MIDI tracks and the "monitor" button

Cubase
1

Hi all,

this is not related to a specific Version of Cubase 7.x. It is an old Thing that I repeatedly get confused about.

There is this Little “Monitor” button on every Audio and midi track. With Audio it routes the Input Signal to the Output and there are various preferences available, like “tape machine style”. In effect you can consider the Monitor button on Audio tracks as “Audio through”.

For me it is completely unclear, why the Monitor button on the MIDI channels does not follow the same logic, i.e. why it does not react to the mentioned preferences.

Maybe I am missing something.
Can someone explain, why the unerlying logic is different for midi and Audio ?

2

I think it probably comes down to it being easy to merge MIDI data (so it’s easy for Cubase to play both the recorded data from the track and what you’re inputting), whereas with Audio this would a) be a bit more difficult and b) isn’t the way traditional studios/tape machines worked?