>I'm running SD on OSX10.4. It generally seems to run OK, but I have >the following problems:- > >1. I am confused about the process of saving patches and libraries. >In the manual it says that when you click on 'Store' after editing a >patch, a dialogue box should come up so that you can choose what >location to store your patch. This doesn't happen for me - in fact >nothing seems to happen when I press 'Store' or 'Store in' so I have >no idea if my patches are being saved. > >2. When I edit on SD and save, does this save changes on the machine >as well, or just in SD? You must understand that SD does several things: 1 - It can "grab" the sounds from your hardware for editing and re-arranging banks etc 2 - You can create new sounds from scratch 3 - You can create libraries for storing and backing-up your sounds. 4 - You can send sounds/banks back to your hardware ......and more.... You must have 2-way MIDI contact with your hardware for any interchange to take place. When you STORE, you are saving data on your HARDWARE (The icon with the arrow and !) When you SAVE, you are saving data on your computer. (File menu/Save) Try this: Request all the sounds from your hardware, or even just a bank of sounds. Open a new Library: [File] menu - [New] - it will be blank. Select one or more sounds from your Instrument Editor window and drag them to the new Library window. Hit [Save] or [Save as] - give it a title. You now have a LIBRARY of sounds which may, for example, be a backup of all your factory sounds on your hardware. If you now edit any of the sounds/patches and STORE them to your hardware, and later regret having done this, you can open your Library (which you just made) and send (Store) the original sound back to the location on the hardware and overwrite your edit. So, now that you have saved your original sounds, do a test: Edit a sound and make a few radical changes. Try to STORE the sound to the hardware, either in a new location or the same one. Play your hardware via a MIDI keyboard - do you get the new sound? >3. I seem to have to re-scan my Xpander synth everytime I open SD, >even though there is a dedicated module for it - this is quite >annoying. You need to request all the sounds, then when you quit SD, [Save Preferences] Next time your sounds should be there still. If you don't Save prefs, they won't be kept. >4. The controls seem to be very stiff/slow and makes me feel like i'd >prefer to edit on the machine itself and just use SD for viewing the >status of parameters - anyone else feel this way? Not here..... >Judging by the stiffness of the controls, I guess controlling >parameters in realtime similar to continuous controllers is out of >the question, but I would like to able to use SD as a patch librarian >to keep patches safe and have unlimited storage. Can anyone give me a >few tips on the above queries to make this a bit easier to understand? See above. You can sets of banks for different jobs or songs which you can then open in SD, and transmit the sounds to your hardware. If you keep a backup as I suggested, you'll never lose anything. I also keep libraries of favourite sounds, so that when I'm looking for good sounds, I can quickly browse through these first. You can obviously keep adding to your "favourites" library every time you find a good new sound that you like. Hope this helps Colin