Bc2000 (for the BCF2000 & BCR2000)

--- In bc2000@yahoogroups.com, Jeff B <jeffbee42@...> wrote:
> 8. Select MIDI > Send
> 9. After the send is finished, press OK to close the Send dialog box
> 10. Back on my BCR, press the 'Preset >' button
> 11. Press the 'Preset <' button
> 
> Is this how you edit (and save) a Preset?

Well, it's one way, but the (hopefully easier) way I intended things
to work is this:

1. First make sure that all memory presets are synchronized between
the BCR and BC Manager.

2. Use BC Manager's "Copy to preset 0" operation in the preset list
window (by pressing the spacebar or via the "Edit" pulldown menu).
This does 2 things:

a. The selected memory preset is copied to the temporary preset in BC
Manager.

b. BC Manager sends a "select memory preset N" command to the BCR,
provided you've enabled 'Select preset upon "Copy to preset 0"' in the
MIDI options dialog box (accessed from the B-Controls MIDI pulldown
menu). (Note: this operation sends no preset DATA to the BCR, so this
only works correctly if the memory preset on the BCR has already been
synchronized to the corresponding memory preset in BC Manager.)

3. In BC Manager, edit the temporary preset ("preset 0") to your
liking. Using preset 0 for editing has the additional advantage that
for preset 0 you can send individual button/encoder changes directly
to the BCR, allowing you to see right away how it works (both on the
BCR itself and by capturing the MIDI data in BC Manager's "MIDI input
messages" window).

4. If you want to save your changes, do this:

a. Copy the edited temporary preset to a memory preset in BC Manager.

b. Send that memory preset to the BCR. This achieves the following:
- First the memory preset data overwrites the temporary preset on the BCR.
- Then the memory preset data is copied from the BCR's temporary
preset to the memory preset on the BCR.
- Finally the BCR's temporary preset is restored to BC Manager's
temporary preset data. (In this case this should be superfluous, but
of course this is not automatically the case.)

Note that the above editing procedure avoids pressing the BCR's PRESET
buttons. This is a good thing, because that would only cause loss of
synchronization between the BCR and BC Manager, hence potential confusion.

To summarize the general philosophy behind the above editing
procedure: it's best to do as much editing as possible in BC Manager
itself. You merely use the BCR's TEMPORARY preset to verify your
changes, and the MEMORY presets only as "dumb receivers" (for later,
"stand-alone" use with your controlled MIDI hardware/software device).

> If the BCR requires a patch change, wouldn't it be easier if BCMan
sent a MIDI program change message after the SysEx send was finished?

There are several problems with this:

Curiously, the BCR has no (SysEx) command for finding out WHICH memory
preset is currently selected on the BCR. So BC Manager would have to
guess the desired memory preset number from the number of the memory
preset that you've just sent to the BCR. However, BC Manager's "Send
preset" operation allows you to send a RANGE of preset, so how would
BC Manager know which of those presets you want to select on the BCR
(i.e. copy to the BCR's temporary preset)?

Another problem: how would BC Manager know that you don't care about
any pre-existing data in the temporary preset? (This data would get
lost after a MIDI program change selecting a memory preset on the
BCR.) So in a sense this would involve a totally different scheme of
working with the temporary preset: "implicitly" rather than
"explicitly". The advantage of the current, explicit scheme is (as
mentioned above) that you can work directly with the temporary preset
(and its individual elements) as a separate entity.


Mark.