Hi Guys
 
I have a question hoping someone will answer this for me and save me another week of trying.
 
I have a Roland jv 1080 , I have managed to midi to pc and gm mode is playing great.
 
I then bought one of the expansion cards and I have it all loaded and ,yes I have a pat file loaded, it plays while in perform mode.
 
And I can hear the instruments from the card.
 
But can I get it to play along with general midi mode so I have more guitars and more pianos etc.
 
Hope you get what I mean just don't want to be working on this another week and it cant be done.
 
 In perform mode the general midi sounds are weird and way off. 
 Do I have to do something to the jv 1080 in perform mode to get the gm sounds to sound good.
Thanks

Not sure what your asking but, General midi is sort of a standard in sounds that would be expected. 
Performance mode is simply more sounds that are not specific to GM. You can turn any perf patch into a GM patch by scrolling to the sounds you like and saving.
 
I don't have any expansion cards so can't comment on that.
 
there are instrument definition files for the JV series for Sonar that make it a little easier to find patches (sometimes) from within Sonar. 

I don't have a 1080 but I believe there is a "GM mode" bank on the 1080 with the specified sounds in the GM defined program locations.
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_MIDI#Program_change_events
 
You can either set the 1080 itself to the GM bank for each channel in the Performance or, as timidi mentioned, you can set up Sonar with instrument definitions to have send the proper bank change messages for the 1080 to load the appropriate sounds by the track controls for the GM bank.
 
You need to set up instrument definitions - there is already a GM bank with the patch names, but you need to set up Sonar to send the proper MIDI Bank Select message for a given device if you want to change banks from within Sonar rather than at the instrument.
 
https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR&language=3&help=Instrument_Defs.01.html
 
 
If you set up/import the 1080 instrument definitions for Sonar, you can then select bank/instrument for each track in Sonar using either the Track Preset Browser or Bank and Patch drop downs in Track View (W and T in the picture below) and it will show the patch names for each bank in your 1080 and send the appropriate messages to the 1080 to select the bank and patch you select in Sonar:
 
https://www.cakewalk.com/Documentation?product=SONAR&language=3&help=Playback.20.html
 

colly888 - I happen to have two JV1080s and expansion cards for them, and have been using them for a long time.

Perhaps I can assist if you PM me.