Can you set a controller to change EXT / OFF in combi?

[CliveJ]

If you turn off SysEx it’ll be a whole lot quieter - Global, MIDI, Enable Exclusive

[CliveJ]

Also have a look at the CME U6MIDI Pro. That can do filtering, routing and translation.
… unless that’s the one you already found…

[Xenophile]

thanks Clive. that little CME U6MIDI Pro is the one I found. I have to look closer at its filtering/routing capabilities. I just got it a few months ago, and I have received two software/firmware updates for it already. I guess it is good to know that someone somewhere is working on it!

I will try turning off SysEx. I noticed that all the panel controls are sending SysEx messages when they are not set to send EXT messages. I just worry that all that babble is going to confuse Mainstage.

I don't use Kronos sequencer, so I was thinking that setting it for external MIDI clock might stop it from sending out continuous MIDI clock messages. But I might want to use the internal clock for something... Auto Wah comes to mind.

I've started integrating Mainstage back into my live rig. I stopped using it when I got my Kronos a few years ago, and just used Kronos as the "brains" and sound source, but I am always worried about it throwing the cursed "A problem has been detected" message on a show, so I want to have some backup I can quickly switch over to, so I'm not completely dead in the water if it shits the bed while I'm playing a gig. But I don't know what kind of mayhem Kronos might send out over MIDI when it freaks out, that might throw Mainstage for a loop as well.

[CliveJ]

Looks like we both came to the same conclusion over Kronos reliability although I turned to Steinberg VST Live - I find it easier to use than MainStage.

You’re right to worry about Kronos SysEx floods - my HydraSynth does not like Kronos SysEx at all, sometimes I had random program and controller changes until I turned it off.

[ChrisDuncan]

But I found that Kronos is still sending lots of stuff on the Global channel. Am I correct to understand that there is no way to turn that off? It seems the only option is to configure the receiving device (Mainstage in my case) to ignore everything coming from Kronos on Kronos' Global Channel.

I did turn off Sys Ex, but the other thing that was a huge load on the destination device was all the stuff the Kronos sends on the midi channels. I went into the combi and unchecked every box in the three midi filter pages on all 16 channels, including the global channel (very tired fingers after that), leaving only the couple of things that I cared about. So in addition to sysex, you might be getting a lot of stuff from the midi filters on the global channel.

Between sysex and the filters, traffic reduced to a reasonable level and my latency issues were fixed. It doesn't sound like MainStage is struggling with the load like the Fantom was, but yeah, there's a heckuva lot of traffic coming from the Kronos.

In the end everything was happy, hope this helps to promote a little happiness with your rig.