Hi all,

I've just made the big leap from a Windows PC running Sonar to a Mac running Logic Pro X.

I've been extremely impressed with both the Mac and Logic and can't believe how quickly I've been able to get up to speed with my music production considering how much has changed in the last couple of weeks. I'm already feeling very competent with most aspects of digital audio. Loving it!

MIDI however is another matter.

I have a fairly simple setup that includes a Roland digital piano and a Roland XV-5050 rack-mounted synth module. I have configured both of these MIDI components under the MacOS utility called Audio MIDI Setup. Under the Show MIDI Studio screen I can now see my setup displayed graphically and when I enter the test mode, the cable routing is all working as expected.

In contrast to everything else in Logic Pro X (which is sooo user-friendly and a delight to use), operating external MIDI instruments is baffling. All I want to be able to do is tell Logic Pro about all of the bank and patch names on my Roland XV-5050 so that I can easily select MIDI channels and sounds.

I've probably spent about 4 hours trying to achieve this so far. Now I'm resorting to asking you lot!

I found a 'MIDI Environment project' from another forum on the web and it loads up this crude looking dialogue box with instrument assignments that relate to my XV-5050's patch, drums and performance elements. I thought I was on a winner but I don't understand what I am supposed to do with this project file. Do I need to save it as a template and use it every time that I want to use my XV-5050? I tried doing that but I couldn't make it work. There are also multiple layers to this Environment screen and some of them refer to cable routing. I thought I'd already done all of that at the OS level? I'm out of my depth with this and can't find any newbie documentation to explain it.

Is there not a simple way to tell Logic about my Roland XV-5050 so that it is available for mapping by all projects? In Cakewalk Sonar I simply added an instrument definition file to the program's folder and that was that.

I would really appreciate any help offered with this. I'm sure there's a way but how it's managed in Logic is just so different to what I am used to.