Hi Bill,

Thanks for the speedy reply. I checked out that link. Unfortunately, it describes how to filter Active Sensing at the DAW. My question is how to turn it OFF at the MOXF6.

I see Bad Mister commented that Yamaha, being a founding member of MIDI, chose to send Active Sensing. I downloaded the MIDI Spec 1.0 and here's what it says ...

"ACTIVE SENSING

Use of Active Sensing is optional for either receivers or transmitters. This byte (FE) is sent every 300 ms
(maximum) whenever there is no other MIDI data being transmitted. If a device never receives Active
Sensing it should operate normally. However, once the receiver recognizes Active Sensing (FE), it then
will expect to get a message of some kind every 300 milliseconds. If no messages are received within this
time period the receiver will assume the MIDI cable has been disconnected for some reason and should
turn off all voices and return to normal operation. It is recommended that transmitters transmit Active
Sensing within 270ms and receivers judge at over 330ms leaving a margin of roughly 10%. "

Note it says ...
"optional for either receivers or transmitters". Given that, Yamaha should offer an option to turn it OFF or ON. Is it possible?

Thanks,
Tom

Thanks for that info. Unfortunately, the Express 128 doesn't offer MIDI filtering. I'd have to upgrade to the Express XT for an additional $100.

Thanks,
Tom

Anyone? Bad Mister maybe? Please? 🙂

The MIDI spec saying it's optional means devices do not have to have it in order to be compliant with the MIDI spec - not that devices that have it need to have an option to turn it on or off.

A well-behaved device that shows MIDI activity should consider that any device may (optionally, it's their choice) be transmitting 0xFE bytes up to approx 3 times a second and not show MIDI activity when it receives these. It should filter these knowing the meaning is "I'm here". If the device doesn't do this (it doesn't have to) then the status LEDs are going to be not so meaningful and that's a problem with the status light implementation.

That a device you depend on doesn't handle these well in the context of status LEDs means it wasn't very well designed and therefore you'd need to lob on something else that takes care of the filtering to make up for the slack of implementation shortcomings (of the MOTU) - if that's the case that it can't avoid seeing FE as busy activity.

That you've had other devices that can turn this off just means the configuration option is a lucky situation for the MOTU that the feature to make up for MOTU's implementation issue is already built-in to other devices. There's nothing in the spec that says you have to do this. And those other devices may have decided to do this to better mix with "low end" equipment that isn't considerate of the full spec.