Frequently Asked Questions

A free, native macOS player for Standard MIDI Files. It plays your .mid, .midi and .kar files through a connected synthesiser or sound module, or through its own built-in synth, and shows you what is happening as it plays: a 16-channel visualiser, an LCD display, lyrics and a full set of monitoring tools.

Apple dropped MIDI file playback when QuickTime X replaced the original QuickTime, so modern macOS has no MIDI player of its own. PXR brings that back and goes a good deal further.

New to any of this? MIDI & Sound Standards is the plain-English introduction.

Yes. It is a free download with no ads, no trial, and nothing held back. There is an optional pay-what-you-like contribution if you would like to support development, and plenty of ways to help that cost nothing at all.

See Support the Project.

Any Mac running macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, Intel or Apple Silicon.

See Installing & First Launch for the full requirements.

JMS MIDI Player is on its way: the same in-house SoundFont engine, running on a phone. Pick a SoundFont, pick your files, press play, then watch every channel of it. Free, with no ads, accounts or trials, and it carries on playing when you leave the app.

It is not out yet. It is coming to the Google Play Store, and it already has a wiki of its own at pixelrefresh.com/jms-midi-player-wiki.

No. The Built-in Software Synth plays through your Mac's own speakers, so you can be listening a minute after installing, with nothing else plugged in. Load a SoundFont and it sounds better still.

Hardware is an option rather than a requirement, and PXR is very much built for it if you have some.

See MIDI Output & Devices.

Standard MIDI Files (.mid and .midi) and karaoke files (.kar), both Type 0 and Type 1. It also opens .m3u playlists.

See Opening Files.

Choose where the sound comes out in Settings → MIDI Output (⌘,), then open a file with File → Open (⌘O) and press play. That really is all of it.

The Quick Start walks through it in five short steps.

From version 1.2.6 onwards, PXR is signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarised by Apple, so it opens normally. You may be asked to confirm the very first time, which is macOS being polite rather than suspicious.

Versions before 1.2.6 are not signed, so those do show a warning. Installing & First Launch covers how to get past it, and why downloading the current version is the easier answer.

Your output. Open Settings → MIDI Output (⌘,) and make sure a device or the built-in synth is selected and marked Active. Then check the volume is up and that channels are not muted.

The small play button beside the Connected to row sends a short test pattern, which is the quickest way to prove a connection without loading a track.

No sound in the troubleshooting guide runs through the rest in order.

Usually macOS, not PXR. When a MIDI device disappears and comes back, most often after being switched off and on again, your Mac can leave the connection looking healthy when it is not.

Choose MIDI → Rescan MIDI Devices and it will normally come straight back.

See My MIDI device has gone quiet for what to try next if it does not.

MIDI → MIDI Panic (⌘⇧.) silences every note and resets the controllers. Stopping playback or clearing the playlist also silences hanging notes.

See Help & Troubleshooting.

Yes, and this is one of PXR's real strengths. Load any standard .sf2 or .dls file and the app plays it through its own SoundFont engine rather than Apple's, which means variation banks Apple's synth cannot reach, per-channel reverb and chorus, and all 64 channels.

You can also give one channel its own SoundFont, or pair an individual file with its own.

PXR's engine is checked against the SoundFont Spec Implementation Test, a public set of thirty-two tests across three suites covering the parts of the format you hear, and it passes every one. So a font should sound the way its maker intended.

See MIDI Output & Devices and SoundFont Instruments.

Yes. PXR handles up to 64 channels across four ports (A, B, C, D), so multi-port arrangements play in full, through hardware or through a SoundFont.

See Channels, Ports & Controls and multi-port presets.

The file and your device probably disagree about which sound standard is in use. Sending the matching reset from the MIDI menu is the quickest test, and the playback options include instrument maps for particular Sound Canvas models.

See A file sounds wrong on my synth, and Effects & Sound Shaping for what the individual controls do.

Because it predates General MIDI. GM settled two conventions that make a file portable: drums belong on channel 10, and the file says which instrument each channel should use. Sequences written before that were made for one specific rack of hardware, with the sounds already chosen on the instruments themselves, and the drum machine answering on whatever channel it was set to. On a GM device, whatever sits on channel 10 is heard as drums, and every part without an instrument request falls back to piano.

No player can fix this by itself, since nothing inside the file says what it was written for. The file needs editing. See The bass plays as drums for how to spot it and what to change, and MT-32 Support for the one family of pre-GM files common enough that PXR has a dedicated mode for it.

They are the sound standards a MIDI file can be written for. GM is the common ground every device understands; GS (Roland) and XG (Yamaha) extend it with more instruments and effects. A file written for one and played on another can sound wrong, which is why PXR detects the format and shows it on the LCD.

MIDI & Sound Standards explains them properly, and the Glossary has the shorter definitions.

Almost always an ageing driver rather than the instrument. The common cases have known fixes, including the Roland SC-8850 over USB, which needs a replacement CoreMIDI plug-in because Apple removed the technology its original driver relied on.

See Older hardware and macOS drivers.

Yes. File → Export Playlist (⌘⇧E) saves the running order, and File → Import Playlist (⌘⇧I) brings it back. Standard .m3u playlists work too, so a list from another app will open.

See The Playlist.

PXR looks for artwork next to the music, so it is usually a question of where the image lives or what it is called. It needs to sit in the same folder as the MIDI file, named cover.jpg or cover.png, and PXR needs permission to read that folder.

See File Info & Cover Art and MIDI Library Folders.

macOS only lets an app read what you have pointed it at. Adding your music folders under Settings → General → MIDI Library Folders grants that access once, so cover art and companion setup files load by themselves from then on instead of prompting each time.

See MIDI Library Folders.

Yes. File → Bounce Audio records the built-in synth to a WAV file, one track or the whole playlist. It captures the sound the app makes, so it cannot bounce external hardware.

See Bounce to Audio.

One row per channel, with live note activity, level, pan, controller values and the instrument name, plus an LCD bar across the top for title, time, tempo and format. There are several view modes, and you can choose which port it displays.

See The Visualiser.

Yes, when the file has words embedded. They appear in time with the music, with a melody roll to follow. A blank lyrics window means the file simply has no words in it, which is common.

See Lyrics & Karaoke.

Presentation View fills the window with a clean visualisation and no surrounding chrome, which is the one to use for screen recording or streaming. For a small player that stays out of the way, see Mini Player and Compact Player.

Yes. Connect a keyboard and PXR passes it through to your chosen output, so you can play over a track. There is also an on-screen keyboard with an instrument browser if you have no hardware to hand.

See MIDI Input and Performance Mode.

Only for you, and only if you want it to. Listening Stats records what you play so it can show you charts, streaks and a year-end Wrapped. All of it stays on your own Mac. Nothing is uploaded, there are no accounts, and you can turn it off, export it, or wipe it in Settings → Stats.

Settings → Support → Reset to Defaults returns every setting to how it started.

The Settings Reference lists every option if you would rather change one thing than start over.

Adjust Window Size in Settings → Display, or use ⌘+, ⌘- and ⌘0 to zoom in, out and back to normal.

See the Settings Reference and Keyboard Shortcuts.

Three ways: Settings → General → Check Now inside the app, the What's New page here, or its RSS feed if you would rather new releases turn up in your newsreader.

Get in touch through the contact form at pixelrefresh.com/contact. The most useful thing you can attach is a saved PXR Log (⌘5), which records what the app was doing at the time.

If PXR closes unexpectedly, it can offer to send the crash report next time you open it. That is always your choice.

See Reporting a crash or bug.

PXR is free and built in spare time, so anything helps. There is a pay-what-you-like contribution if you would like to chip in, and telling a friend, leaving a review or following along cost nothing at all.

See Support the Project.