@Cloudschatze; Channel 1. It does nothing. Some devices are not flexible which makes me think they did it on purpose to encourage buying more Roland equipment. A bit like the JX-3P requiring that stupid PG-200 gizmo that stopped you using the MIDI port until you were done programming.
@Mau1wurf1977; The utility throws a fit with my K5 for whatever reason, I dunno, but having to use a patch just to change the MIDI port irks me somewhat. Why should I take your challenge up? You didn't take up mine and it takes more work than mine... Or do you have no confidence in the build quality? In which case, why should I believe anything you say?
Price. You've hit the nail on the head, I was going to write about it before (Given how apparently everyone at a LanParty had Roland/SoundBlaster setups) but who in the 1990's had this stuff? Nobody. It was too expensive, think about it, out of everyone I knew there was only one guy on a Roland (He had an LAPC-1 as far as I know, I was young and only vaguely remember what it sounded like) and there were even people who still didn't have any audio cards at all given the cost of them... Another win for the GUS, it was a cheaper overall solution. Moving out of the PC sector and into the Synth sector though, Roland are stupidly priced, Korg probably cost more though, depends on what you try to buy... Drum machines are the worst for it, the Roland TR-808 fetches thousands of dollars whereas the Casio RZ-1 is hundreds at most - and has a sampler so I can wind up TR-808 fans 😉.
In reality, I look at it on a per-game basis too, I just like a debate every once in a while. You could never convince me to use an MT-32 again, but I'm not about to go around stopping other people using them, well, unless they choose to test the build quality... I will, however call bullshit when I see it and in my application at least, they were terrible.
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As I said, there's no malice behind this, I do just enjoy a debate every once in a while and I haven't got anything else to do right now.