Thanks for the responses.
DG, I understand what you are saying and I was able to do all those steps the only problem is that I don't have my midi keyboard hooked up yet because I found out my old midi cable isn't compatible with my new computer so I'm going to buy a USB cable or something like that soon, however like I said I was at least able to follow your steps and understand that so far (at least I think I do).
But either way, I don't expect to really make music in Cubase, what I plan to do is compose in Sibelius and then import the music via midi into Cubase for EDITING. So that is why I am asking how to assign the vienna ensemble to the Imported midi tracks rather than creating the new tracks.
The problem is I can't seem to figure out how to route a track to a vienna ensemble instrument and I'm not sure how to explain it but here's my best explanation.
1. I open a new project
2. I click import midi and import my orchestral midi file
3. all the tracks are now imported, I hit f11 to bring up the VST instruments control window.
4. this VST instruments window has numbering from 1-32. At the top on numer 1 I click it and click on Vienna Ensemble.
5. It asks me do you want to create a midi track assigned to vienna ensemble? I click NO because I don't want to create a new track I just want to assign the tracks I already imported to it so that I can begin editing them with the Vienna Ensemble instrument sounds/patches.
6. Now I click on any random instrument midi track to see if I can get it to route to a Vienna instrument. Let's say I click on track #3 which is my flutes. I click on that to highlight it and then I go to the left to the Inspector and in the input it says "All Midi Inputs". I leave that as it is.
In the output it says "HalionOne" I click "HalionOne" and change it to "Vienna Ensemble".
7. As soon as I do this suddenly a new Vienna Ensemble instance opens up. I now have 2 instances of Vienna Ensemble open. One opened up from when I chose Vienna Ensemble in the f11 VST instruments list and the second opened up when I changed it from HalionOne in the Inspector for the 3rd track (flutes). Now I have no idea where to load the actual instruments because I have 2 vienna ensembles open. If I go to all 20 of my midi tracks and change the midi output from "HalionOne" to "Vienna Ensemble" I will now have 20 instances of Vienna Ensemble open.
How am I supposed to work with that?? How do I make all of them route to just ONE INSTANCE of Vienna Ensemble rather than 20 individual ones?
8. Either way, I add an instrument in BOTH INSTANCES of Vienna Ensemble and route it to "Channel 3" because in the Cubase track list the flutes are the 3rd track. When I hit play in Cubase I don't hear any sound at all (when I have track 3 as solo). When I play the whole thing every track except this 3rd track of flutes which I attempted to route to V.E. plays. So I am somehow routing it wrong.
Please help, it is so frustrating. Ugh.