Thread Accessing MIDI soft synths on a Power Mac G5

I just made the switch from PC to Mac. I have a Power Mac G5 Quad, OS 10.4.4.

When I wanted to play a pre-recorded MIDI file on my PC, I imported it into Sonar, and it played. Period. No problem. I guess Sonar automatically accessed some instruments for the MIDI file to play. I routinely converted a Band-in-a-Box song file to MIDI, and then imported it into Sonar so I could play along and record myself on an audio track.

Now my setup includes a Presonus Firebox and Cubase LE, which came bundled with the Firebox sound card. When I import the same MIDI file that worked fine on the PC with Sonar into Cubase, I get levels on the software meters but no sound. For some reason Cubase isn’t controlling or accessing the Mac’s MIDI instrument banks. I tried importing this same file into Garage Band, using drag and drop, and … it played! So, clearly Garage Band is automatically set up to have MIDI data control some kind of onboard soft synths.

But I am still perplexed about why I can’t make Cubase LE work as it should. Since this is a free, “light” version of the software, Steinberg doesn’t offer any support.

So my question is: Does this sound like I just haven’t gotten Cubase to control MIDI instruments on the Mac? If so, are there such things already installed on the computer? (Because when I do the Cubase MIDI setup, it doesn’t find anything.) Or do I have to buy something for Cubase to control?

Thanks for any light you can shed.

Paul S.