My v1.06 update has never given me those problems. Strange. It also never makes a sound on boot-up. Silent as the grave!

Try this if you get the strings in a layer at the wrong pitch… wiggle the bender fully both ways. Perhaps it is faulty? I have found that the benders tend to wear out if used heavily, like I do. Perhaps yours is affecting the string sound. Check the Performance edit and see if the bender is enabled for both Parts. If it is the bender, the good news is that those are still available from Roland, and putting them in yourself is fairly simple, no soldering or major disassembly, just the screws to open the case and four screws to remove the bender assembly. Unless a complete technophobe, you should be able to do it yourself…

As to the 432Hz tuning, what is likely happening is that the SMF has a MIDI Reset command at the start of it, a short sysex command that resets all values back to nominal. It was a common practice with commercial SMF creators to ensure that nothing like CC values or pitch bends etc. from the previous file were left hanging around at the start of the next one.

The solution isn’t easy, it will involve using a computer to insert a pitch change sysex code for the 432hz after the GS Reset command on all your sequences. This is going to be a pain if you have a lot of files. Now might be a good time to decide if you REALLY need to work at 432hz… Are you playing with anybody else, or do you have a piano tuned to 432hz next to your arranger?

If you can work at 440hz, you’ll save yourself a ton of work… it’s unlikely you’ll be able to hear the difference unless you are playing something else as well. Why did you choose the old pitch reference? I guarantee that whatever pianos were sampled in the first place were sampled at 440hz, so you’re not getting the strings and body resonances of a 432hz piano in the sample!