That seems the minimum to me, and a decent compromise. I just can't think of any reason why I would choose to replace a missing synth and then not want sound from it. Not to mention it wasn't the most intuitive place to look where to solve it as all connections on my tracks were correct and there aren't any actual on/off buttons on e tracks or in the synth rack.

I'm glad it's working and it wasn't a very complicated thing - just something that was confusing and disrupted the workflow. Since Cake seems to be making a point of working on that, this can go on the list as far as I'm concerned - perhaps make one of those new Toast notifications out of it if they don't want to change the default behavior.

I expect being set as disconnected happens during the missing detection and replace just assumes the replaced condition

Hi Sander,

I agree it's a little odd. It's probably to prevent problems with synths in a frozen state. However, I'll pass the request along to our developers for consideration.

I was having this same problem myself.  It's nice to know there is a solution, however non-intuitive.

Thanks, Dan, that's all I can hope for.

Sanderxpander
Thanks, Dan, that's all I can hope for.

I put a vote for this to change as well.
 
Opening old 8.5 project encountered the same thing in X3.
 
My workaround were to disconnect midi going to the synth, remove the synth track, add a new separate synth track, and then connect midi to it again.
 
I never figured is would be disabled by default if replaced - if project opened with a now nonexisting synth, were replaced with a new. A popup asking to enable or telling you about it would be good.
 
But knowing about this is a good thing.
 
Again praise to Cake for online support.

Also, if you replace synth with Kontakt and hear no sound, check that the midi channel is set.