Monitoring an External Instrument

I have been adding some hardware synthesizers to my studio. Been setting them up by creating an external instrument option in Cubase. Once the instrument is setup and the instrument track is created, I have noticed that the input is always live and being monitored through the Cubase audio path to the main output bus, even when the monitor button for this track is not selected. Is this normal? Is there a way to make it work like an audio track where the input isn’t monitored until you select either the record enable or the monitor input?

Thanks!

Is your external instrument routed in through an audio channel? If MIDI is sent to the instrument, it’ll play back. Cubase doesn’t have control over the external hardware.

I used to use them but stopped a couple years ago. I don’t have anything to check it with anymore…

Yes, an external instrument was created in Audio Connections and is associated with a midi port after creating it as a midi device.

Are the monitoring settings for cubase maybe generally altered ?

No they haven’t