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From: dts@quad.uucp (David T. Sandberg)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: MIDI specs...
Message-ID: <230@quad.uucp>
Date: 14 Aug 89 09:02:16 GMT
References: <5791@rpi.edu> <2631@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Reply-To: dts@quad.uucp (David T. Sandberg)
Organization: Quadric Systems, Richfield MN
Lines: 23

In article <2631@blake.acs.washington.edu> wiml@blake.acs.washington.edu (William Lewis) writes:
>  BTW, anyone who actually uses a MIDI system -- from this article it looks
>as if only sixteen instruments can be connected to any MIDI loop. (only
>4 bits are available to specify instrument number.) This includes things like
>keyboards, sequencers, &c. Is this true?

Rather than instruments, say that there are only sixteen *channels*...
if you have two sound sources you want to double up on the same part,
they can both be set to read from the same channel information.  But
in general, yes, you are limited to sixteen channels on any given MIDI
path.  However, this can be gotten around by using multiple MIDI paths
in your overall system, if you have both hardware and software smart
enough to handle such a setup.  Also, you seemed to indicate that the
limit of 16 "instruments" includes sequencers.  Fortunately, only
controlled devices need to be assigned to specific MIDI channels... by
definition, a sequencer is reading and dispatching MIDI data on *all*
channels, for the other devices on the loop, so it doesn't need a
separate channel for itself.

-- 
                                  David Sandberg - Quadric Systems
  "Strike Hard, Strike Sure"      PSEUDO: dts@quad.uucp
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