I use a MIDI patchbay at times also.

There is a way to to filter the channels such that one synth will ignore whatever channels you designate, or in a lot of cases, the synth can be set to receive on a certain MIDI channel only. This is done "inside" each synth and requires studying each synth's manual as to how to get into those menus and change the MIDI receive channel from "All" to a certain specified channel.

Such can be a real hassle, though, to have to do such for a specific song and then have to return things back to the way they were in order to play other songs that don't need the specified channels.

And there is another thing to consider when attempting to combine voices from separate synths and mfrs as well, which is how well the different sounding patches will actually work together. Or not. Most of the quality MIDI synth mfrs spend a lot of time getting their samples to work and play well *together* such that the user is not confronted with having to be an Audio Engineer in order to be able to tweak each patch for a good mixfit. That means that the really rich sounding Patch from synth A may not sound all that rich - or possibly sound TOO rich - for the sounds from the "other" synth B.

Occasionally, though, such things can work out. I tend to save that for making actual recordings - and at that point will be working in a full fledged DAW such as RealBand rather than attempting to do it inside Band in a Box and don't use such for everyday use with Band in a Box because I'd rather spend my time practicing with the program or developing up new songfiles rather than dealing with MIDI commands as specialized as this. For everyday work I prefer using one good MIDI synth that will load into BB immediately and play the greater majority of songfiles, being able to switch from one songfile to another without hassles from the MIDI synth.


--Mac

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