name. "Previews" should not be left for finished products. In the contrary, that's what Beta releases are for - to hear what people think and to see if things can be improved if possible before the product is finished, right?

I can follow your expanation of the historical context of FM synthesis and respect the philosophy behind Soundmondo, but It doesn't really answer my questions. The ability to download/upload patches from/to my local harddisk to/from Soundmondo is still high on my wishlist. I don't see how that conflicts with the "bigger picture" 🙂

Very newest Chrome browser, Mac OS X 10.95, Reface DX - not working at all.
Reface-DX is recognized, but there is no functionality.
The "panel" is just a picture of a reface-dx synth, the sync button does not work, the whole thing looks as if there is something missing (Flash, Java ??), no reaction to anything.

update: i tested soundmondo on Windows 7 VM under Parallels on my Mac - and it seems to work here. Clicking on the sync button opens a page with a very basic looking "editor" (more or less a table with numbers - no "panel" - is this way the editor is supposed to look ?)
and it sends the patch to the DX.
OK - it is working in Windows, not on Mac - i can live with it.

Martin wrote:

My idea is to replace the little picture of a Reface keyboard with a QR code picture representing the patch in the format of the Reface Capture iOS App.

Multiple QR-codes on one screen. Hmm! There are probably more than one reason that's probably not a good idea. One being the ability to capture just one with your camera.

Also the "little picture" is actually the actual front panel settings for that particular Voice, not just a jpg of the keyboard, on all but the DX (which has a screen). I'll ask but, it seems in order to execute "Sync" they want to take you to an isolated screen, not the assembly area.

It also allows you to (slow down) read what the designer wants to tell you about the sound. You can also find out something about the person.... They can also post a video and an example of the sound being played. (You don't want to just skip all of that, to just capture the QR-code, do you?)...

Are you that person with the 10,000 fm sounds? 🙂

Thanks for you explanation. I didn't know the pictures showed a miniature version of the front panel, because I only own a Reface DX. Replacing this with QR is a bad idea indeed.
In that case a better place to offer a direct download or QR code picture is the page where you show the Youtube video or Soundcloud soundclip. In fact this IS already possible! I could try it one of these days as a proof of concept: Simply create a new Reface DX patch, and then make a YouTube video that shows a QR code of the patch. Share the video on Soundmondo. People can now watch the "video" (which is only a stiil of the QR) and scan it with their iPhone from screen.

That should work, but sounds like a bit of overkill to me. Why not offer an extra upload functionality: Allow not only to upload (links to) YouTube video, and Soundcloud audio (and I forgot the other options, but you know what I mean) but also to upload a QR picture that can be shown here, and/or a direct link for a one-click-download of a SysEx file representing the patch.

Yes, I own at least 10000 patches, collected from the 1980's until now. And I'm in the process of converting, and making these 10000+ patches available as SysEx download for Reface DX. To be expected early in 2016. I will not upload all of them to Soundmondo - that would be an almost impossible task, due to the limitations I have described - but will put them on my own website as pure sysex in one or more zipfile collections. But I will upload some examples to Soundmondo. To be continued ....

it's works on OS X since a few hours - great ! The problem seems to be fixed.

Glad you figured it out... It's been working for several months.... If you run into any problems, please let us know.

it's a bit annoying while browsing the sounds, that i must
- first click on a patch
- wait for the next page to load
- click on sync
- wait for the next page to load
- click multiple times "back" to load the next sound

Would'nt it be faster and easier if the sound would be loaded instantly into the DX just by clicking on the name or a little sync-button for every patch on the "browse"-page ?