OB-6 Editor — User Manual

Everything the editor does and how to use it. If you only read one section, read Connecting your OB-6 — the three Globals settings there are what make everything else work. The instrument's own documentation is the OB-6 Operation Manual (PDF).

Contents

• Connecting your OB-6
• The display & program navigation
• Editing parameters
• Filter & envelopes
• Modulation: LFO, X-Mod, aftertouch
• Effects & distortion
• Arpeggiator & clock
• The sequencer
• Voice: unison, portamento, output
• Globals
• Dump layout & calibration
• Saving programs
• My Banks — the librarian
• Compare, morph & randomize
• The performance keyboard
• Settings
• Keyboard shortcuts
• Troubleshooting

Connecting your OB-6

1. Connect the OB-6 to the computer with a USB cable (or through a MIDI interface).
2. Open the editor in Chrome, Edge or Opera and allow MIDI access when the browser asks. Firefox and Safari do not offer Web MIDI.
3. On the OB-6, press globals and set:
   • Param Xmit (top row, button 5) = NR (NRPN)
   • Param Rcv (top row, button 6) = NR (NRPN)
   • MIDI SysEx (top row, button 8) = USB (or MID if you use DIN cables)
4. In the editor, pick the OB-6 under MIDI Out and MIDI In. The editor selects it automatically when the port name contains "OB-6".
5. Press Get from Synth. The current sound appears in the editor.

The editor also works offline — every control still updates the screen — but obviously nothing sounds until a synth is connected. Turn off Send edits to the synth in Settings to edit offline deliberately.

The display & program navigation

The red display mirrors the instrument: bank (0–9), program (shown as the OB-6's own three-digit number, bank × 100 + program) and the program name. Banks 0–4 are User banks, 5–9 are Factory (read-only on the synth).

• Click the bank readout to open a bank picker; pick programs in the named list beside the display.
• The bank list beside the display shows the whole bank at a glance. Factory names ship with the editor; user-bank names are learned from every dump that passes through — or press Fetch names to learn a whole bank in one go (about ten seconds).
• ● edited appears when you have unsaved changes; click it to list exactly which parameters changed.
• Get from Synth reads the synth's edit buffer — use it after tweaking knobs on the instrument. Send to Synth pushes the editor's sound to the synth. Revert throws away edits and reloads the stored program.
• The SEQ chip lights while the sequencer plays or records; click it to jump to the Sequencer tab.
• ☆ favorite stores the current program in a Favorites bank inside My Banks. ✎ rename renames it (20 characters, ASCII).

Editing parameters

• Drag a knob vertically to change it (sideways nudges it slower). The synth follows in real time over NRPN.
• Scroll over a knob for single steps; double-click a knob to reset it to its default.
• Double-click the value under a knob to type an exact number.
• The − · + buttons step by one; the middle button resets (bipolar knobs reset to center).
• Hover a parameter and press the i button for its NRPN and CC numbers — everything a DAW needs for automation.
• Every edit lands in the undo history: Ctrl/Cmd+Z steps back, one gesture at a time.

Filter & envelopes

The filter card draws the SEM-style state-variable response live: turn Filter Mode and watch the curve morph from low-pass through notch to high-pass; engage Band-Pass and the curve becomes a band-pass instead. Frequency, resonance and the morph all move the graph. (It is a picture of the shape, not a laboratory measurement — the real filter is analog.)

The two envelope cards — Filter and Loudness — have draggable graphs: pull the attack corner, the decay/sustain corner, or the release corner directly, or use the knobs below. The Filter envelope's Amount is bipolar; negative values invert the envelope. Velocity switches make key velocity drive each envelope's amount.

Modulation: LFO, X-Mod, aftertouch

Three sections, exactly as on the panel, each with an amount and a row of destination switches:

• LFO — five shapes (sine, saw, reverse saw, square, random; sine and random are bipolar), frequency from 0.022 Hz to 500 Hz, clock sync, and destinations VCO 1/2 frequency, pulse width 1/2, filter frequency, filter mode and amp. Initial Amount at zero means the mod wheel alone brings the LFO in.
• X-Mod — the OB-6's cross-modulation: the filter envelope and VCO 2 as sources, with bipolar amounts, routed to VCO 1 frequency/shape/pulse width, filter frequency, filter mode, and the normal↔band-pass morph. Switch VCO 2 to Low Freq for LFO-style effects or keep it audio-rate for FM.
• Aftertouch — channel pressure with a bipolar amount, routed to VCO 1/2 frequency, LFO amount, loudness, filter frequency and filter mode.

Effects & distortion

Two 24-bit effects run in series, A into B, on an otherwise all-analog path; Effects On is a true bypass. Each card has a type selector, Mix, and two parameters whose names follow the chosen effect — delay time and feedback for the delays, rate and depth for chorus/flanger/phaser, reverb time and early reflections for the reverbs (reverbs are only available on B, the last effect in the chain). The delays can sync to the clock: the Clk Sync chip lights and the time knob then steps through musical divisions.

Distortion is stereo, analog and independent of A and B — on the instrument it hides behind holding the effect button; here it is simply a knob.

Arpeggiator & clock

On/off, mode (Up, Down, Up+Down, Random, Assign), octave range 1–3, and the shared clock: BPM 30–250 and the Clock Divide used by the arpeggiator, the sequencer and any clock-synced effect or LFO. The chips on this tab show at a glance what is following the clock. Hold on the instrument latches chords; the arpeggiator pauses whenever the sequencer plays.

The sequencer

The OB-6's polyphonic step sequencer: up to 64 steps with up to 6 notes per step, saved with the program. The editor shows it as six voice lanes:

• The overview shows all six voices; click a row to edit that voice.
• In the lanes, drag a note bar vertically to set its pitch (hold Shift for semitone-fine movement), drag the lower bar for velocity, and click a note bar to cycle its state: note → tie → rest on voice 1, note → tie → off on voices 2–6 (Alt/⌥+click = off). Double-click to type an exact note (C4, F#3, or 12–108) or velocity.
• A tie (hatched bar) lets the previous note ring on through the step; a rest is silent while the loop keeps running. Both use the instrument's own encoding, decoded from real hardware: a tie stores the held pitch with bit 7 set in the note byte, a rest is a flagged step without it — so ties and rests round-trip perfectly between the editor and the synth.
• Fill voice puts step 1's note in every step at velocity 100; Clear voice empties the voice, ties and rests included.
• ▶ Play, ● Record and Transpose talk to the instrument's own transport. While recording, play notes on the synth or the performance keyboard below; on the instrument, tens enters a rest (with notes held: a tie) and bank steps back.

Voice: unison, portamento, output

• Portamento — on/off, rate, and the four modes (fixed rate/time, each with a legato-only variant).
• Pitch — pitch-bend range up to 12 semitones, and Detune (Slop), the vintage drift control that also spreads unison voices. (OS 1.6.6's Vintage mode, on Globals Page 3 of the instrument, replaces slop with Prophet-5 Rev4-style voice variation.)
• Unison — on/off, voice count 1–6 or Chord (chord memory), and Key Mode note priority (low/high/last, each with retrigger).
• Output — program volume and pan spread (0 = mono-center, up = wider per-voice stereo).

Globals

Device-level settings that live in the instrument, not in programs: transpose and master fine tune, alternative tunings (the 16 shipped scales are listed by name), MIDI channel, clock mode and ports, parameter send/receive, local control, pot mode, the Sequence-jack behavior, sustain-pedal polarity, velocity and aftertouch curves, and stereo/mono. Press Request from synth to read the current values; every edit is sent immediately as NRPN. (The OB-6 ignores incoming global dumps — NRPN is the only remote way to change them, which is what the editor uses.)

That covers everything on both globals rows of the instrument (press globals once for the top row, twice for the bottom row) — and beyond the documented numbers, the editor also controls a set of parameters Sequential never published, captured from real hardware: Arp Beat Sync (bottom row, button 9), the whole Globals Page 3 of OS 1.6.6 (hold bank + press globals: the MPE bend ranges, Y-axis settings and Vintage mode), and the extended values mpe (MIDI Channel) and cas/nas (Param Xmit). Only ply (MIDI Out poly chain), Pgm Dump (bottom row, button 8) and the service functions remain panel-only — and for dumps, the librarian's Receive from synth… requests the same data from this side, and collects whatever a panel-started dump sends. The Globals tab lists all of this, so nothing is silently missing.

Dump layout & calibration

Sequential never published the internal byte layout of the OB-6's program dump. The editor ships with a layout captured from real hardware (OS 1.6.6) using its own calibration routine, so everything — fetched programs updating the knobs, envelope graphs, the sequencer view, byte-exact saves — works out of the box. Nothing is ever written at positions the editor is not sure about, so no patch can be corrupted.

The tools under Settings → Dump Layout exist for the day that changes: if a future OS update moves something (the symptom would be knobs no longer following fetched programs), Learn dump layout from synth re-learns the whole map from your own instrument in about 30 seconds — the editor steps through every parameter over NRPN and watches which byte of the edit buffer moves; the sound you were editing is restored afterwards. A locally learned layout always overrides the built-in one, and Copy/Paste lets you share a layout with other owners.

Also in the toolbar: Diff lists exactly which parameters differ between snapshot A (and B) and the current sound, and the Arp & Clock tab has a Tap button that sets the BPM from your taps, like the instrument's own tap tempo.

Saving programs

Save to… opens one dialog for every destination:

• On the synth — any slot in user banks 0–4. The slot list shows the names the editor knows, so nothing is overwritten unseen. Factory banks 5–9 are read-only on the instrument.
• In this browser — any bank in My Banks, replacing a program or appending.
• A .syx file — a standard OB-6 program dump for backup or sharing.

My Banks — the librarian

• Import .syx files with the button or by dropping them anywhere on the tab. Multi-program files become banks named after the file; single programs join the selected bank.
• Receive from synth… collects a whole bank: press Request bank, or use Globals → Pgm Dump on the instrument (PRO/ten/ban/USR/all all work — the editor collects whatever arrives).
• Audition any program with one click — it goes to the synth's edit buffer, nothing is overwritten. Factory banks are listed by name; with the synth connected, clicking one calls it up on the instrument.
• Staging is a tray for compiling: drag programs in — factory programs too, their data is fetched from the connected synth on the way — reorder them, then save the tray as a new bank. Send any bank to user banks 0–4 with the ⇪ button.
• Favorites (★) and search work across all banks; backup everything to a JSON file from Settings.

Compare, morph & randomize

• Save as A / Save as B snapshot the current sound. Compare flips between snapshot A and your edit. The morph slider glides continuously from A to B — switches snap at the midpoint, everything else interpolates.
• Random randomizes the sound by the amount set in its ▾ popover, where sections can be locked — mangle the filter while the effects stay put. The sequencer is never randomized. Undo brings everything back.

The performance keyboard

Four octaves of clickable keys (drag across them to glissando), octave shift, velocity, a spring-loaded pitch wheel, a mod wheel, and a pressure strip that sends channel aftertouch and springs back to zero — so you can hear your aftertouch routings without a pressure-capable keyboard. The six voice lamps above mirror how the OB-6 hands out its voices, including unison stacking; the instrument does not report voice allocation over MIDI, so the lamps are the editor's own model of it.

Settings

• OB-6 version — Keyboard or Desktop Module (cosmetic; both share the same engine).
• Follow OB-6 — mirror knob movements and program changes from the synth.
• Auto-fetch on program change — request the full dump whenever you step to a slot, so the editor always shows the real sound.
• Send edits to the synth — turn off to edit offline.
• Show performance keyboard and voice-lamp release behavior.
• Storage — backup, restore or delete all My Banks.

Keyboard shortcuts

Troubleshooting

The editor doesn't hear the synth / "No reply from the synth"

• Check Globals → MIDI SysEx on the OB-6: it must be the port you are actually using (USB for a USB cable).
• Check that the right MIDI In port is selected in the editor.
• Only one program may use a MIDI port at a time on some systems — close your DAW or other editors.

Knob movements don't reach the synth (or don't come back)

• Globals → Param Rcv must be NR for edits to reach the synth; Param Xmit must be NR for the editor to follow the instrument's knobs.
• Check the MIDI channel: the editor's channel selector must match the synth's (or tick Omni).

The browser never asks for MIDI access

• Use Chrome, Edge or Opera on desktop. On iOS, use a Web MIDI browser app.
• Web MIDI needs a secure context: https:// or http://localhost.

Sounds are wrong after a transfer

• Damaged dumps (a dropped byte) are detected and ignored — try the transfer again. Slow USB hubs are the usual culprit; connect the synth directly.

Something else?

Turn on the MIDI Monitor and watch the log at the bottom — every message in and out is listed there. Copy the log and send it to patrik@pistol.se.

© 2026 Patrik Pistol · Pistol Instruments. “OB-6”, “Oberheim” and “Sequential” are trademarks of their respective owners, used only to describe compatibility. Not affiliated with Sequential LLC or Oberheim Electronics.