If you've never used your PCM 80/81 with MIDI before, you'll need some type of MIDI connection to your computer. During testing, we used everything from a simple MIDI-USB A cable to full MIDI patchbays.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to recommend a particular brand/type of cable. The basic rule is: if it's known to allow MIDI system exclusive messages, then it is likely ok to use.

There have been some cables that partially fail: they allow the computer and PrimeBlue to connect to the PCM 80/81 and they allow you to edit presets and save them back to the PCM 80/81. They may even allow saving the preset to your computer. Where they fail is when you try to open a saved preset from the computer for editing. PrimeBlue reads the file from disk and then transfers it to the PCM 80/81 edit buffer so you can hear it. That transfer is where a failure might occur.

Syncing is critical to using the editor. Here are some troubleshooting tips.

Check the MIDI connections in the editor by clicking on the MIDI button. Verify your MIDI interface is there and selected with a check mark.

Next, if you are using a USB MIDI cable or MIDI patchbay, verify the connections to the PCM 80/81. The cable marked 'Out' should be connected to the PCM 80/81 MIDI Input and the cable marked 'In' should be connected to the PCM 80/81 MIDI Output. The same logic applies for a MIDI patchbay.

The PCM 80/81 should not be daisy chained with other MIDI gear.

If the connections are correct, try these steps

1. Press the Control button on the front of the PCM 80/81
2. Use the Up or Down buttons to find row 3 MIDI
3. Use the Select encoder to find MIDI SysEx 3.7
4. If the display shows: "Receive Off", use the Adjust encoder to change it to: "Receive On"
5. Press the Program Banks button on the PCM 80/81
6. Press the Sync button in the editor
7. Watch the PCM 80/81 display to see the message "Transmitting MIDI bulk data ..."

If the message does not appear, the PCM 80/81 may not be receiving any MIDI data. Watch the PCM 80/81 front panel carefully and press Sync again. Look for a small blue dot to appear on the left side, above the program number. If there is no dot, the PCM 80/81 is not receiving the sync request and there is a fundamental MIDI routing issue that needs to be addressed.

If the PCM 80/81 displays the message but the editor still says Sync failed, the PCM 80/81 data is not being received. To troubleshoot, close down your DAW and all other music/MIDI apps you have running on the computer. Close down PrimeBlue and restart it. Verify the MIDI connections and try Sync again. If that fails, try to monitor the MIDI cable/patchbay to see if data is being received.

If everything is still failing contact me and I will try to directly help.

The file browser on the right side of the editor is very rudimentary. Currently, there is no way to fully navigate up and down the file structure using just the main list. The directory entry line at the bottom of the file list is the fastest way to navigate directly to a specific folder.

Click in the rectangle at the bottom and type in an upper level directory such as C:\ or /home or ~ and the press Enter. Now navigate down into various folders by clicking on the small arrow to the left of the folder name. When you find the desired folder, double click on the file name to load it.

NOTE: you need to be synced to your PCM 80/81 before you can load a file into the editor because it sends the file data to the PCM's edit buffer so you can hear it.

If you have used the PCM 80/81 from the front panel and/or read through the MIDI documentation, you may have noticed that Pitch Tuning (as found in the Res1>Plate and Res2>Plate algorithms cannot be used as a patch destination.

In fact, it can be patched and it made sense for it to appear in the Patching area as a valid destination. You may not love hearing an LFO modulating the main tuning across a few hundred cents, but then again, you might.

It is possible to edit multiple PCM 80/81 units with the PrimeBlue editor. However, running multiple copies of the stand-alone version is neither recommended nor tested. It's likely to cause problems, I know why, and it is not be possible to fix it 100% correctly, so do not do it.

Here are suggestions to edit multiple hardware units:

It will be easiest if you use a MIDI patchbay instead of multiple USB-MIDI cables or splitters and merge boxes.

Set each PCM 80/81 to a different ID number.

1. Press the Control button on the PCM 80/81
2. Use Up or Down to find row 3 - MIDI
3. Turn Select to find 3.7 MIDI Sysex
4. Press Load/* to see the Device ID
5. Set each unit to a different number

In the PrimeBlue editor, turn on Auto Collect of the user registers by checking the box in the upper right.

Verify the MIDI connections to your interface using the MIDI button

If you are using separate USB-MIDI cables you will need to manually change these settings each time. If you are using a MIDI patchbay, you should only need to change the routing on the patchbay.

If everything is set up this way, you can press Sync in the editor and it will collect the User Register names and display the ID number in the upper left corner of the editor. You can edit and save as needed and when you want to switch units, change the patchbay (or MIDI settings), press Sync again, and now you will be talking to the other PCM 80/81.

It is possible to use the PrimeBlue Tap button to set the tempo. Currently, there are some limitations.

• The Common+System page does not update the Tempo after you press the Tap button.
• The PCM 80/81 screen does not jump to the Tempo page to display the new setting.
• By using the editor Tap button, you are sending MIDI commands and controlling the timing to set a precise BPM will be challenging

If there is sufficient interest in the stand-alone version, I will work on the VST and AU versions. They will be available to existing users for a small upgrade fee.

Note that the VST/AU versions will require extensive testing and likely more continual support due to the wide variety of DAW platforms out there.

When you save a preset to a file, all the edits are saved, including all the Local changes you made in the Patching tab. The purpose was to save your work in progress so you can continue the edits later.

When you load that saved preset into PrimeBlue, it also sends the data to the PCM 80/81 so you can hear the effect. In some situations, this could result in a "Bad Patch Dest Info!" message showing up on the PCM 80/81 and possibly an error pop-up in PrimeBlue.

If that happens, here is the suggested method to clean up and continue:

• If Auto Collect is checked, uncheck it
• Try to save the preset by clicking the yellow Save to PCM button in PrimeBlue. If that does not work, go to the PCM 80/81 and use the standard Store procedures. NOTE the register number for later!
• Restart PrimeBlue and sync to the PCM 80/81
• Select that same register where the preset was saved.
• Finish making your edits in the Patching tab
• Save the preset back to that same register, overwriting that bad data

Now that you can see everything more easily you might be tempted to go wild setting up all kinds of cool modulations on the Patching tab.

That's great, it makes me happy, and was one of the reasons for creating this editor.

However - with a bunch of patches using LFO as the source and the LFO rate set high, the PCM 80/81 will struggle to keep up. You may notice this at first as odd glitches in the processed audio. At some point, you will push the PCM 80/81 as far as it can go. When that happens, the PCM 80/81 *will not* be able to keep up with the MIDI requests from the editor. As a result the editor and PCM 80/81 will start getting out of sync and MIDI errors will cause the editor to throw up an error message.

At that point, you need to close down the editor and decide whether or not that patch was really worth saving.