Thanks John,

But it's pretty straight forward. SD4 is plugged into USB port on computer. Win7 identifies it as Ketron SD4 and that is what I select in the MIDI output devices in the RealBand list.

Play a MIDI sequence that is known to work fine under WinXP. Note that it has "issues". Start up the VMWare VM with WinXP Pro running on the same computer. Attach the SD4 to the VM (under XP the driver only says USB Audio Device). Select that USB Audio Device as the MIDI output in RealBand under XP.

Play same exact MIDI file, absolutely fine, great SD4 sounds as always.

In both cases I'm using RealBand 2011, same build, etc. Fresh installs to local hard drive, one install to the Win7 hard drive the other to the WinXP hard drive in the VM. Only obvious difference at the moment is that the one install is under Win7 64 bit and the other is under WinXP (32 bit of course) in the VM. Both running on the same notebook computer.

I'll try sending the GM reset that the other reply mentions, but I don't see any other way to select the Ketron than what I'm doing at present. There is of course a second USB selection option for the SD4, but that one doesn't solve the problem.

I did get an external USB to MIDI adapter yesterday and will try that for grins and giggles.

To the other reply about pitch bend sensitivity and friends, yes I know about that I've hit it the past and actually wrote a utility program that lets me scan MIDI files looking for pitch bend sensitivity issues, reserved CC's being used, and other things that have bitten me in the past with sequences that I have not produced myself. The MIDI(s) I'm testing with are all MIDI specification compliant, and set the pitch bend sensitivity, etc. to proper values with no reserved CCs being used. In addition most of the channels that are "messed up" do not use pitch bend.

Also, I have tried reseting the SD4 by disconnecting it and reconnecting it, and then restarting RealBand. No difference, the output still are messed up when playing under Win7 via RealBand but not under WinXP.

Thanks again to all who have replied. I'll let you know the result of the sending the GM reset.

Burt