Ok, my second post
I just recently got this XP-30 and am trying to interface it with Cakewalk, and I'm really very new to this.
Here's my question:
I hold down Performance and press Patch to go into 'Record mode.' I select a patch for Part 1 and set Cakewalk's track 1 to channel 1 and I'm ready to record my first track, but ... what happened to the friggin' patches?!?! Yes, I can hear them but in this 'record mode', all of the patches sound like they have been 'castrated'. Or in other words, the patches lose almost all their punch and it suddenly sounds like I'm playing a $20 Casio
WTF is going on? Can someone explain it to someone who is brand new to the world of MIDI? Is there a way in record mode that I can go and turn all the EFX back on? I know it will probably seriously screw with the polyphony, but I'd rather have 8 voice polyphony than to record with little to no EFX.

Does the playback of your recorded midi data sounds as crappy as when you record it? If it doesn't, I wouldn't bother about it much, because the playback is good.

Yes, the playback sounds just as bad. As an example, on an XP-30, in Patch mode, go to the C bank and select patch 079 (Jet Str Ens) and then press Performance + Patch and select C079 as part 1 in Performance mode and compare the difference in sound. The resulting sound isn't bad in itself, but definitely not what we start off with.
As far as recording, I'm not sure if I'm even going about this the right way, but this is the only way I can hear anything at all when I play it back.

The EFX you are using in the performance mode is the same of the patch mode?
The XP 30 have 1 EFX for all parts in performance mode, so when you select a patch, it sounds different due to overall EFX setting. You can define if the source of EFx is the patch or the performance; in case of patch EFX, the source can be any of the 16 parts.

C079 Jet Str Ens use Tremolo Chorus EFX, when you assign the patch to a performance part, it may be using a default EFX for performance mode (example: Stereo EQ).

Mgomes

Ok, I've figured out with the Edit button on, I can click on the 2/10 button and get to a screen where you can choose the EFX type and the source. I've set the EFX type to 12:Tremolo-chorus (for C079) and the source to Part 1 and now it sounds a lot better, but still kind of dull compared to it's patch mode counterpart. Is there an easy way of saying "use the exact same EFX settings as in patch mode" or is it necessary to go in and fiddle with the EFX settings for each part?
I know these are probably stupid questions, but it really doesn't help that I don't know what I'm doing

The EFX settings are defined in the patch, but the reverb and chorus settings are defined in the performance. The part send to reverb and send to chorus levels are also defined in performance.
These values are not copied from patch, so you'll have to manually adjust the settings.

Mgomes