ALESIS QS8.1 - Manual (Page 51)

Part 4: Basic Operation
48 QS7.1/QS8.1 Reference Manual
PAGE 14 — MIDI PROGRAM SELECT
MODE
This parameter determines how your QS deals with MIDI Program Change
Commands. There are three possible settings:
OFF turns all Program Changes off. With this choice selected, your QS will
neither send Program Changes nor respond to them.
ON makes the QS respond to incoming MIDI Program Changes, and send them out
whenever you change Programs from its front panel. In Program Mode it will send
and receive Program Changes over the currently selected MIDI channel. In Mix
Mode, Program Changes are received over all active MIDI channels, but sent only
from those displayed channels that have had MIDI OUT enabled. Please Note:
With this setting, incoming Program Changes will only affect the Programs
associated with each specific channel, not the entire Mix.
MIDI MIX SELECTION: CHANNEL 1 through CHANNEL 16 are identical to ON
as far as Program Mode is concerned. In Mix mode they work quite differently,
however, allowing you to change entire Mixes in response to Program Change
commands. Select CHANNEL 4, for example, and a Program Change 22 command
coming in over MIDI Channel 4 would automatically select Mix 22 in the current
Bank. The same is true of Bank Select messages which come in on Channel 4 in this
scenario; they’ll call up a Mix in another Bank. (Program Changes coming in over
other MIDI channels would continue to work as before, changing any Programs
associated with those channels within the current Mix.)
Any time you turn General MIDI Mode (Global Page #7) to ON, the MIDI Program
Change setting will automatically default to ON as well. There’s a good reason for
this: if MIDI MIX SELECTION were left in place here, then an incoming Program
Change could call up some other Mix than the standard GM Multi Mix…and there’d
be no telling what the GM sequence you were playing might wind up sounding like!
For an in-depth discussion of how these settings impact Bank Select transmission
and response, see Part 5: MIDI.
PAGE 15 — INPUT/OUTPUT MODE
This parameter determines whether your QS will communicate to the outside world
through (A) its MIDI jacks, or (B) its serial port. The possible selections depend on
how the rear panel [SERIAL PORT SWITCH] is set.
1) If the switch is set to MAC, your choices will be MIDI and MAC 1MHz.
2) If it is set to PC, your choices will be MIDI, PC 38.4kBaud, and PC 31.25kBaud.
(Your typical PC will work properly at the 38.4kBaud setting. PCs that require
the 31.25kBaud setting are quite rare.)
If you select MIDI, then the MIDI jacks will work and the serial port won’t. This is
the factory default.
Select any of the others and you’ll get the opposite result: the serial port will be on
and the [MIDI IN] and [MIDI OUT] jacks will be shut off (although the MIDI OUT
jack can still be used as a MIDI THRU depending on the MIDI Out Mode setting
described just below).