Sonar & Boss DR-660 & MIDI question for AD 2

I don't know the 660, but from your description that looks like how to send a "dump" of the contents in syssex.

Translated to English, that's a way to back up the contents in a file on a computer. The file will be in what's called System Exclusive (sysex) format, which is different for every MIDI device. If you like, it's a language only it can understand.

Sonar can send sysex data to a MIDI instrument but it's probably not the best way to do what I think you want to do, which is to have the MIDI as note data in a MIDI track?

I've downloaded and looked at the manual, and it's not entirely clear to me at first reading, and I've been dealing with MIDI pretty much as long as there's been MIDI.

But what I think you want to do should work like this.

Connect the DR's MIDI in and out sockets to a MIDI to PC interface and switch it on.
Launch Sonar and create a blank MIDI track. You should see the DR listed in Sonar's MIDI preferences as an available device. Enable it.

Sync the DR to Sonar following the MIDI sunc instructions in the DR manual. That will make the DR run at Sonar's tempo and stop/start when Sonar's transport does.

Now tell your MIDI track to receive input from the DR and record-arm the track. Make sure the track is set to point it's MIDI output anywhere other than the DR, otherwise the DR will echo the notes Sonar sends to it and they'll set up a MIDI feedback loop. An alternative is to make sure "imput echo" on the MIDI track is "off".

Then set Sonar running and you should see the DR streaming MIDI into your MIDI track.
You may need to check the MIDI channel the DR is operating on and make sure Sonar's MIDI track is set to the same channel. If you want to send MIDI from Sonar to the DR that's essential, but going the other way often the MIDI channel setting in a Sonar track doesn't matter.

It's possible that the first few notes of a song will be missing because the DR and Sonar might not start at exactly the same instant. A work-round for that is to add a blank bar to the beginning of the song in the DR to allow time for everything to sync together before data starts moving.

Hope that helps.

Awesome! You were exactly right on what I wanted to do. Including that blank measure at the beginning is always a must. So, make sure the MIDI channels are the same - got it.
So just like recording audio do NOT have the track input and track output set to the same thing.
Then once the MIDI track is created, I can open Addictive Drums 2, then copy the MIDI track created from the DR to the MIDI track in the AD 2 MIDI track. I have AD 2 set to default to open with separate mono tracks in it's own folder.
After that it would just be making sure AD 2 has the right notes assigned.

Maybe this will be easy!

Thanks for the help.

Thanks Cactus! So, both MIDI in and out cables plugged into my interface.
More questions - sorry guys! Syncing tempos is all I have done with MIDI.
With AD 2 - you said it will not play my samples. Does that mean the sounds of the drums from my DR-660 cannot be played by AD 2? Because I would rather use the drum sounds from AD 2 anyway.
I am looking to be able to just use the beat structures that are programmed into my DR-660. So if the kick drum is played on beats 1, the and after 2 and on 3 on the DR-660, AD 2 would play the kick drum on the same beats but the sound would be the kick drum in AD 2.
I am really quick on programming beats on the DR-660 and was hoping this would be another solution to triplets in Sonar's step sequencer.
Make sense?