Active Sense

Category: System Realtime

Purpose

A device sends out an Active Sense message (at least once) every 300 milliseconds if there has been no other activity on the MIDI buss, to let other devices know that there is still a good MIDI connection between the devices.

Status

0xFE

Data

None

Errata

When a device receives an Active Sense message (from some other device), it should expect to receive additional Active Sense messages at a rate of one approximately every 300 milliseconds, whenever there is no activity on the MIDI buss during that time. (Of course, if there are other MIDI messages happening at least once every 300 mSec, then Active Sense won't ever be sent. An Active Sense only gets sent if there is a 300 mSec "moment of silence" on the MIDI buss. You could say that a device that sends out Active Sense "gets nervous" if it has nothing to do for over 300 mSec, and so sends an Active Sense just for the sake of reassuring other devices that this device still exists). If a message is missed (ie, 0xFE nor any other MIDI message is received for over 300 mSec), then a device assumes that the MIDI connection is broken, and turns off all of its playing notes (which were turned on by incoming Note On messages, versus ones played on the local keyboard by a musician). Of course, if a device never receives an Active Sense message to begin with, it should not expect them at all. So, it takes one "nervous" device to start the process by initially sending out an Active Sense message to the other connected devices during a 300 mSec moment of silence on the MIDI bus.

This is an optional feature that only a few devices implement (ie, notably Roland gear). Many devices don't ever initiate this minimal "safety" feature.

Here's a flowchart for implementing Active Sense. It assumes that the device has a hardware timer that ticks once every millisecond. A variable named Timeout is used to count the passing milliseconds. Another variable named Flag is set when the device receives an Active Sense message from another device, and therefore expects to receive further Active Sense messages.

The logic for active sense detection