Using more than 16 input channels

[sykhro]

For my use case, I have MIDIs with more than 16 channels. I've tried setting "synth.midi-channels" to 256 but nothing changes. Does the midi need to use meta events like port select (FF 21 01 xx)?

[derselbst]

The MIDI protocol is inherently limited to 16 channels. synth.midi-channels will increase the number of channels that the synth can handle. But it cannot fix the limitation of the protocol. You either need to

• use the sequencer to dispatch events with custom channel mappings to the synth, or
• use a MIDI driver that creates multiple ports (like alsa_seq), or
• use those SysEx events as you suggested (not sure, if fluidsynth even supports them at the moment).

[sykhro]

Disregard what I said, it has just occurred to me that the channel number is limited to 4 bits. I'll have to check the files manually to see what's happening, and more importantly, figure out how this was even working back when I used DirectMusic