[LAU] mid channels on arturia beatstep

hi all, I recently bought an arturia beatstep that I'm planningto use for audio routing control and music composition in linux. I am currently monitoring "all midi stuff" that come out of this little midi controller , using "qmidiroute" to see the event log. I see that all commands that are sent from Arturia's beatstep are on midi channel 1. I tried changing that from beatstep surface, (holding down "CHAN" button and selecting a channel from the 16 pads) but the event log still registers midi information on channel 1. am I doing something the wrong way? or does beatstep only step signal on midi channel 1 Only? thank you in advance for you help!