emusonacid!

I have 2 E4XT Hollywood samplers eos v.3.0. They are both on the same computer midi port. One has the basic midi channel set to 3 the other is set to 5. I have the midi thru of the first device connected to the midi in of the second device. The midi mode is set to poly on both machines. Both machines respond to midi messages that are sent on either channel 3 or 5. Is this just poor midi implementation in eos 3 or am I missing some basic setup for these devices. I have the ability to use them on separate ports but it seems a shame to waste 32 midi channels for 2 synths when I am generally using them in a monotimbral mode.
Any suggestions?

Responds ? You mean just visually by that MIDI LED or what ? But it plays alright ? You're sending mixed channel MIDI via one port, then the first machine is fully forwarding what's coming in to it's MIDI THRU to the second E-mu, that's how MIDI is. Should be ok, as far as each machine really set to Poly and the appr. MIDI channel, should actually respond only to the MIDI channel set, or ? Hope I' m not missing something

Your description is exactly how I would expect them to behave as well....but they don't.
The only reason I mentioned I have 2 of them is that it would be unlikely that their both broken in the same way.
It would appear that it's either a set-up issue (me), or it's just a flaw in the v.3.0 EOS.

So here's the situation:
No mater what channel I send data on, the E4Xt will respond to "patch change" "note on", "note off", etc., etc.
It doesn't seem to care that it's on channel 3 or 5 or whatever. When I say it responds I mean that it reacts as if it were set to the same channel the data is being sent on. To be more precise, if I send out a patch change on channel 3 with a patch number of 20 the E4XT set to channel 5 on this port will go to patch 20 along with the E4XT on 3.

I'm using cakewalk Sonar 6 as my control software. I have at least 10 other synths made by Yamaha, Roland, Novation, Ensoniq, etc. None of the other modules exibit this behavior.

I'm hoping it's some little silly idiosyncracy of the E4XT that I'm missing.

have you checked the MIDI mode, in the "Master" section? the E4 has three modes, "Omni," "Poly," and "Multi"

it sounds like your machines may both be in "Omni" mode.

my E4 is running EOS 4.10, so perhaps this is different on EOS 3.. hope this helps

Your right, It does sound like I'm in omni mode. But alas dear friends I have indeed selected poly.

Somebody out there must have an E4 with eos 3.0 that can tell me if the poly mode actually works or if there is some setting somewhere that I'm missing. I even changed the midi device ID # to see if that had any effect. I know that this is pretty much for system exclusive messages but this sampler goes back to a time that I'm not sure what parts of the midi spec had been adopted by what manufacturers.
I suppose it's possible that there is something wrong with the second device's poly mode.
I'm going to try swapping the position of the units with respect to the midi stream and see what happens.

I really love this synth/sampler/marvelous monster and if it continues to demands a port of it's own I guess I''ll just have to let it have it.

Well,
Thanks for the input guys.
I swapped the 2 machines around and everything is working fine.....go figure.
I'm not sure if one of the E4s has a real issue or if it's possible that the out and through got swapped somehow.
I'm not even sure what comes out of the output under normal operation.
When I get a chance I'll yank them out of the rack, open them up and compare connections.