Audio Midi Setup seems to do nothing but crash lately

Question

I looked around for a more suitable forum but this seemed like my best bet. I recently started having very poor luck with Audio Midi Setup (AMS here).
I just installed Logic Pro, a MOTU Ultralite, and a MOTU micro express, but I have never used AMS on an Intel prior to installing this gear, so I don't know if any of the three is responsible.
AMS will randomly crash for no reason that I can figure whenever I'm in the MIDI pane. Additionally, I can cause it to crash by fiddling with MIDI routing. The crashing becomes more frequent if I change icons and colors of MIDI devices. There is one guaranteed way to get AMS to crash, and that is to click on one of the MIDI devices' information bullets. Come to think of it, not all devices have these buttons, and I have no idea what they're supposed to do. But I can't resist clicking on 'em.

Answer 1

LOL
Aside from crashing and other AMS weirdnesses I've seen over the past few months (on both Logic-based and DP-based systems), and aside from the fact that Logic's environment renders the MIDI side of AMS redundant, here's the thing I really don't like about Logic + AMS integration:
When you create a MIDI instrument in AMS, Logic will recognize the instrument and add it to the environment's MIDI instrument layer, but it won't show up there the first time you launch Logic. Might show up the second time. Or it might not show up at all.
But aside from this bit o' behavior, any multi-timbral AMS-created MIDI devices that appear in the environment will have the program change checkboxes enabled for every channel, the program numbers themselves seemingly set at random. This means that if you select this instrument (on any channel) as the thru instrument in the arrange window and hit play, the MIDI device will be sent this not-set-by-the-user-and-very-random-but-transmitted-anyway program change. So say bye-bye to any edit that might have been living in the synth's buffer.
The workaround here is to remember not to select any of those instruments for use in the arrange window until you first select each sub-channel of each multi-timbral MIDI device (as it shows up in the environment) and manually uncheck all of the program change check boxes. And trust me, it's a major pain in the *** to do on just one multi-instrument, let alone, say, 16 (as was my original AMS-derived environment setup).
So that's yet another reason not to define your instruments ('specially multi-timbral instruments) in AMS.