Maestro was designed to mimic motronic (well it is motronic but..) with a lot less functionality in order to make it approachable for the beginner. There are hacks in the code in order to make it more universal between engines, and more user friendly. You spend a lot of time learning a language, that once you realize what you're giving up, you'll have no use for. The initial cost is as high as a tune from a big name tuner, but you "get" to do all the work! The AWP/AWM files are interchangeable, because the hardware is mostly the same. If we're talking traditional motronic, you can only use the definition that's specific to the file version you're working with in general. There are some cases where a definition will be shared between different software versions, but this is an exception.

Thanks a bunch for the response guys!  I didn't even think of the immo... more reading to do!  I just found the sub-forums in here that look to have a good amount of information that I will start picking through.  Are immo bins written for THAT particular ecu that they came from?  I don't physically have an AWP(or the like) ecu in hand to pull bins from.  Could a guy pull a eeprom bin from online, disable immo and then flash that eeprom bin to a non immo ecu?

Basically where I'm at is trying to figure out if it would be .ore efficient to try and cross flash an already defined bin onto my 018m ecu or to jump into either defining my own file.  I spent a week playing with winols and hex but I was also learning motronic principals too so my brain was a bit fried and I put it on the back burner while I learn more lol.  I'm not scared to learn by any means, I'm just sorting through being efficient as I'd like to get to a point where I can ditch Maestro. 

So, is maestro just a hack?  It's been great for me personally as I'm new to this type of more dynamic tuning.  Playing with some other well defined xdfs and comparing them to what I have available with Maestro is an eye opener.  Seems as maestro just scrapes the surface of the total depth of motronic lol. 

Thanks again, I greatly appreciate the help.