Korg Poly 800 MIDI-Problems

DETOX · Joined: May 22, 2008 Posts: 143 Location: Germany

hi there !

for several years now i've been owning a korg poly 800. it still works really fine and i actually am still in love with it. anyway there's something thats bothering me: whenever i select the midi-receive channel on the poly 800 (e.g. 01) it still accepts midi from all channels sending any midi-information (although the DAW or sequencer sends only on channel 02 the poly 800 still receives all the midi data, even if it's receive channel is set to 01).
does anyone of you have any solution or idea for solving this problem? i'd really like to embed the poly 800 into my midi setup!

thanks !

EdisonRex · Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 10:11 am Post subject:

Your poly 800 is in midi OMNI mode. It will always power up in OMNI mode.
To change to POLY mode, select parameter 86 "MIDI RECEIVE CH", you don't have to change it but you have to select it. That will switch it out of OMNI mode.

This is not a sticky parameter. Those old MIDI implementations were kind of primitive.

DETOX · Joined: May 22, 2008 Posts: 143 Location: Germany

EdisonRex · Posted: Fri Mar 30, 2012 4:05 pm Post subject:

Old Korgs used omni mode as default, I guess to make it easier to connect one more keyboard. It's inappropriate in a network. Omni hears all channels on the pipe, so that's probably ok with one other keyboard directly connected, but annoying if you have a router.

DETOX · Joined: May 22, 2008 Posts: 143 Location: Germany

I've been searching the internet for a few days now and none of the tricks to turn off the omni mode did work. i also found out that the first production run of poly 800s has an eprom build in which doesn't have a proper midi implementation. i haven't checked the SN of my poly but it seems that it's one of that first run (it didn't have the memory battery build in either). the only solution probably is a midi-filter box or a router/midi interface.
sending a manual omni-mode-off cc command (cc 124, value 0) via behringer bcr2000 didn't work either but my behringer seems to have midi issues anyway (another story......).

are there any recommendable midi-filter boxes or diy kits out there?

xrc · Joined: Feb 27, 2019 Posts: 1 Location: Hungary

hey ho
just a short note: cc 124, value 0 works
NB please be sure to send the cc message on the same midi channel as You set on the poly 800!
Smile

all the best and thanks for the infos above