so, i know that this has been repeated ad nauseum, but it appears that people don't understand how to explain themselves or use normal english in their answers over at the FLStudio forums, so as a whole i have no idea what's going on. this is for either FL 8 or 8.5 beta 4. please don't take anything for granted - i honestly don't know squat about MIDI anything. i need most everything explained to me because i don't understand the crappy tuts that are out there already.
1. is it possible to change MIDI channels from an axiom 49? i don't want to change channels in FL Studio (VSTs like orchestral or omnisphere require multiple MIDI channels per instance), rather i want to be able to select a VST in fl and then change channels directly from my keyboard. if that's not possible, what do i have to do in FL to allow me to switch between them? i use edirol orchestral and spectrasonic's omnisphere a lot, and i can't trigger anything other than whatever's in channel one for anything. i want to be able to switch between channels/layers so that i can play any of them whenever i want to - and i can't right now. it's incredibly frustrating.
2. i got the transport keys working - play, pause, and stop - but FF and REW don't appear to do anything other than bring it back to the start of the piece regardless of when i use them. i watched kablam's guide from the FL forums, but his settings don't appear to work in the 8.5 beta, at least.
3. so, is there a working way to get aftertouch into FL? i've tried about fifteen different workarounds to make it work, and nothing seems to run properly. i use both NI's massive synth and Kontakt's string modelers (gofriller, mostly), but both VSTs require the use of aftertouch to make the instruments they create sound real. gofriller is horrid without vibrato, and the only way to make it work is with aftertouch. i know my keyboard's putting it out right - both synths work fine in standalone mode - but i can't make FL actually do what it's supposed to do, no matter how i do it. i've tried doing the "link to controller" thing, the midi out thing, all that - nothing works.
how is it possible that a major keyboard company like m-audio's products don't work with this program without having to tie yourself in knots? m-audio blames fl, fl blames m-audio. seriously, man up and make it work. this is ridiculous. image-line recommends buying m-audio keyboards and then nothing bloody works in their program.