MIDI: Program change vs. mixer

Hello everyone,

I'm new to DAW's in general and I'm just checking out the Sonar X1 demo to decide on which one to get.

Sonar looks great, but there's one thing I'm wondering about. I'm working with MIDI tracks only, routed to my hardware synths (Korg M3 and Korg Radias).

At the start of the song I've set up a bank/patch for the M3 to use on Midi channel 1 which is the M3's global channel. This will cause it to select a specific Combi (Korg speak for multitimbral setup) so when the song starts, it has the correct 16 sounds loaded up.

I also want to use the Console view in Sonar to specify Pan and Volume for each timbre so that they play at the correct level.

Now, my problem is that it seems that I can have one of the above but not both! If i set up the M3 not to react to program/bank changes and manually select the correct combi, the Console settings are transmitted when the song starts and everything is at the correct volume level. However if I re-activate the program changes to allow the M3 to select the correct combi, it seems that the M3 is so busy (for a second or so) selecting the combi and setting up effects etc. that the volume set in the Console is ignored and volumes turn out all wrong.

Of course I could set every volume in the combi to the correct value and store it that way, but I figured that using the mixer Console in Sonar would be great as I then have M3 timbres and Radias timbres (and any other synths I might get in the future) alongside each other and can mix everything in one window.

Is there any way to make this work? Can I for example specify a delay between when the bank/prog change messages are sent before the settings in the Console are sent to give my synths time to select the correct combi and be ready for the volume messages?

Or am I going about this in the wrong way? Is there any other smart way of having the correct program/bank selected on MIDI channel 1 and then having volumes sent on each channel so that my synths behave?

Any info will be greatly appreciated. I'm on the verge of purchasing Sonar. I do have Cubase 5 already, but I'm not very satisfied with it (partially due to the fact that mixing console midi messages are not sent at the start of the song at all, and the lack of a playlist). Thanks and best regards, Rune :)