How many instruments can I load into PLAY? Can I control each of them separately?
When using Play as a plugin, you can load as many instruments as you want into a single instance of Play. However, you have only 16 MIDI channels that you can use to control the instruments in Play, effectively limiting you to 16 independently-controlled instruments. You can certainly load more than 16 instruments, but some instruments will need to share a MIDI channel and this will take away your ability to control those instruments independently of one another.
When using Play as a standalone application, you are limited only by the power of your computer and the number of MIDI inputs/ports you have. Play allows you to select a MIDI port and channel for each instrument. This means that for every MIDI port, you can control 16 instruments independently of one another. You can also choose an audio output for each loaded instrument. This allows you to send each instrument to its own discrete audio output (based on the outputs available on your hardware/interface).
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