SY22 Control

A browser editor for the Yamaha SY22 vector synthesizer. It makes the inside of the machine visible: all 64 internal voices and 16 multis at a glance, every voice parameter on a knob (including the ones the SY22's own screens never show), and the level and detune vectors drawn out so you can see, and record, how a voice moves.

Use it: open SY22 Control in Chrome or Edge (Safari has no Web MIDI). Everything runs in your browser; nothing is uploaded.

Status

Personal project, built for my own studio and shared as-is under the MIT licence. Free to use, copy and change. It is not actively maintained: I update it only when I run into something while using it myself. No support, no feature requests, no update schedule.

What it does

Memory

• Receive all voices and multis from the SY22 (or open a .syx file), save them as .syx, send them back
• 64 voices in an 8 × 8 grid like the SY22's banks, 16 multis below; drag a voice onto another to swap them (multis that use them are updated too)
• Follow: clicking a voice selects it on the SY22, and choosing one on the SY22 selects it here

Voice editor

• Every parameter of all four elements: the two AWM sample elements (A, C) and the two FM elements (B, D) with separate modulator and carrier
• Hidden parameters, marked in orange: temperament, operator waves, frequency ratios, fixed frequency, operator envelopes, envelope peak, LFO to carrier or modulator only
• Envelopes drawn as you edit them
• Live: every change is sent to the SY22's edit buffer, a few times per second
• Knobs can learn a knob or fader from a MIDI controller (tested with a Korg nanoKONTROL2), each with its own range and pickup
• Snapshot A/B with a morph slider, copy element A → C or B → D, revert, save a single voice as .syx
• Get from SY22: pulls in the voice the SY22 is playing

Vectors

• Level and detune vectors drawn on a pad with the SY22's corners (A top, B bottom, C right, D left)
• Record a new vector with the mouse, at the voice's own vector speed, like recording on the synth; loop or end, clear, or edit the steps in a table

Multis

• Name, effect, and per part: MIDI channel, voice, volume, detune, note range and note shift

Lab tools: compare two dumps byte by byte (with labels), raw bytes of the selected voice or multi, MIDI log.

Setting up the SY22

• UTILITY → MIDI: EXCLUSIVE on. To receive voices or a bank: internal memory protect off.
• Stay in VOICE play mode (not EDIT) while editing live.
• Nothing becomes permanent until you store it on the SY22 yourself. After a live edit, the SY22 asks whether to store the voice when you change voices. That's by design: the machine keeps the final word.

Good to know:

• The SY22 can't take single-parameter changes, so every edit sends the whole voice (592 bytes, about 0.2 seconds of MIDI). Live editing is close, not perfectly smooth.
• After receiving a voice the SY22 jumps to its pitch bend screen. Nothing in the SysEx controls that, as far as I found.
• The effect is one byte: 16 types and a depth of 0–7. There are no delay times or reverb lengths to edit.

How it works (short version)

• One voice: F0 43 0n 7E 04 48 "PK 2203AE" [574 bytes] [checksum] F7 · request: F0 43 2n 7E "PK 2203AE" F7
• All voices + multis: F0 43 0n 7E + 17 blocks ([count] [data] [checksum], 4 voices each, then 16 multis of 94 bytes) + F7 · request: F0 43 2n 7E "PK 2203VM" F7
• Each voice and multi also has its own 8-bit checksum: the sum of its bytes, where the high-bit bytes count × 128 (for voices, byte 0 is one of them)
• Voice: name at bytes 3–10, effect at 2, elements A 15, B 30, C 5F, D 7A, vectors from AB (50 steps of time, X, Y)
• Multi: name 3–10, then per part channel, note limits, voice, volume, detune, note shift; effect at 91

Not possible (as far as I found)

• Changing a single parameter without resending the whole voice
• Effect settings beyond type and depth
• Choosing which screen the SY22 shows

Thanks

• Edisyn by Sean Luke (TG33/SY22/SY35 editor), for the voice layout and the wave name lists
• Rich Hanson and the old SY-Edit / sy35form documentation, and everilae/sy22 on GitHub for the byte-by-byte voice table
• Yamaha's SY22 owner's manual for the bulk dump formats and parameter ranges

Credits

Made by Maurice Hissink (harmonicworks): idea, design and testing on my own SY22, with Claude (Anthropic's AI) doing most of the reverse-engineering and coding. Built in one morning, on the foundations of my other MIDI tools (SU10-Kit, M5 Editor, VS-880 Control Room).

MIT licence.