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[Shutoku]

So I have a bit of an odd situation.

I am using a rig consisting of a Korg sp250 piano, a Korg Kross, and sometimes an old Korg m1 as a midi controller.

I use the Kross as my "brain" as it were, so for the most part all my sounds are coming from it.

So I use one of two set ups:
1: sp250 midi'd into the Kross
2. sp250 + m1 to a 4X1 midi merger, then to the Kross

Here are the issues

with the sp250 midi'd directly to the Kross, occasionally and randomly while holding a note or chord on the Kross with a sustained sound like an organ, the notes will suddenly stop sounding even though the keys are still down.

This only happens with this particular set up. I can midi the m1 into the Kross, or a couple Yamaha digital pianos I've used, with no problems at all. Only the sp250 seems to do this.
However the sp250 midi'd to another keyboard like my m1 works perfectly.

With setup 2 involving the midi merger, the merger draws power from the keyboard plugged into the first midi in. I generally used the sp250 in this position, however about 50% of the time the merger would not get power unless I moved the midi cable in the sp250. I tried multiple midi cables including a couple brand new ones, but get the same result.

This suggested to me there was a problem with the midi out din on the sp250, so I took it into my repair guy who is very very experienced and very good. He said there was no problem he could find, but I had him replace the din anyway. It didn't help.
Interestingly I have no problems with notes dropping at all when using the merger, so if I power the merger from the m1, everything works fine.

Recently because of gigs where I only wanted the sp250 and Kross, I went back to midi'ing them directly without the merger, however the old note dropping issue returned as well as now occasional indefinite sustaining of notes on the Kross (until I change programs or combis)

So here is the long and short of it. With set up 1, a simple one keyboard midi'd to another:
sp250 -> m1 = no problem
m1 -> Kross = no problem
Yamaha piano -> Kross = no problem
Sp250 -> Kross = problem

With the Midi merger:
powered from m1 with m1 and sp250 -> merger -> Kross = no problem
powered from the sp250 power to the merger is temperamental, but there are no issues with notes dropping out.

Does anyone know of anything I can do without adding another box or something? I mean the simplest answer is to use 3 keyboards, and the merger powered from the m1, but it seems a shame because I don't really need 3 keyboards for many real world gigs.

If it matters, I generally set the Kross to channel 3.
The sp250 defaults to 1 for most sounds, but layers send on 1 and 2.
When in the system I set the m1 to channel 4.
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Stage: Korg Krome 88
Home: above plus Korg Kross 61, Korg m1, original Korg Mono/poly, Yamaha Reface CS, Yamaha KX-5

[OpAmp]

Hmm, difficult to make a conclusion...
Just some thoughts:

The fact that powering your merger is not always working well using the sp250 and that you tried several cables, points to a bad contact on the board.
On the other hand you've changed the connector already...

As far as I know, the MIDI standard does not foresee MIDI out to power equipment. It is a 'creative usage' of the interface. But maybe the output driver of the sp250 is not strong enough or damaged due to that? This could explain why the powering does not work well and on top of that it may by accident result in illegal MIDI out messages.
Now these illegal messages may be ignored or filtered somehow by the merger or other equipment and maybe not at all by the Kross. Worse in the Kross it generates a 'reset' of the active voices (dropping of sound).

It probably leads to far, but maybe your repair guy can help... You may need to look to the electrical signals on the MIDI connection between the sp250 and Kross using an oscilloscope or logic analyzer. Maybe something happens on the line wich explains the dropped notes... MIDI is in the end a serial wire protocol, where you can right away see the bits of the message on the signal in the cable.

Good luck
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microKORGXL, Kaossilator Pro, monotribe, SQ-1, volca fm, Kross 88 BK
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