Start/Stop buttons always send MMC Start/Stop... even when set to Off

[dumpshock]

When I press Play and Stop on my BeatStep, I would like for it to stop sending the 16 keys in the sequence. It does that just fine. However, it also sends Start and Stop messages to everything else on the chain -- meaning that another device with a built-in sequencer will start/stop playing inappropriately. I would like for the BeatStep not to send these Start and Stop messages.

What I have tried:

Changing the MIDI channel of the other devices. This doesn't cause them to ignore the MMC start/stop messages. But it does make them ignore the CTRL pads exactly as intended: hitting the pads will make the synth on channel 1 fire keys, but the other synth on channel 5 will not. But the start/stop still happen.

Using the MIDI Control Center, and assigning the Start and Stop transport buttons. This simply has no effect. I assign them both to "Off", but when I save the config to the device, the Start and Stop buttons still do as they always have. If I unplug the BeatStep or "sync" it in MIDI Control Center, these buttons are back to MMC Start and MMC Stop. I also tried assigning them to nonsense commands (e.g. Program Change on channel 8, and nothing uses channel but same thing.

Reading the manual. The BeatStep manual states that the "default" behavior of the transport buttons is MMC Start and Stop, and the buttons are editable/interactive in the MIDI Control Center. So I'm pretty sure that I *should* be able to reprogram these buttons.

Making other changes, so I know I'm saving changes properly. Other settings are saved to the BeatStep just fine: sequence tweaks, note tweaks, assigning the big knob to do various other things. So the process of saving to the BeatStep is sound... except for these two buttons.

Is anyone else having this issue, or has anyone else successfully assigned the Start/Stop buttons to not do this?

[dumpshock]

Been chatting with Arturia the past few days, and it seems this is an expected behavior. Even if you turn off the MMC messages, starting and stopping the sequencer (the master clock) will trigger the Volcas to start/stop playing. I'm still searching around to find any solid documentation in regards to this behavior and whether one can work around it.

[Koshdukai]

Yup, was about to reply to the original post when I bumped it and that's the issue, the MMC is correctly turned off, but the problem is MIDI Clock's additional msgs of Start/Stop that are always on and being sent.

If the receiving gadget listens to those, it'll Start/Stop accordingly because of MIDI Clock and not of MMC.

So unless a future BeatStep firmware update adds the ability to turn MIDI Clock out Off or restrict it just to "Timing clock" (F8) msgs, your only solution is to find out if the receiving instrument is able to ignore those MIDI Clock Start/Stop msgs (FA/FB/FC)