Thanks for the reply, Matt.

The cakewalk tip was a good source to google. I found the .ini files for my jv's and the expansion cards.

I'm away from my DAW right now, but I'll have a go at converting the .ini files to .pat files and try them.

I did manually modify/write some .pat files for the JV1080. Yea, tedious. When selecting the higher patches through biab, sometimes they changed and the instrument sounded as expected (GM and User), most often the instrument which played was obviously not the instrument selected in biab from the "+" pull down menu.

Reading through a sonar forum from a google hit, they were writing that - in sonar - one needed to create a default multitibral template on the first performance bank within the JV-1080 unit itself to access the higher banks. And making some sonar specific setting and some JV specific setting for the two to communicate.

Is this also the case with biab? Any clue what setting are needed in biab or on the Roland?

The documentation on GM with desktop daw in the Roland manual is sketchy. It states to place the JV-1080 on GM mode (shift > GM). I get all the familiar GM patches and (many, not all) GS patches selecting those from the "GS" button on biab gui.

Does the JV-1080 need to be in a different (Performance?) mode to access the higher patch banks and expansion card patches and select the instruments through the biab gui interface ("+" pull down menu)?

....I'm not even going to ask about getting the JV-1080 working with RealBand. Yet.

Thanks in advance.