TC Electronic PLETHORA X3: The ultimate MIDI guide (feat. Hotone AMPERO Control) | Deep Dive 

Thank you Claude! 🙏🏻

Thank you for the kind comments, I hope these are useful! 🙏🏻

Glad to be of service! 😁

You're welcome! And yes, RU-vid notifications aren't... 🤷🏻‍♂️

(for the midi primer - not the plethora specic stuff obv)

Thank you! 🙏🏻 10 years ago I was too busy on the sofa watching TV... 😬

@@PedalPlatform Me too.

Thank you for the extremely kind comments, Adam. 🙏🏻 I'm still trying to get this thing right, but it's great to see that the effort on this side is translating on camera. As for the takes, there were a bit more than two... I just try to hide them better! 😁

You're welcome!

Thanks mate, that means a lot coming from you. 🙏🏻 Yup, you can absolutely do curves from the TonePrint Editor, but I've covered that to death in other videos and decided to show the other way of doing it - while removing that other layer of complexity from this video. Mash everything together (no pun intended...), and as you just said, the possibilities are endless!

Grato! 🙏🏻

Thank you so much for your kind words and support, they're very appreciated 🙏🏻I agree with both your remarks, and I'd even love to see the board name as a permanent feature on the screen, not just at switching time. Let's see where TC decide to take this 😄

Thank you, hope it's useful!

You're very welcome! 🙏🏻

hello, i have like you a marshall 6100 anniversary, is the tc plethora can change the channels of the amp with midi? is there a latency? thanks!

Thank you! 🙏🏻 I'm really enjoying the Ampero Control: great size, expandable, really easy to program, and the price seems more than fair!

Salut Nicolas! 🙏🏻

Thank you Daniel! As far as I know, the MIDI tempo is still top of the requests for the next firmware version, but we'll have to wait and see... it would certainly plug a hole in the feature set! 🙏🏻

Thank you! 🙏🏻

Thank you @Jacob! 🙏🏻There certainly are some loop switchers that include MIDI switching capabilities, and both the Boss ES-5 and ES-8 do it. I just checked the Rolandcorp.com.au website and this is what they say: "...plus adding in the factor that the ES-5 can send up to 16 unique MIDI messages simultaneously, you can simultaneously change patches on as many devices as you could ever feasibly string together - all with a single footswitch tap." So yeah, this will do it :) Link here: rolandcorp.com.au/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-the-boss-es-5-effects-switching-system#ES5-47

Thank you! And no, there is no PC for the tuner. 😕

Thank you for the kind comments 🙏🏻 The Plethora takes a regular 5-pin DIN MIDI cable. It's as old school as it gets, which I find refreshing 😁

Thank you so much for the kind words, they are really appreciated! 🙏🏻 As for your question: there isn't currently an option to midi dump the Plethora's contents. There is an export function on the Global Settings menu (it creates a system image on the internal drive, which you can access when you plug it into a computer), but unfortunately there isn't a way of restoring it into the Plethora at this time, being mostly used for debugging purposes by the TC people. I don't know at this point if the full export / restore function will appear in the future, but I definitely hope so.

@@PedalPlatform Thanks for the prompt reply Filipe. I have placed an order for an X3 anyway as it is the ideal design for my needs. While we all want everything for next to no money when it comes to multi-effects units, we need to be realistic, however I hope TC includes these 2 must have options for working musicians in a future update. 1. A way to backup and restore boards. We invest so many many hours creating presets for our repertoires. 2. Show the current board name somewhere on one of the screens or if this is not possible, a way to use midi via a switcher to quickly show the board name similar to when you use the toggle switch on the unit, but without having to actually go out of and back into the current board to see that. Anyway, it's a great start for now.

I agree wholeheartedly with both feature requests, so here's to hoping they'll be implemented. :)

Hi Claude! It's not stupid :) I've never used the FXL8 Pro, but from what I can see in the manual it seems to only be able to send one MIDI command per patch; if that's the case, it *should* be okay to change patches, or turn one effect on / off, but I don't think you can chain commands like I'm doing in this video.

Nope, not currently available, but high on TC's feature request list... together with loop sync, etc 😁 Let's hope it makes its way to firmware 1.4!

@@PedalPlatform omg loop sync with a drum machine would be amazing 🤞🏼

Hi Gill, I also don't have any first hand experience with the Maschine, but I have been able to control the Plethora relatively easily with a DAW. As long as you are able to time the messages so that the Plethora has time to process the board changes, and send the CC's with enough separation between them when turning multiple effects on/off, I'm guessing it should be fine.

@@PedalPlatform I did have it working fine a few nights ago, then it didn't - new midi usb cable just arrived. Since the lack of clock sync is so annoying I was wondering if there is a method to calculate the time setting by knowing the BPM and then using the app to set one of the hot knobs to control time and use a cc to set the BPM. I find your videos to be very informative and easy to follow, the sort of video I struggle to find is anyone showing the features working together. I look at the X5 as an opportunity for me to not even touch the pedal and just concentrate on the playing, having effects and hot knobs automated, expression pedal occasionally, drive pedal changes. When it comes to the electro side it almost works the opposite way, finding a maschine tutorial after seeing someone do something interesting in a performance vid, that's what I can't find for the X5. Sorry for rambling, I perhaps see more potential in the X5 than there is in actuality - limitations that I haven't considered or are unaware of. My hope would be that I can play a 5 minute track with several effect changes, one looped section captured, paused and brought back in, possibly hot knob automation and potentially set at the correct BPM, but with an empty bar at the start where CCs essentially load and reset the board, that way when I put all of that together in the composition and recording process it works the same live by just importing the midi to something like Reaper with the backing/click track. I even looked up "plethora x5 performance" and the closest I got was Chords of Orion, which is always interesting, but didn't deal with midi. That's all I'm missing from this guide, an example of how it can be used in a live situation without even touching it. Maybe TC would recognise the midi potential of their products if more people showed it off.

I'm sorry for the late reply, but my youtube seems to be eating notifications for dinner and I just stumbled upon your answer... 🤦🏻‍♂️ no worries about the rambling, it's good to hear from different types of users what their frustrations are, not only from my video creator point of view, but also from the developers perspective, as that can help them direct their efforts. I think you're not wrong, the potential is there, as long as you can live with the quirks, e.g. don't try to do board changes during a performance because it goes into bypass for half a second or so. The CC to bpm thing might actually be easy to do with a bit of number crunching and toneprint editing. As an example, say you have a song at 90 bpm, and you know the longest delay you want is quarter note, but also want the option to have eight and dotted eight. Create a toneprint and map the delay pot curve 0% point to give you the eight note (60,000 / 90 / 2 = 333 ms); map the 100% point for the quarter note (60,000 / 90 = 667 ms). Do a linear mapping for the other points such that the 50% point lands on 500 ms (dotted eight). Now if you get the hotknob to control the delay, you can send the corresponding CC value 00 for eight notes, 64 for dotted eights, 127 for quarter notes. If you don't want to create a toneprint per song / bpm, it should still be relatively easy to map the CC's to the response curve to get more precise values, but I'd definitely recommend creating your own toneprints to make sure the mappings are what you expect, as the factory toneprints will vary (off the top of my head, the tape delay goes from 60ms to 800ms, whereas the 2290 does 0 ms to 7000 ms, etc). You'll also want to keep the min-max range as tight as possible, otherwise you'll be trying to map 7000 ms into 128 values, which will create massive jumps between steps. Who's rambling now?? 🤣😉 Hope this helps, and please let me know how it's going for you.

Thank you! 🙏🏻 Unfortunately I think the tuner doesn't support MIDI control...

Nope, still missing in action. 🫤 And I know it's still on the user's wishlist, but have no idea when it's going to be implemented. 🫤

Thank you! 🙏🏻 Unfortunately no, not at this point, but it's on the user request list, so... it might happen at some point!

@@PedalPlatform thank you! So I guess all the effects don’t sync with midi clock. That’s a bummer, at least for me. I own Flashback x4 and Ditto x4 for this precise reason: they sync with dm, synth and Ableton. Thank you again, have a nice day

Felt appropriate! 😬

Hi Ian, thank you! You can rename boards from the TonePrint Editor app. 👍🏻

Hey there! If you swipe toward the left on the board from the app on your phone you can rename the boards. On a computer just click the dots on the right hand side. I just found this out today haha!

Hi Mauro, Unfortunately I don't have an Iridium that I can use to demo the process (my Christmas list keeps getting bigger...), but from what I can see in the Iridium's user manual it should be almost as simple as what I did in this video with the Plethora, along these lines: - Plug the MIDI out from the controller to the Plethora MIDI in; - Plug the MIDI thru from the Plethora to the Iridium's EXP port (you will need Strymon's MIDI EXP cable, or an equivalent cable - be careful, as they're not the same as the older audio cables with DIN plugs); - Follow the Iridium's user manual steps to configure the EXP jack to use MIDI, set the MIDI output mode (you'll want it in OFF mode), and the channel. All other concepts in this guide should then apply almost directly to both devices: send Program Change (PC) messages to both devices to switch presets, or Continuous Controller (CC) messages to update parameters, etc, according to their respective implementation. You can find the table with the values for the Iridium in their user manual, and the Plethora's is in the menu, as I showed here. It all looks a lot more complex than it is, but once you start messing with it, it'll start making sense. :)

@@PedalPlatform Thank you! I've always wondered how two different devices fuse via midi and create a preset that can be called up by the controller. As you say, it's easier to do it than to say it. And since they have been doing it since the 80s, there is obviously a way to do it and even in a simple way. In a multi effect device is simple , you made a preset and push save, but with midi is different.

I think there are a couple of principles related to midi that I didn't explicitly cover in this video but might be helpful to always keep in mind: - in a midi chain, nothing happens until *you* make it happen; - all the devices that you are controlling are independent *of each other*, and there is no pairing process per se (some devices can be made to send a MIDI command whenever they change preset, etc, but that's a different, more complex situation). Putting both of these concepts together: - Say you have a Plethora and the Iridium plugged in to a controller, both on different MIDI channels, and you send a PC message #0 on the Plethora's channel. That will cause the Plethora to load board #1, but the Iridium will stay exactly as it was before. It will ignore any message that's not sent on its own channel. Same for the Plethora: if you send a PC #0 on the Iridium channel, the Iridium will load preset #1, but the Plethora won't do anything about it. If you want both devices to react to the message, you have to send the message on both their channels; - Both devices can load different presets at the same time: if you keep the devices on their own channels (which you should), you can load different presets on the devices with the same controller press. For example, you can send PC #0 to the Plethora and PC#1 to the Iridium in the same controller press. This will load Board 1 on the Plethora, and preset #2 on the Iridium. - Always be explicit: never rely on things being the way they were when you programmed your controller. Say you want to create 3 presets that involve 1 - Plethora Board 1 | Iridium Preset 1 2 - Plethora Board 2 | Iridium Preset 1 3 - Plethora Board 3 | Iridium Preset 3 As you're programming your controller's presets, you'll create the first one where you send PC#0 to the Plethora, and PC#0 to the Iridium; when you move on to preset 2, you might be tempted to just send the PC#1 to the Plethora, since the Iridium is already on Preset 1; then you create preset 3, in which you send PC#2 to the Plethora, and PC#2 to the Iridium. When you now tap back to the preset 2 on the controller, the Iridium will stay on whatever preset it was before you tapped it - because you didn't explicitly tell it to move back to 1. I will be doing more videos on MIDI in the future, where I hope I can explain these concepts in more / clearer detail - not necessarily with the Iridium, but most concepts are transversal to every MIDI controlled device, which should allow you to start seeing the patterns that govern the fantastic and sometimes confusing world of MIDI control 😁

@@PedalPlatform thank you Very much…you are beautiful person! I didn ‘t expect this kind of answer. Like you said, midi is fantastic world but at the beginning a few “nerd” 😉 I wouldn’t wrong buying a midi controller and so i’m wondering this kind of question because i don’t know this world. Anyway you was Very helpful!!!!

Yeah, it would be nice to have that as a table somewhere. Some people think it's just more convenient to have it on the device itself, to avoid having to carry a paper copy / pdf, but it can also be a royal pain if you're doing other stuff or have it in a rack, etc. Clearly a case where both would be better.

@@PedalPlatform yea....I'm planning on using midi to create "scenes" with the Hotone Ampero 2. I'll be programming the midi controller using my PC, and will have several commands for each switch...it would just be nice to quick reference a piece of paper or even an online manual so that I don't have to keep dialing through menus just to learn a command.

Thank you for the sub, appreciated! With the Plethora, the tone of the drive being affected depends more on the drive than the Plethora itself. The Plethora buffers / converters are really clean, so it all depends on the drive preferring to be the first in the chain, or being fine when placed after a buffer. 👍🏻

@@PedalPlatform yeah.planning on getting one..and my chain signal would be dunlop dime wah-boss sd1-wampler pantheon deluxe-tc spark boost-plethora and inserting the mxr analog delay to the loop of plethora.. what is that is there enough buffer for this kind of set up? I mean there is a buffered bypass setting on plethora right? Hope it wont affect the tone of the pantheons tone..thinking the that wahs input buffer and making the plethora the output buffer would be enough i guess.. thanks for the answer... Really appreciate you videos ..this will be my guide when i finally get plethora

Theoretically yes, 100%, just daisy chain out of the X3's MIDI Thru port into the Kernom Ridge, keep the Plethora and Ridge in different MIDI channels so they don't get their comms all mixed up, and it should work just fine. In practice, your mileage may vary as some devices are pickier than others, but in principle you *should* be just fine.

Kind of - the maximum number of "heads" per delay is two, but you can load up 3 different (serial) delays on the available slots, for a total of 6 "heads". Will need some tweaking, but it can be done :)

It's a steal! 😁

The app I'm using is the Ampero Control app, from Hotone. Sorry I didn't make it clearer 😬

For the MIDI side you don't need the TonePrint Editor - that's only for editing toneprints and renaming boards, changing their order, etc 😄

@@PedalPlatform Thank you so much for the info! I love your videos, so clear and made my decision to purchase an X3 clear.

Thank you for the kind comments! I hope you enjoy your X3 😄

Same problem for me but with Es 8.... Any hints?

The plethora can not receive cc for a period of time after a pc. Basically when you change banks you will notice there is a period of time that the screen takes to change. Ccs won’t be heard during that time. I found a work around to send cc and pc seperate

The plethora can not receive cc for a period of time after a pc. Basically when you change banks you will notice there is a period of time that the screen takes to change. Ccs won’t be heard during that time. I found a work around to send cc and pc seperate

The plethora can not receive cc for a period of time after a pc. Basically when you change banks you will notice there is a period of time that the screen takes to change. Ccs won’t be heard during that time. I found a work around to send cc and pc seperate

The plethora can not receive cc for a period of time after a pc. Basically when you change banks you will notice there is a period of time that the screen takes to change. Ccs won’t be heard during that time. I found a work around to send cc and pc seperate

I don't think so, but if I'm wrong I'll report back 😄

Nope, not at this point...

As far as I know MIDI clock sync is still high on the user requests list... hoping it'll be there on the next firmware!

@@PedalPlatform Yep certainly would be a good feature, especially for us Synth heads :)

It's the one huge glaring omission and also a huge letdown now that I've purchased one

That is the main reason why I haven't bought Plethora x3 yet. A reliable clock sync would be glorious.

I haven't tried the Boss ES-5, but from taking a look at the MIDI spec, it should 100%.

@@PedalPlatform Unlucky it's not true. It's a shame that X5/X3 is the only FX device can not take multi CC# from the BOSS ES5/8 inside one CH#, it means you can only turn on/off one slot inside the board via midi CC# message. TC Electronic do not fix this bug even in the lastest firmware .

Have you tried slowing down the rate of CCs by inserting "blanks" in between the real ones? Check this time stamp for an example: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NrsOYkBgfXg.html.

@@PedalPlatform The simple answer is "no", X5/X3 will not responce any CC# commands come after the PC# message. And even you do not use PC# message(specify the board), X5 will igore all the CC# messages except the first one when you are using BOSS ES8 assigning function. If you do not use PC# message,and insert one blank midi map between every two midi maps, X5 will response only two CC# message successfully. becuase ES8 have only 8 midi maps,so that is means X5 can only response 4 CC# message. The only way X5 take multi CC# message and PC# is to set X5 MIDI channal to OMNI,and use each CC# come with different CH#

Yup, ignoring the CC#s after a PC# is a known issue, and is caused by the board reloading. The Plethora "resets" and goes into a temporary bypass while changing boards (even the IRs are bypassed for a moment), and basically ignores everything while it does so. As for the CC# not registering, it's also a massive annoyance, especially as you say in a situation where you are limited in the number of CC# you can send with a single tap. All I can say is TC are aware of these issues, but until they find a way of not having to reset the whole unit when changing boards, I'm not sure we can expect many changes in the PC# followed by CC# behaviour... I hope the CC# buffer can be an easier fix, but we'll have to wait and see. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Nope, not at this point in time (pun definitely intended...).

We might still get the midi clock sync, but I agree with you on the encoders. Any multi function potentiometer nowadays should absolutely be an encoder 👍🏻

@@PedalPlatform I briefly had the X5 when it was released. I promptly discovered it didn’t clock sync. I use it for synths, so you can imagine my chagrin about that. I sent it back and bought a GFI Specular Tempus instead (no regrets there, these guys still update regularly and improve/expand the algorithms to boot). Seeing TC still hasn’t updated the firmware to support clock sync tells me something is amiss. A bit like what happened with Mooer’s Ocean Machine, which has midi but no clock sync and never was updated even when many people hoped they would add it. It’s a bit too weird TC can’t make a midi clock sync happen within a year or two. Apart from the missed opportunity to put endless encoders on this (the design just screams for it) this pedal could have been fantastic, but now it’s just a bit too clunky. I guess TC didn’t want to undercut their pedal business too much? If it had midi clock sync I think I maybe could live with the lack of endless encoders. The X3 would make a very fine triple delay :)

IMHO the Ocean Machine has some bigger issues than just the lack of MIDI clock... I love the routing capabilities, and it has some really cool sounds in it, but it's unusable in stereo as the channel levels are all over the place. I still have mine in the box for the occasional fun stuff, but it's no longer a pedalboard permanent occupant. As for the Plethora, we'll really have to wait and see what happens with it. I hope it'll carry on being developed, as I believe there's still a lot of untapped potential in it.

@@PedalPlatform The OM indeed feels unfinished imho. Here it’s collecting dust, so I probably will make someone else happy with it. TC has all the knowledge and with Behringer’s production capabilities they are entirely capable to create the X3 we all want for a terrific price as icing on the cake. So why didn’t they? It’s almost there but not quite. It feels like life itself, lol! Meanwhile I caved and finally ordered a Volante. Although not perfect (I wish its sound was slightly more like the El Cap, but I understand it wasn’t modelled after the same tape delay) it very nearly is, and that is quite rare. I’ll be eying what TC comes up with regarding the X3/5 and midi clock. For what good it will do, I’ll cross my fingers. :)

It *is* black magic! 🤣

Hello! 😄