Several display windows in the lower part indicate the streaming activity, the Midi parameters and the sound activation/selection. MIDI allows you to select channels, transposition (more or less two octaves), velocity response and its range. Info gives you information on CPU charge (not a reliable tool...), hard-disk activity, used RAM and voice number (which is different from note number).

In MIDI Port you can select which MIDI controller/keyboard will be active, but only in standalone mode. When Play is used as a plugin, this depends on the host’s preferences. Since this setting is on a by-preset basis, you can assign a specific MIDI controller per loaded instrument. Just below you’ll find access to the separate outputs: in standalone mode, you can route audio to the different outputs of your soundcard. In plugin mode, Play doesn’t yet offer separate outputs in Logic8 (but it does in Logic7), Cubase, Nuendo and Pro Tools and EW have stated that it will be available soon .

The last display is Articulations: from left to right you’ll see the name, the keyswitch used , whether a sound is active or not, whether it is loaded or not (you can unload sounds to free up some Ram), and an adjustable volume.

Then you have a keyboard displaying unused notes (in yellow), articulation range (in white) and keyswitches (in blue). This keyboard is fully functional and can be fun to play around with using a mouse (nice glissando...).

The central area includes a display window flanked by three vu-meters for L/R levels and Pan. The functions are the same for the three libraries, but will change for forthcoming ones (QL Pianos, Symphonic, Forbidden Planet, etc.).

The controls are practically the same, they’re just located at different places depending on which library is loaded. A delay with a Time setting (0.2 to 4.6s, with analog pitch emulation when you quickly move the parameter), Feedback and Level, then an AHDSR envelope (up to 10s for each segment, from 0 to -120 dB for sustain), Volume and its Mute and Solo (independent for each loaded instrument) and, with the exception of Fab Four, a low-pass resonant 12B/oct filter (cutoff from 35 to 23999 Hz). A Reset Round Robin knob which forces the plugin to start on the first sample when using presets with alternate samples.