PBC10 and Lexicon PCM81 Problems

wire_twerp

Well-Known Member
Hi there
I hope I've not contravened protocol by making this my first post - I couldn't find a specific introduction page. I've had my PBC 10 for a few years and have managed to programme it to work with a number of hardware devices. It is a fabulous piece of kit and I wouldn't be without it. I've found the forum to be a great source of help (whilst lurking), along with the Wiki.

I am stumped, however, by my newly acquired Lexicon PCM81; I cannot select banks. The standard bank UP/DOWN button options do not seem to be recognised by the PCM (no MIDI light comes on on the front panel when pressed) and I am not having any success using the CC commands - according to the manual (page 2-31) both CC 000 and 032 are interpreted as bank select commands (does this mean an MSB:LSB device?).

I've done the customary search on the forum and I've tried set up the Devices tab as recommended by Ron in an earlier thread. I can get the device to switch banks and patches from the Presets TAB but I don't really want to have 300 presets to work through...

Ideally I'd like to either have two buttons to go up and down the banks and then I could use PC+/- (or some other method). I may be something wrong (most likely am!) so I would be most grateful for any help or advice. Thank you.
 
Unfortunately, there aren't CC -/+ buttons like there are PC -/+ buttons, so your ability to scroll through banks is limited. An IA cycle button can let you cycle through 4 banks, at least. To do that, you would set the button to IA, turn off all checkboxes except IA Cycle, which should be on. Then, add these actions:

PCM81 / CC Toggle #0 on: 0
System / Step
PCM81 / CC Toggle #0 on: 1
System / Step
PCM81 / CC Toggle #0 on: 2
System / Step
PCM81 / CC Toggle #0 on: 3

And, set your device to MSB banks.
 
Thank you for your help Ron. I will try this and let you know!

Just one other question - in the programming commands above, do I set the "off" command to "none"?

Sorry if this is a dumb question but I've never completely figured this out before...
 
Thank you for your help Ron. I will try this and let you know!

Just one other question - in the programming commands above, do I set the "off" command to "none"?

Sorry if this is a dumb question but I've never completely figured this out before...
You may as well set it to None. On an IA Cycle button, the "off" values are not used anyway, but it's good practice to use None in case I ever do decide to start letting it process off values.
 
I'm getting very strange results here. CC#0 doesn't work at all - the device does not show MIDI in activity but CC#32 does (when the button is pressed).

Various combinations of on/off values show intermittent bank changes but which are not at all consistent - most of the time nothing happens - I get occasional changes when I send the changes to the PBC but I cannot seem to replicate it. I've tried writing down combinations of values but there is no real repeatability that I can discern...
 
Ok, use CC#32, then. That's bank LSB.

One thing I forgot about is that sending a bank select message doesn't change anything on the device immediately. You need to also send a PC afterwards to get it to do anything. Something like this should work:

PCM81 / CC Toggle #32 off:None on: 0
PCM81 / PC off:None on:Same
System / Step
PCM81 / CC Toggle #32 off:None on: 1
PCM81 / PC off:None on:Same
System / Step
PCM81 / CC Toggle #32 off:None on: 2
PCM81 / PC off:None on:Same
System / Step
PCM81 / CC Toggle #32 off:None on: 3
PCM81 / PC off:None on:Same
 
Yes that does make sense - thank you - I will give it a try. I really appreciate the time you take to help us out.
 
Hi Ron
This worked with a few tweaks. I had to use the swap MSB/LSB to get MIDI transmitted (don't know why but it works!)

Instead of using PC On: same, if I use a preset number it works.

I know that you've said before that the Lexicon's MIDI implementation is a number of years out of date, but with your help I can now switch banks using the PBC. Thanks.
 
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