Re: [fluid-dev] Fluidsynth Channels

[Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas]

On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 8:45 AM, David Henningsson <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 11/29/2011 09:14 PM, Craig wrote:
>>
>> My question is, gleaning the fluidsynth source and docs it appears that
>> fluidsynth can handle midi channels above the 0-15, given that
>> information, how does a midi file format hand of a midi event with a
>> standard note on ->  144 + midi channel, message1, message2, and time
>> stamp.  If I increas the 144 + midi channel, I end up in 160 land which
>> is a different midi event.
>>
>> I am a 50 year old man who write symphonies.  I would love to have
>> access to more that 16 channels.  How does fluidsynth do this?
>
>
> Hi Craig and thanks for your interest in FluidSynth!
>
> The MIDI file format does not support more than 16 channels - this is a
> limitation in the MIDI file format, not FluidSynth. You'll have to use
> special API calls in order to make use of more than 16 channels.
>
> That said; XG level 2 and level 3 seems to support more than 16 channels.
> Does anybody know if there is a MIDI file meta event that would switch
> "group of MIDI channels for this track" or something? I haven't found
> anything myself, but it would be very useful if it existed.

Each group of 16 MIDI channels is usually known as a "MIDI port".
There is a SMF meta-event to specify a specific port name for each
track:

http://home.roadrunner.com/~jgglatt/tech/midifile/port.htm

Regards,
Pedro