Chris:
I'm definitely chording. My software allows me to send all the staffs to one channel and voice if I want, though I generally do things the traditional way - treble/bass grand staff to one channel for keyboard voices. After 6 years of college theory (culminating in a failed Masters in music theory and composition back in my dark and foggy past) I know how to write traditional keyboard.

I found pretty early on that my little JV-1010 can get a bit "laggy" when one or more channels using a layered voices has to handle a lot of notes. It's amazing how thin proported "64 note polyphony" can be when someone actually calls the bluff . . .

SysEx, as you state, is supposed to provide remote configuration of hardware, including muting channels - that much I've garnished. But it seems obvious to me that Roland intended their little module to be used as a performance tool. They made the dang thing cheap enough to entice MIDI dabblers like me to try it for other things, but I'm getting the impression that its lack of on-board controls has created more problems than it's cheapness can solve.

I WAS serious about enjoying seeing the Hex contents of messages. Amongst my various hats, I have been an on-again, off-again data management programmer and web developer, and I'm constantly looking at what my WYSIWYG interface does to the code. My knee-jerk reaction to my difficulties is to have at the hex, and find a way to deliver it to the module, but there's too many barriers in the way - time being the most obvious.

By now, of course, I would have completely read the posted documentation of the MOTU units in question, if they were, in fact, posted - which they're not. And there is nary a supplier of such equipment within 100 miles of my home. Ah, well!

Thanks so much for your remarks.