The MIDI channels you see inside the Editor are the channels of the notes when they were entered (either by step entry or by recording). In other words, if the MIDI track was set to ch #1, the notes would be entered as ch #1. If you then change the MIDI channel on the MIDI track to, say, ch #2, it will indeed transmit those notes on channel #2, but they remain written as ch #1.
Think of it this way… the Channel setting on the MIDI track serves two purposes…
- It determines the channel on which the MIDI notes (and CC#s etc.) will get entered (including the setting, “Any”, which will preserve the incoming MIDI channel(s)… for example, if you are feeding Cubase from an external multichannel MIDI sequencer).
- It also determines the channel on which the entered notes will get retransmitted (and, once again, “Any” means that they will get transmitted exactly as entered).
EDIT; Steve got in there first! 