Download BC Manager Manual - Mountain Utilities

message, then waits for the BC to confirm reception of that message before sending the next message.
(But of course this doesn’t tell you what exactly is wrong.)
One thing that you can do after a failed transmission is to execute ‘Refresh connection status’
(either via the button or the item in the MIDI menu). If this doesn’t work either (as reported in the
Personality and Firmware columns), the problem is indeed a sudden loss of connection, due to
switching off the BC, entering Global Setup or Edit mode, etc. On the other hand, if ‘Refresh
connection status’ reports nothing unusual, the problem may be more specifically connected with the
data you’re trying to send. You should also watch out for feedback loops and duplications in the
MIDI paths to and from the BC: these may mess up the MIDI SysEx message ‘chains’ of which
preset and element dumps consist.
[38] I tried to send a preset to my BC via BC Manager, but BC Manager hung in the middle of the
transfer process, so then I sent the syx file via MIDI-OX. What could have caused the transfer
to fail in BC Manager but succeed in MIDI-OX?
When BC Manager sends a preset to the BC, it uses a bidirectional, handshake protocol. That is: it
sends one SysEx message, then waits for the BC to reply with a SysEx acknowledgment message
before sending the next message. So this may be the reason for your problem with uploading your
data from BC Manager: maybe somehow the BC didn’t return the correct acknowledgment message,
or BC Manager received an unexpected message back via a feedback loop, upon which it decided to
stop transmitting.
By contrast, MIDI-OX simply sends all the SysEx messages to the BC with fixed delays between
them, without waiting for any acknowledgments from the BC. MIDI-OX’s method has two
drawbacks:
1. If the BC doesn’t actually accept the data (for whatever reason), MIDI-OX doesn’t inform you,
let alone halt the transfer.
2. Perhaps surprisingly, in practice MIDI-OX’s method is usually slower than BC Manager’s,
because of MIDI-OX’s fixed delays between the messages (by default 60 msec, I think): BC
Manager continues immediately upon reception of an acknowledgment from the BC.
Note: BC Manager version 2.0.0 and later allow you to use one-way, generic SysEx transfers as well
(via the ‘MIDI System Exclusive messages’ window), but it is inadvisable to use this method for BC
SysEx data such as presets — unless you don’t have a bidirectional connection, perhaps.
[39] Does BC Manager overwrite all 32 presets each time it sends a preset to the BCF/BCR?
No. When you send one or more individual presets to the BCF/BCR, only those presets are sent (plus
the ‘temporary’ preset, but that’s a different matter). Only when you execute ‘Send all data’ does BC
Manager send all 32 (possibly ‘empty’) presets to the BCF/BCR.
By contrast, BC Manager’s Save operation (in the B-Controls window) does save all 32 presets
to any syx/txt/bc2 file it creates (even if some of these presets are ‘empty’). However, the ‘Export
selected preset(s)’ operation (in the Presets window) saves only the preset(s) you have selected.
[40] How can I save a particular parameter setup made on my BC for my synthesizer? (I.e. the
current values (positions) of the various buttons, encoders and faders in a preset.)
Execute the BC’s snapshot function, by pressing EDIT + ‘= PRESET’ on the BC, or pressing the
‘Snapshot’ button in BC Manager. This sends all the current positions of the BC’s elements (at least
those defining Control Change messages etc.) to BC Manager.
BC Manager can capture such a sequence of CC messages in various ways, and you can then do
various things with this sequence. For instance:
1. You can save it as a MIDI file. (Go to the ‘MIDI input messages’ window for this.)
2. Even better: you can put such a sequence of CC messages in the definition of one BC button, so
that you only have to press this button to send all those settings to your synthesizer. In this way
you can create whole banks of favorite parameter setups. You could put them under free buttons
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