DX7 - active sensing issues

[aktech]

Those of us who have been sequencing for awhile (and plenty of newbies) still use and enjoy the venerable DX7 as master keyboard controller for its great keyboard feel. One of the early implementations of MIDI, however, was Active Sensing on some keyboards, including the DX7. This is essentially a "keepalive" message sent every 300 ms. Many new synth modules and pieces of gear ignore this and don't report it or show it in MIDI activity LEDs as a valid message. But in some cases, that IRRITATING blinking LED (if you have seen it, you know what I mean) somewhere in the MIDI rig, on some piece of gear that doesn't know better, just reminds that the DX7 doesn't shut UP! Even the Grey Matter E! ROM board update for DX7 didn't fix this.

So, for any of you techs and bitheads out there.... do you know of a fix? Note that Active Sensing can't be filtered with the usual MIDI filters (sequencing software or outboard hardware) as it is not part of SysEx or normal MIDI messages.

I'm posting this in the sequencing section also.