I have asked this question in the FL forums, but since the only answer I have received is "you must be doing something wrong" I thought I would also ask here. BTW, that wasn't an Image-Line response, and I think the guy was actually trying to be helpful, but...

I'm trying to use the other manuals in B4. It's set up to use MIDI channel 1 for manual 1, MIDI channel 2 for manual 2 and MIDI channel 3 for manual 3. The problem is no matter what MIDI channel I send on, FL seems to make it channel 1, because I can only ever play manual 1. The plugin settings include a MIDI input and output, but they don't seem to do anything. I can set them to any channel under the sun and they will never be anything other than channel 1 as far as B4 is concerned.

I can use the different manuals just fine in energyXT. How does FL do MIDI?

are these all on the same port? say 0 for example?

Port? If "port" is what I think it is, there is only one - I only have one MIDI input device, my keyboard. All this terminology stuff sucks, especially considering each "track" in FL Studio is called a channel - the same word that MIDI uses.

So when I select the B4 "channel," all MIDI from my keyboard ("port"?) goes through it. But what it seems to do is pass the MIDI through on channel 1, regardless of the MIDI channel that's actually coming IN.

B4 has three sound generators (tri-timbral?) on each of the MIDI channels 1, 2 and 3. If it receives on channel 2, it will play the lower manual and if it receives on channel 3, it will play the foot-pedal manual. I've made this happen in energyXT, but not FL Studio.

Does this make any more sense?

Look on the top right on the wrapper, you should see a little LED type thing. Drag it to 0 or 1, then make sure all your MIDI Out's are on the same number. Hopefully this helps.

yes like Brian said.
sorry I should have been more specific pough

smart wrote:

Look on the top right on the wrapper, you should see a little LED type thing. Drag it to 0 or 1, then make sure all your MIDI Out's are on the same number. Hopefully this helps.

Nah, that's not it. I was doing that. Mirabebe answered me over at the FL forum. Of course, now that I'm at work I can't find out if that worked for a long time!

Apparently I need to add three channels (FL-style channels) with MIDI out generators, set the B4 channel (FL-style channel)'s "port" (that LED up at the top right) to a number, set the three MIDI out channels (sigh, FL-style channels) to that same number, but their MIDI channels to 1, 2 and 3.

None of that set-your-MIDI-channel-on-your-keyboard nonsense for us FL users. No, sir. We do things the special, unintuitive, seemingly undocumented way!

pough wrote:

Nah, that's not it. I was doing that. Mirabebe answered me over at the FL forum. Of course, now that I'm at work I can't find out if that worked for a long time! Apparently I need to add three channels (FL-style channels) with MIDI out generators, set the B4 channel (FL-style channel)'s "port" (that LED up at the top right) to a number, set the three MIDI out channels (sigh, FL-style channels) to that same number, but their MIDI channels to 1, 2 and 3. None of that set-your-MIDI-channel-on-your-keyboard nonsense for us FL users. No, sir. We do things the special, unintuitive, seemingly undocumented way!

That's the same way you have to do other multi-timbral synths (sfz for example, or Tera2, or a sampler), or if you want to use a synth's MIDI learn feature rather than FLS' "link to controller" support (which used to - and may still - only support the first 255 VSTI parameters).

It is under-documented (AFAIK it's not in the help files) and a bit "odd", but it works. I've seen it both here and Looptalk, and I've posted information as above at least twice here on KVR for various reasons.

I usually just use one channel with the keyboard split for the B-4, because it's easier (this coming from a guy that has two vintage Hammonds in his dining room...) It was fun to feed a MIDI of Toccata & Fugue in Dm into B4 and tweak the drawbars realtime...

Doug

Thanks, Doug. I started to do a search here, but after a few minutes, KvR still hadn't come back with any search results. I'm not known for my patience.

pough wrote:

Thanks, Doug. I started to do a search here, but after a few minutes, KvR still hadn't come back with any search results. I'm not known for my patience.

Interesting enough, a post on using FLS with external controllers and MIDI pass-thru just came up this week:

http://www.kvr-vst.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34352

(but if you were searching for B4 FLStudio MIDI I don't know if you would have found it. I found FLStudio multitimbral buried in the 49-page sfz thread, but who would go there? )

Doug