Chris:
Yes, your remarks were quite helpful. However, it's obvious to me we're doing very different things. Correct me if I'm wrong - it sounds like you're primarily performing, or recording performance on a keyboard for MIDI playback; and you depend on your keyboard(s) to address and route MIDI information. It sounds like your MOTU unit is just broadcasting everything.

My nick-name on this forum is revealing. I'm a classically-trained pen-and-ink writer who actually manuscripts every note. I, of course, now use a software package for that purpose, but I still enter every note. I have somewhat recently discovered that the package I use (Noteworthy Composer) also provides the ability to control MIDI - up to a point.

Since I'm quite new to the MIDI game, I've managed to learn how to assign specific voices to channels through the software, and have become somewhat proficient at extracting some semblence of realism from the MIDI sequences through coded software controls rather than performance MIDI recordings. I'm a terrible keyboard player (as a performer, I'm primarily a vocalist with some guitar chops), so that's how it must happen.

I intend to use my sequences for performance as well as sound recording. I want to be able to separate channel destinations through the sequencing software, or (and this was the reason for my question) an intermediate device, so all modules don't play all channels. I've seen some modules providing on-panel controls for channel muting, but mine don't. (That'd just be TOO easy!)

My latest correspondence from MOTU implies that I'd be better advised to upgrade the software (and hence my ability to control devices directly through it), though they have yet to specifically state whether their devices will do exactly as I've asked.

The thing that is so maddening is that there seems to be no literature of any kind on this subject. The only decent MIDI book I've found so far is Lehrman/Tully's "Midi for the Professional," but it's too general to be of much use here. How do folks learn these things?!

Thanks for tolerating an ol' man's ramblings . . .