Controlling external synths, nrpn, hydrasynth

I'm trying to figure out the best way to control my new external hardware synth, the Hydrasynth with Logic. By default it's set to use NRPN, which I had literally never heard of until I got this thing. Now I've discovered you can change the settings called "PARAM RX" and "PARAM TX" to be CC instead. Here's the issue, when I have it set to NRPN and I use the big ribbon slider, it gives me a set of four different automations, in the piano roll, but they're basically unintelligible as to how to edit them. For instance, a big left to right slide on the ribbon shows up instead as a sharp up and down line in the data LSB section.

If I set the hydrasynth to CC instead of NRPN it doesn't record the automation of the ribbon at all, BUT I can tweak the macro knobs and those show up easily editable as "CTRL 20" etc.

I guess my question is, uh, what do I do to make it so I can edit automation, including the ribbon? I read a post from a dozen years ago about setting up stuff in the environment for mapping NRPN messages. Is still the best way?

Thanks!