Your instrument
Back up your instrument before you send anything. Nord Sound Manager makes a full backup. What is supported says which instruments have been tested.
Connecting
Close Nord Sound Manager first, since it keeps the USB connection to itself. Then click Connect instrument… in the top bar, or choose Instrument ▸ Connect…. A web browser asks you to pick the device. The desktop app takes the first Nord it finds. Install lists the browsers that can connect.
Once connected, drawbar reads the instrument’s folders, and its slots appear,
labeled the way the panel shows them: 7:4 Africa Split. Empty slots are listed
too, as places to drop things. Instrument ▸ Read everything (⌘R) reads them
again. A folder drawbar cannot name keeps the instrument’s name for it and is read
only.
Slots
Right-click a slot to Open, Copy to this computer, Load on instrument, Rename, Duplicate or Delete…. Load on instrument makes the panel play that slot, and a document from a slot has the same button in its header. The name is typed in the browser, which opens at the slot when you rename from the Keyboard tab or the Library.
Samples and pianos keep the name they were sent with, so they cannot be renamed or duplicated on the instrument. The instrument also keeps one of each name: a sample or piano named like one already there is queued to replace it, and cannot go to any other slot until you rename it.
With several slots checked, Copy to this computer reads each folder’s slots in one go. Export as bundle… writes them, with what they play, as one bundle; see Bundles.
Drag to move things:
- a slot onto This computer copies it;
- a sound onto a slot queues it for sending;
- a slot onto another slot in the same folder swaps the two.
Sending
Nothing is written until you send. Dropping a sound on a slot, Queue for sending, and saving a sound that came from a slot all add to the queue. Send in the top bar counts what is waiting.
Click Send, or press ⇧⌘S, to review the queue. Click a destination to change it, click × to remove a row, and select a row to see what the slot holds now and what it will hold after sending. Send all writes everything. If the instrument refuses something, the rest stays queued.
When sounds on this computer no longer match the slots they came from, a Queue button appears beside Send. Click it to queue them all.
A sound’s name goes with it, minus the extension: Africa-Split.ne5p becomes
Africa-Split on the panel. Sending a sound renamed on this computer renames its
slot, even when the slot already holds the same sound.
Safety
- A move is a swap. Nothing is lost.
- Before writing over a sound, drawbar copies the old one. If the write fails, it puts the old one back. If that fails too, the old sound is kept on this computer, and the activity log says where.
- An interrupted transfer cannot leave the instrument stuck on its progress screen.
- Writing Settings, or the slot the panel is playing, reloads the panel, so unsaved panel changes are lost. drawbar warns you before writing Settings.
Disconnecting
Unplug, and the instrument’s slots disappear. The send queue is kept, so plug back in and send.