The Part Inspector
Ever wondered exactly what a MIDI file is doing to one particular instrument? The Part Inspector answers that. Pick a single channel and it lays out everything shaping that part in one window: its voice, levels, effect sends, tone tweaks, tuning and more, all updating live as the music plays.
Open it from Display → Part Inspector, from the side links in any effect window, or simply click an instrument's icon or name on the main player and the inspector opens already focused on that channel.
Choosing a part#
Two rows of buttons select what you are looking at:
- Port sits at the top right, on the title bar, and picks the port (A to D) on multi-port files. Ports the file does not use are dimmed.
- Channel runs across the row below and picks one of the 16 channels on that port. Each button carries a small activity light, green while that channel is sounding notes and red when it is silent, so a glance shows you which parts are busy.
What it shows#
- Voice: the instrument's icon and name, its bank and program numbers, and velocity sensitivity where an XG file sets it. On a PLG150-PF part a NOTES/KEY reading joins them, being how many notes of the board's polyphony a single key costs.
- Live: a small keyboard lighting up the notes being played (with the part's key range shaded), beside live pitch-bend, expression, aftertouch and modulation displays. It sits directly below Voice, so a glance tells you what is playing.
- Levels & Sends: volume, expression and pan, along with the reverb, chorus and variation send levels (plus dry level on XG files).
- EG: the part's amplitude envelope, drawn as a shape you can read at a glance beside its attack, decay and release dials. These read as offsets either side of centre, so 0 leaves the voice's own envelope untouched.
- Vibrato / Filter: vibrato rate, depth and delay shown as a gently moving waveform, and filter cutoff and resonance shown as a response curve, each beside its own dials. They read the same way, as offsets around centre.
- Mod Wheel: how the part's modulation wheel is set to shape the sound, its pull on pitch, filter and amplitude, plus how deeply it drives the vibrato-style LFO on each. Six dials, working for both GS and XG files.
- Pitch & Mode: pitch-bend range, coarse and fine tuning, portamento, sustain, mono or poly mode, and the part's key range where the file sets one.
A value the file has never touched reads dimly as Default. Everything updates live as the song plays, a lovely way to watch a well-programmed file at work.
Tip
The quickest way in: click any instrument's icon or name on the main player and the inspector opens on that very channel.
Note
NOTES/KEY appears only on a PLG150-PF part, and it answers a question the polyphony meter cannot. Some PF voices layer several notes on one key, so a part holding eight notes can be using thirty-two of the board's voices. If the meter looks busier than the music sounds, this is usually why.
The volume strip#
Down the right-hand side sits the same volume fader, level meter and MUTE / SOLO buttons as the Mixer, and they share the same state, so muting a part here is exactly the same as muting it there. Above the fader is the Mixer's transpose dial too: drag it (or use the - / + buttons) to shift the part by up to 24 semitones either way, and double-click to snap back to zero.
Tweaking a part yourself#
When you are playing to MIDI hardware and playback has started, the controls become interactive. Drag any dial and PXR sends the change straight to your synth, exactly like the effect monitor windows. The three on/off cells in Pitch & Mode, Portamento, Sustain and Mono/Poly, turn into buttons too: click one to flip it. On the built-in synth the window stays a read-only monitor.
Related pages#
- The Mixer for all 16 channels at a glance.
- GS & XG Effect Monitors for the global effect blocks.
- The Visualiser where the click-to-open lives.