thanks alot to all of you, you have all been a great help. i figured the VSTi out, but now i have another problem (its too late for me now.....yall be hearing from me often, as i am not too smart, and have gotten turned onto the evil world of sequencers and synths) ....so i buy me a yamaha sequencer the other day and a novation nova. i plug em into cubase and get a sequence goin.....everythin is fine and dandy. i remember you guys said that i cant apply eq and plugins to real instruments, so i tried converting it to audio. it converts fine, but whats really weird is that the sounds have gotten a lot quieter than they were when they were being through cubases midi sequencer. have yall experienced something like this before?? (ps, all my record levels are way up)