Indeed, you don't have to set up a Performance channel to use the JV or XP modules/keyboards as multitembral sound sources.

I'm just used to doing it that way, so it's the most efficient for me.
I don't use a lot of effects from the JV or XP, or chorus and reverb either these days, but sometimes I do, and the external effects are CPU-free to my computer, so if the effect settings are basically used to create the sound(s), then I'll use them.

The JV1010 is a strange one... no persistent memory for USER anything... not even sure why the are there. When you turn it off, everything's gone.

So on that unit these days I more or less use it as a preset-playback unit, sometimes in Performance mode and sometimes in Patch mode... I don't try for more out of it than that. It has the internal capabilities, but without an adequate UI you have to be a sysex guru to get anything more out of it.

Still fun though...

- zevo

I just wanted to add to this thread--I used the JV1080 with previous versions of sonar (thank god I've since upgraded to the 5050).

Anyway I always avoided lots of headaches by not using channel 1--I would end up with myriad problems, most often the performance preset switching for seemingly no reason, to match the patch I selected. So you still have channels 2-15 to work with. Hope you get it worked out:)

I created a performance in the JV-1080 that has 16 different parts set to channels 1 through 16.  This works perfectly with Sonar.