Bob thanks so much for your time and expertise. I will do this tomorrow as I am going into another session right now.  We don't do much MIDI stuff but I REALLY need to spend enough time on it so that I can make something work when I need to.

No sweat.

Bob Bone

Jim, I am around most of the weekend, so if you have any additional problems or questions, I had sent my cell number to you in that private message, and you are more than welcome to call me over the weekend.

I would be happy to spend some time getting you up to speed on the midi aspects of life in Sonar-land.

Bob Bone

OK - finally have this resolved.

The imported midi track splits into multiple midi tracks, 1 per channel of recorded data.  No problem there.

Each of these tracks has embedded midi events of type RPN, which for some reason can whack out some synths, the free ones included with Sonar included.

The painful workaround is to delete these events from each track - I suggest this NOT be the method used.

Better method: 

1.  This will require a reload of each synth modified so go ahead and delete any of the SI-Piano etc synths you may have loaded into the rack
2.  Go into Utilities> Cakewalk Plugin Manager
3.  Click on VST Instruments (VSTi) on the left side
4.  Click on Dimension Pro - yup this one too
5.  At the bottom, click under VST Configuration, click on Plug-In Properties to open the property page for Dim Pro
6.  Check the box that says Do Not Intercept NRPNs.
7.  Click OK

You will need to do this for all of the Cakewalk included synths.

After you are all done, any of these synths that were loaded into the synth rack will have to be unloaded and reloaded to pick up the changes.  I do not know if a Sonar restart was required - I just went ahead and did one - I was playing Minesweeper anyways.

Now, if you load up 1 synth per midi track, and an associated audio track is set to pick up the output from each synth, and each imported midi track is set to output to a loaded synth, everything should play.

I verified the client's midi file that you sent to me in my email, and everything plays just fine on all the tracks.

Please feel free to ask me any additional questions on the above.

Bob Bone

To all, 

I KNOW RPN and NRPN events are used all over the place for control through registered and non-registered parameters and all that.
Sometimes, SOME of these can goof up SOME soft-synths.  This DID occur with the midi file that Jim was trying to process in Sonar.

I confirmed the potential for playback problems in the Cakewalk-supplied synths and these RPN and NRPN evemts, and I also confirmed the workaround I posted above with the tech support folks at Cakewalk.  

Further, I tested the workaround on my system, and Jim test it on his, and in both cases the original problems WERE present, and following the workaround, the problems WENT AWAY.

Any ensuing debate and/or debacle on the merits, or any other anything to do with these types of events is welcomed to occur outside of any comment or participation on my behalf - in case anybody is itchin to get into such a discussion.

:)

I am quite happy that Jim can get back to being productive in Sonar, and happy I learned something through assisting him.

Bob Bone

I want to thank Bob for all of his tireless detective work on this matter. His finding this issue has kept me from looking like a dummy in front of a client and furthered my MIDI education by leaps and bounds. Seeing the cure to my issue I would NEVER have found it without Bob's efforts. This sequence was suppllied by the client and done on the latest version of Notae so apparently that program added the offending instructions to the file.
Again THANKS BOB!