My MIDI activity meter…hope that’s what it’s called, is bouncing way into the red intermittently…like every 4th bounce it bounces 3 or 4 times in the red…is there an explanation for this please… 
never noticed anything like this before…maybe it’s normal…just dunno 
this is on any project, even empty one’s…
and Cubase 8.35…
cheers 
Do you have any external control surface? I have a Faderport and unless I remove it from the All Inputs tick box, it bangs my MIDI meter every couple of seconds.
You may be seeing a MIDI Active Sense message.
Some devices send out an Active Sense message (at least once) every 300 milliseconds if there has been no other activity on the MIDI bus to let other devices know that there is still a good MIDI connection between the devices.
If you disconnect all the MIDI devices it should go away. Reconnect them one at a time and see which is sending the Active Sense message. Some devices can be configured to turn this function off. If it bothers you it might be possible to filter the message in Cubase (I can’t check at the moment whether this is possible or, if it is, it affects the MIDI activity meter).
Hi, I unplugged the midi keyboard and it made no difference…the MIDI activity is still banging away and still red…
I only have the Yamaha N8 and a midi keyboard…dunno why this has suddenly started to happen…
where’s the all inputs tick box?
thanks for your help
Weird! Nothing plugged into the N8 MIDI port?
The All Inputs tickbox is under Devices > Device Setup > MIDI Port Setup on the right hand column. This allows you to choose which devices are included in All MIDI Inputs when it appears in the Inspector. It might help you to troubleshoot the problem.
nope…unplugged it and it was still bangin!!
thanks…will give it a go…
No luck there…can’t really see what or if anything is wrong…and finding it a bit strange that the midi activity does not stop if I unplug the midi keyboard…
Does it do it on a new (or other) project - one of your VSTs might be sending midi data.
Does it on even empty projects…does it even when my MIDI keyboard is unplugged
Are you talking about MIDI events that occur every half second or so?
I have the same thing when any MIDI equipment is attached. Especially keyboards with control knobs and stuff will do that, when you have checked the “all MIDI inputs” for the device. I do not pay much attention to it. If I would make a guess, it’s not the MIDI equipment itself, but the (possible) drivers that are doing “handshaking” every period of time. If you are using a dedicated sound card that has also MIDI inputs/outputs make sure there is nothing attached to those.
Other than that I have no idea.
To be honest mate I dunno what the Hell I’m talking about 
my MIDI activity meter was always showing MIDI activity bafore but never banging in the red, now it’s banging in the red so I assumed something was wrong…doesn’t seem to be affecting anything so maybe I should just ignore it,
Try and record it, and look at the event details?
You’ve lost me there…on an empty project?
Yes makes perfect sense… that way you can record it and look at the ‘controller lane’ in the midi editor to analyse any midi events… if you have a plugin such as bfd that has a midi analyser then load that up and see what’s going through it… an empty project is the best option as there is no existing midi data to confuse things.
I have a couple of Korg synths that do this when i have them hooked up but if you have nothing external connected then yeah that’s a bit weird!
I’ll give it a shot…thanks.