Re: [fluid-dev] Fluidsynth Channels

[David Henningsson]

On 11/30/2011 12:28 PM, Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas wrote:
> 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

Aha, thanks. I also found this:
http://www.midi.org/techspecs/rp19.php

Unfortunately it does not impose a very good standard for Device names :-(

I had a quick look at timidity source as well, which seems to do 
something similar for "FF 21 01 x" instead, probably as described here:

http://www.omega-art.com/midi/mfiles.html#meta

The code looked a little strange so I'm not completely sure this was it.

// David