So I'm just curious... when I have a MIDI track inserted without a synth selected I click on the Patch dropdown in the Inspector and there are a bunch of sound names. If I select one I don't get any sound from them. Considering I'd usually just pick a sound from an inserted synth I'm wondering what all that stuff in the patch browser list is? Are they place holders for some kind of standardized MIDI set up?

Sorry I can't be more clear. It's a little confusing to me. 

Cheers.

Those are sounds in the GM (General MIDI) spec.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_MIDI

Scott

--
Scott R. Garrigus - http://garrigus.com
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar and Sony Sound Forge Power book series: http://garrigus.com/?PowerBooks
* Author of the Cakewalk Sonar ProAudioTutor video tutorial series: http://garrigus.com/?ProAudioTutor
* Publisher of the DigiFreq free music technology newsletter: http://digifreq.com/?DigiFreq
* Publisher of the NewTechReview free consumer technology newsletter: http://newtechreview.com/?NewTechReview

Beep that list is a list of GM patches. Because you don't have the track connected to a synth soft or hardware it defaults to a standard GM list. If it were a hardware synth and you had set up an instrument definition file for it it would list all the patches on that synth. What you can do with it is search your patches with it. By bank and by type depending on how the IN Def file is setup. 

A very handy feature for those of us using hardware. For example I have a Roland XV 5080  with some addon cards. When I want to use a patch I can find it using that browser and set the track to use that patch on the XV. Some soft synths also will show their patches to the browser. 

As for that being junk no its not. LOL  

Cool. Thanks, guys. I'm surprised I managed to kind of guess what it was. There may be hope for me after all. ;-)

Anyway... back to the manual.

Cheers.

Instrument definitions have so much potential, I always wonder why they are restricted to MIDI ports. I even took the effort to loop MIDI out and back in, just to be able to use instrument definition files for some of my VSTi. Not so much for patch lists, but it's worth it for the named CC alone. 
They could be nicely enhanced with clear names for keyswitches and other articulation related features to help working with complex VSTi (probably there is also hardware which could benefit, I am a bit behind the curve there).

I'm not sure how an Idf would be helpful with CCs. Nothing is stopping one from using them as it is via automation or the event list or the PRV.

Could you explain this further? 

With instrument definitions you can give the controllers meaningful names and even reduce the dropdown list to those that make sense for the particular instrument. Like for example in my old but loved Gofriller Cello there is this short list:

 cc1 Vibrato Depth
 cc7 Volume cc7
 cc11 Bow Pressure
 cc64 Bow Change
 cc67 Vibrato Rate


I find it nice to have just these few in the CC list and named after their function. You can of course still access them all, but (if things didn't change in the Sonar X series) there is a convenient dropdown list with just the choice you define in the file. Great feature, but reserved for hardware instruments/MIDI FX if you don't do a MIDI loopback.

Or (on the other extreme as I mentioned complex VSTi), if you ever used MindControl with Kontakt, you can do amazing stuff with that, a bunch of CC and a clever Kontakt multi. It's good to not have to go into the MindControl GUI to find out which CC are doing what. They are telling you nicely and the list to crawl through is shorter.