Midi and middle C an Pan laws-Confusion

What you have to remember is that MIDI doesn't care about octave notation. It simply says that MIDI note 60 is Middle C (261 Hz), and that's that. It does not dictate what you call that note. That's a display issue, not a musical one. The MIDI Manufacturer's Association would have no problem with you calling it "Fred".
 
Electronics engineers and software programmers tend to start numbering at zero, because when you reference a list of things, be they numbers or names, you specify an offset (or index) into an array. Zero means the top of the list (no offset), and 1 refers to the second thing on the list (base address + 1).
 
Because synthesizers were designed by engineers and not musicians (e.g. Bob Moog was not a musician), the zero-based convention made far more sense. A MIDI note value of zero would correspond to C0. An octave up would be C1, and so on. That's the approach Cakewalk took. Unfortunately, that makes MIDI 60 land on the 5th "C", so it would be designated "C5". Yamaha had their own take on it, making Middle C = "C3". Meanwhile, in the musical world, while there was no universal consensus, most musicians called it C4.
 
Bottom line: if you want Middle C to be called "C4" in the PRV, set the "base octave for pitches" to -1.
 
When it comes to drums in particular, use a drum map. Drum maps don't care about "C4" vs. "C3" or "C5", only MIDI note values. With a drum map, the PRV shows "Kick" for MIDI note value 36, regardless of the base octave designation.
 
Where I used to often get confused was with keyswitches for Kontakt instruments, because Kontakt instrument developers presume "C4 = Middle C", and show keyswitch assignments that way rather than by MIDI note numbers.
 
For example, if a Kontakt instrument designates MIDI note 24 as an articulation selector, the instrument developer will typically show that as "C0" on the GUI. Some, such as Orange Tree Samples, try to avoid such confusion by showing the actual MIDI note value, which no doubt confuses musicians even more!
 
Most other vendors don't do this. For example, in Kirk Hunter Concert Strings 2, if I'd wanted to choose the "Smooth" articulation (C#1) I'd have to drop it into the PRV at C#2. Confusing! Nowadays, I have Cakewalk's base octave set to -1, which makes my PRV line up with CS2 and other Kontakt instruments.