Here is my situation:

1) I am a complete idiot.
2) I have cheap ass equipment.
3) I can't get my cheap ass equipment to work.


I have a copy of Cakewalk 8.0 and a Yamaha PSR-630 keyboard. I can play midi files without the keyboard until the cows come home, but.... All I want to do is be able to play the keyboard and record it. I have purchased the midi cable to plug into my Diamond Monster Sound card. Everything seems to be hooked up right, but I cannot get any sound from the keyboard, nor can I play a midi file through the keyboard. I have selected the MIDI-in port in the audio setup that the keyboard is plugged in to. Not really sure what else I should look for. In case you haven't guessed I don't have the cakewalk manual.
Some more stupid questions include:

1) Can the sounds on the keyboard be used to play midi files on the computer? In other words, when I play a midi file, I want to hear it with the keyboard's sounds instead of the built in sound card sounds. If so ... how?!
2) I think part of my problem might be channel and/or port settings. Possibly source settings as well. Suggestions?
3) Can I play on the keyboard with the volume off and still get sound from the PC?
4) I'm also seeing a lot of talk about tutorials in cakewalk. Where are they?


Thanks for your patience!

I've never used a configuration like yours.
But probably, genereal solutions could help to you.

1- Yes. But the keyboard must supply General Midi (in order to use lots of MIDI files). And your soundcard must supply MIDI out.
2-Try to connect your keyboard's MIDI In with soundcard's MIDI out. And set the channels to MIDI out port (from cakewalk) you want to hear from your keyboard.
3- All The MIDI keyboards have an option called "Local". If you set this option to "Local Off" then your keyboard's synthesizer stops to respont your keyboards messages, but continues to send MIDI messages. This is what you need I think.
4- Did you have a look at cakewalk's HP ?, Synthzone ? )