MIDI/Status Monitor Window (Sound Checker)

Purpose:

The Monitor displays MIDI events arriving at the MIDI IN Ports and being sent to a MIDI OUT port.

The text display is ideal for viewing the exact MIDI output of your instruments or to see the precise messages being sent to your instrument. This can assist you in learning about MIDI. It is also extremely useful while sorting out unusual problems in your MIDI system. The text mode is also useful for viewing SysEx dumps and is invaluable when creating your own modules for Midi Quest.

MIDI events arriving at a MIDI IN port are displayed in black. MIDI events being sent to a MIDI port by Midi Quest are displayed in red. Each time there is a port switch, an entry is made indicating the port which is sending the MIDI event.

The monitor window is also used to display other status messages to indicate changes within the program. For example, messages are displayed when Midi Quest senses the addition or removal of one or more MIDI ports. These status messages are displayed in blue.

The window is comprised of 3 columns. The first column shows the time of the event in seconds since the program was started. In brackets beside this value is the amount of elapsed time since the previous MIDI message. This allows you to see the amount elapsed time between SysEx messages for example and determine the source of an overload.

The middle column displays the actual MIDI events in hexadecimal format. For standard MIDI messages, this will be two or three bytes. For SysEx, as many rows are added as required for display.

The right column is displays an interpretation of the MIDI message on that line. For standard MIDI messages, this includes the message type along with the MIDI channel and message values. If a SysEx message is being displayed then the ASCII character equivalent is shown in this column.

The monitor window will also show a range internal status and error messages. This is feedback that may be useful from a technical perspective while the software is running but does not warrant the display of an error dialog.

Monitor Menu

The MIDI Monitor menu contains four groups of options.

The first three items are used to clear the contents of the window and to copy the contents of the window to the clipboard as text. This final option allows you to copy the text information displayed in the window so that it can be pasted into another application for whatever reason.

The next 9 items in the menu are filter selections. You can choose to display or not display note off, note on, polyphonic aftertouch, controllers, patch changes, channel aftertouch, pitch wheel, system and real time events, and SysEx events. Items that are checked are displayed in the MIDI Monitor Window.

The next two items determine whether incoming and outgoing MIDI events are displayed.

The final two items will copy just the MIDI IN or MIDI OUT SysEx to the clipboard as text. This information can then be copied into an email or other text based application.

Using the Monitor

To open the Monitor Window, choose Utilities/Monitor Window, or press the Midi Monitor button on the button bar.

Available in: