BIOTTO - SysEx Tool for Juno-X
What is Biotto
Biotto is a handy app designed to help you managing and writing tones to the Juno-X with ease.
Chances are you already tried to import/export tones to the Juno-X, and you most likely used the the Juno-X Editor. That is a nice piece of software, but it’s not that friendly when you have to write many patches.
Let’s say you have a starting tone you want to have available on a range of 16 patches. With the Juno-X Editor, you have to copy the tone to the synth 16 times, manually, as the software won’t write all 16 locations at once.
Or maybe you want to tidy up a few memory locations which contains tones you are not using anymore, drafts or whatever, wipe out those patches and replace them with init tones... Again, the Juno-X editor lets you do that, but you have to overwrite the tones one by one. Time (and mouse) consuming!
That’s where Biotto comes in. It creates and send messages to the synth, letting you write many memory locations at once; with just a few clicks.
Hopefully Biotto will save some of your time time as well, time you can spend making music and having fun with your keyboard.
User Interface
How Does it Work
Biotto works with SysEx messages.
If you don’t know what a SysEx is, here is a recap.
Musical instruments communicate with each other (and with computers) by using a well established protocol called MIDI (Musical Instruments Digital Interface).
A System Exclusive (SysEx) message is a special type of MIDI message, designed to transmit information about specific functions inside a piece of MIDI hardware, like your Juno-X.
SysEx messages are defined by the manufacturer (Roland in this case) and are specific to the hardware; the Juno-X has different SysEx messages than the Jupiter-X, for instance. Unlike other simpler and more common MIDI messages, SysEx messages are sent in a format called a string, meaning you can send and receive multiple instructions in one single data stream.
Biotto takes your previously created individual tone SysEx file as input, and creates a stream of data that, when sent to the synth, will overwrite the patches you tell it to in one pass. Biotto comes with a few factory tones you can use as input (more details on page 5).
Biotto can only send/write MIDI data to your synth. It can’t receive/read anything from it. If you want to make your own SysEx files instead of using the defaults, you’ll need a third-party app. I recommend SysEx Librarian, which is light, reliable and free.
Go from this...
to this... in a couple of clicks!
Supported ZEN-Core Hardware
Juno-X is the only synthesizer supported by Biotto at the moment.
Compatibility
MacOS 10.15+ (Catalina and above).
macOS 13.6 (Ventura) is the latest OS version the app has been tested on.
Biotto might work on older and newer versions of the OS, but it has not been tested there, so compatibility is not guaranteed.
Installation Notes
If the alert that the app developer cannot be verified shows up:
- Click Privacy & Security in the System Settings window.
- Scroll down to the Security section, click “Allow”, and enter your password to continue.
Official Apple support page for this procedure is available here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102445
Feedback & Support
I'm super excited to share this tool with you. Just a heads up though: like any software, it's not perfect!
If you notice anything funky happening, don't hesitate to hit me up directly instead of dropping a negative review. Your feedback means a lot, and I'll do my best to help you out.
Thanks you so much for your understanding and support!
User Manual
Social Links
You'll get the Biotto app for MacOS, along with its user manual. Biotto comes in a zip format file containing the installer package.