PRESET MANAGEMENT WITH VYZEX MPD32 PDF

Welcome to the Preset Management with Vyzex MPD32 PDF manual. This is one of the early releases of the
software, so please remember to check back at the Akai Professional website (www.akaipro.com) for updates
to the program and to this document.

All of the concepts and operations covered in this document are accessed through Vyzex MPD32’s DATA
editor mode. Please feel free to open the editor, select the DATA mode and track along.

Vyzex MPD32 operates on three different levels to manage your MPD32 presets.

Firstly, there is your actual MPD32 with its USER bank of 30 presets, Current Preset and Global Settings.
Secondly there is the Vyzex Editor Window, which contains another bank of 30 presets plus Current Preset
and Global Settings, and finally there is your computer's hard drive, or connected flash media readers or
CDR\Ws etc., that store your MPD32 data as various file types such as Set & Collection files.
For the sake of simplicity, we'll refer to these three levels as MPD32, Editor and Disk. Before getting deeper
into the details, though, it is worth reviewing the concept of the Current Preset first.

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Whenever you select a preset from your MPD32's front panel, you are actually loading the preset into
MPD32's Current Preset, where it comes alive to control your connected hardware and software.

So, let's say you're working with MPD32 without the editor and you’ve loaded a preset from MPD32's user
bank into the Current Preset and edited it to your satisfaction. When you invoke MPD32's front panel SAVE
PRESET function and choose the destination, MPD32 copies the Current Preset (which contains your new
controller settings) into the selected destination spot in its user bank: This means the new preset ruthlessly
overwrites the preset that lived at the supplied address and inherits its bank location as a reward. It's
survival of the fittest inside your MPD32, and the only way any new preset can live is at the expense of
another preset's existence.

Fortunately, Vyzex MPD32 offers a better way of doing things that gives you practically unlimited space to
store and manage your presets, and that’s what we’ll now explore.

THE THREE LEVELS

Here is a conceptual view of the three levels that Vyzex MPD32 works between to manage your important
presets. From left to right, we have the three levels of preset management:

INSTRUMENT LEVEL: This is your MPD32. Inside you can see a user bank of 30 programmable factory
presets (green squares) and the currently loaded preset (a single square, colored red because it's directly
editable from MPD32's front panel). This is the level you operate on when MPD32 is disconnected from your
computer.

SOFTWARE LEVEL: This is the Vyzex MPD32 application window. It also contains a current preset and a
user bank of 30 presets. This is the level you operate on when MPD32 is connected to your computer and the
editor is running. Because the editor's current preset always remains synchronized with the current preset on
MPD32, the editor operates like a 'Virtual' MPD32 whose user bank can be navigated and tweaked with real-
time editing and auditioning, even though the user bank in the editor may not match the user bank on your
MPD32.

DISK LEVEL - SET FILE: This is any SET file that you may have stored on your computer. As can be seen,
every set file contains a current preset and a bank of 30 presets, effectively representing the contents of an
MPD32 in a single file (MPD32 Set files also contain global settings data, but this is irrelevant to the current
example). You can think of each SET file at the disk level as 'Backup' MPD32 units.

DISK LEVEL – THE COLLECTION: This is the automatic storage file that Vyzex MPD32 uses as a shared
preset library – When you drag any preset to the collection view (Options->Collection View in the program
menu) it is automatically written to the collection file when you exit the program.

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Now that we've covered the three levels, let's put them to work for your music.

We're going to step through each of the buttons from Vyzex MPD32's DATA Mode, which is shown in the
illustration above as an inset graphic in the upper-right corner. Each button in the DATA Mode LCD screen
transfers preset data between the three levels.

First stop on our tour is the GET SET button: This button 'gets' an entire 'set' of data from MPD32 as shown
above. You can look at this as having two purposes: Firstly, since the GET SET updates the Editor's current
preset buffer and user bank to match that of your MPD32, it allows instant editing and reorganizing of all 30
presets from your MPD32 within the Editor's bank window. Secondly, Once your MPD32's contents are at the
Editor level, they are only a single step away from the sanctuary of the disk level.

We'll get into saving sets to disk shortly, but first we're going to cover the return path from the Editor to your
MPD32.

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The PUT SET button performs the opposite function to the GET SET button. Instead of transferring your
MPD32's internal user bank and current preset to the Editor, the PUT SET button transfers the editor's user
bank and current preset to MPD32: Whenever you plan to disconnect MPD32 from your computer and
perform live, the PUT SET operation ensures that your latest preset edits are locked and loaded for the gig.

One thing before we move on - The PUT SET button will replace (wipe out) all the user bank presets that live
in your MPD32, so PLEASE remember to back up your signature presets to a SET file before engaging this
button.

The OPEN SET button loads a set file from disk into the Editor. Once loaded, you can step through the set's
user bank and evaluate each preset as it is automatically cycled through MPD32's current preset for
auditioning and editing.

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The SAVE SET button transfers the Editor's current preset, user bank (and global settings, not shown) to the
Disk level, where they are stored as a SET file. You can think of each Set file on your computer's hard drive
as a 'Backup MPD32' waiting for the opportunity to return to life as either a 'Virtual MPD32' (when loaded into
the Editor), or as a Real MPD32 when transferred through the Editor to your MPD32.

Now we're going to explore the CURRENT PRESET management buttons: These handle transfers between the
current presets and user banks at both the MPD32 and Editor levels.

GET CURRENT PRESET requests the current preset from your MPD32 and loads it for immediate editing in
the Editor's corresponding current preset buffer. This button is especially useful if you use your MPD32's front
panel controls and LCD menu systems to edit a preset while the editor is running: You may recall that the
Vyzex MPD32 quick-start manual PDF warns that the editor is unable to track changes made through the
MPD32’s LCD menus, and this is true from an automatic point of view. Fortunately, you can always force the
editor to synchronize itself by pressing the GET CURRENT PRESET button, so it is possible to combine MPD32
menu editing operations with editing through the editor GUI provided you always press the GET CURRENT
PRESET after you are done each menu-level edit from the MPD32’s actual front panel.

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One of the Vyzex MPD32 editor's favorite tricks is to update MPD32's current preset whenever you make
edits through the editor interface. Every change you make in the editor's current preset is therefore
automatically reflected in MPD32's current preset, updating your controller in real-time whether you are
changing a single parameter or even loading entirely new presets from the editor's user bank or the disk
level.

Given that this process is automatic, you're not going to need the 'PUT CURRENT PRESET' button in most
circumstances. If you ever find that your MPD32 has somehow fallen out of sync with the editor, however,
this button is good for pressing while you stare at MPD32's front panel LCD: If MPD32's displayed preset
name continues to differ from the current preset in the editor's editing buffer, then this is a sure sign the USB
MIDI connection is not online for some reason. In this case, you'd need to ensure your MIDI In and MIDI Out
ports are assigned properly in the editor's application preferences and then restart the program to get things
working.

STORE operates differently than the other buttons in the DATA mode: Instead of handling transfers between
the three levels (MPD32, Editor and Disk), store works entirely at the editor level to transfer the current
current preset contents to a particular location within the User Bank.

Now is a good time to point out that Vyzex MPD32 handles parameter changes at the editor level in the exact
same way that your MPD32 handles parameter tweaks within its own internal memory: Whenever you select
a preset from the User bank, it gets copied into the current preset where you can edit its parameters and
evaluate the results in real-time (remember that all presets loaded to the editor's current preset are
automatically copied to MPD32's current preset to achieve the second result).

Because the current preset & user bank relationship at the editor level is the same as that between MPD32's
current preset and user bank, the same tough choice occurs whenever you wish to step to a new bank entry
after performing some edits in the current preset: Do you discard the edited preset, or do you overwrite one
of the presets in the user bank with the contents of the current preset?

Vyzex MPD32 is set up by default to assume you want to discard edits if you step to another bank entry
without explicitly storing them. This means you can discard an unworthy preset by simply stepping to the
next bank location - You don't even have to meet it for coffee and make a speech blaming yourself first.

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 Remember: Whenever you store an edited preset, this does not automatically save the SET
file to your disk or send it to your MPD32’s onboard bank!

The store destination is always the preset number indicated in the upper-right corner of the Main LCD display
in the editor GUI: If you don’t want to overwrite the preset at this location, Switch to BANK mode and swap
the destination preset for another less desirable one (or one that has already been dragged to the collection
for safekeeping).
Although the 'always discard' approach is the way Vyzex MPD32 was designed to work, you are free to
reconfigure the editor to always store edits when you step to the next preset, or to have the editor present a
dialog box every time the choice needs to be made. This is done in the 'Preferences' dialog:

If you change the default option to 'Manual Store', the next time you try to load the editor's current preset
when it contains an edited but un-stored preset, you'll see the following dialog:

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The choice is yours, but the default 'Store' option is recommended for the smoothest experience.

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The SYNC button performs two tasks at once: Firstly, it stores the editor's current preset to the numbered
user bank destination exactly like the STORE button. Secondly, it ALSO transfers this tone to the
corresponding user bank location within your MPD32.

This makes it a powerful but dangerous ally ...Take care when invoking its use, or it can overwrite your
favorite presets on board your MPD32 against your wishes. The reason you need to be cautious when using
the SYNC button comes from the fact that like the PUT SET button, Sync writes directly to your MPD32's user
bank, wiping out any presets it targets to make room for the preset you are syncing.

There's no undo for this command, so don't press this button without being sure of the details.

Warnings aside, the Sync button is great for performing quick updates to your MPD32 user bank when you've
only changed a couple of presets in the editor and you want to avoid spending the time that a PUT SET
operation takes.

This concludes the Preset Management with Vyzex MPD32PDF Manual. As mentioned earlier on, it’s a
good idea for you to also read the companion PDF manual called Vyzex MPD32 Quick-Start for a more
complete view of how the editor operates. Just as with this PDF, the Quick-Start PDF is also accessible from
the program’s Manuals pull down menu.

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