Back panel, Blueprint

The wiring canvas. Drag plugins, audio I/O, MIDI inputs, and utility nodes onto an infinite grid; connect them with type-aware cables. This is the layer where you decide what audio your rig makes; the Front panel is where you decide how the audience sees you change it.

Anatomy

• Cards, every node is a card: title, category color stripe, ports on the sides. Audio I/O and MIDI input cards are pinned (audio-in, audio-out, midi-in*); plugin / mixer / utility cards are placed wherever you drop them.
• Ports, input ports on the left, output ports on the right. Audio ports are circles; MIDI ports are diamonds. They refuse cross-type connections.
• Cables, drawn behind the cards, type-coloured, animated when signal flows (configurable via the wire-visualization toggle in the top toolbar).
• Selection, click a card to focus, shift-click to add to selection, marquee-drag empty canvas to multi-select.

Adding a plugin

Hit the + button in the top-right of the canvas, or right-click empty canvas. The plugin picker opens with two views:

• Grid (default), large cards by vendor, format / version / category badges, vendor groups collapsible (click the chevron; search auto-expands matches).
• List, a vendor → family → variants tree, keyboard-driven.

Pick a plugin, optionally rename it, hit Add. The card lands at the centre of your current viewport, not at a fixed grid corner, so you don't have to pan after every add.

Wiring

Drag from an output port to an input port. The hit-region is generous (~14 px); on hover, the destination port lights up if the type matches.

• Multi-channel bundles. A stereo cable carries both channels, you wire it once. Hover the port to see its channel count; expand a port to split into individual cables when the destination needs per-channel access.
• Drop-on-wire splice. Pick up an unconnected card, drag it over an existing A→C wire, drop, the engine splices it inline (now A→B→C). Mirror gesture (drag a card off its wires onto empty canvas) auto-stitches around it.
• Wire context menu. Right-click a cable to disconnect, view source / destination, or insert a node from the picker.

Auto-arrange

Auto-arrange in the top toolbar runs an audio-aware layout pass: nodes are placed by signal-flow depth (audio-in at column 0, audio-out at the deepest column), then nudged vertically by barycentric placement so wires read straight instead of zig-zagging. Run it any time a graph gets messy.

Wire visualization modes

The wire-mode select (top toolbar) toggles between:

• Simple, static wires.
• Activity, wires pulse when audible signal flows. Good for spotting a dead patch without leaving the canvas.
• Levels, stroke color shifts green → yellow → red with live signal level. Best for verifying gain staging without opening a meter on every wire.

Inspector

Selecting a card (single click) opens the right-hand inspector with:

• Plugin / card identity (name, format, version).
• Bypass toggle.
• For Channel Mixer cards: per-strip user labels (rename "CH 1" to "Piano" and the strip header reflects it; binding pickers in the front panel inspector also adopt the user label).
• Remove (with confirmation; auto-stitches A→C wires around the removed node).

Reset knobs / faders via double-click on the in-card UI of mixers, meters, the metronome, and other built-ins.

Per-strip labels on Channel Mixer

A Channel Mixer's strips ("CH 1", "CH 2", ...) can be relabelled. Open the node inspector with the mixer selected → "Strip labels" section → type a label per strip. The label propagates into:

• The strip header on the card.
• The performer-inspector's parameter dropdown ("CH 1 Treble" becomes "Piano Treble" if strip 1 is labelled "Piano").
• The peak-binding picker on the performer inspector.

Labels round-trip in the project file under the canvas-extras blob.

Built-in nodes (utilities)

In addition to your VST3 / AU plugins, Stagewright ships a small set of always-available built-ins. See Built-in processors:

• Channel Mixer, N-strip console with input gain, EQ, fader, pan, mute / solo, post-fader peak metering.
• True-Peak Meter, broadcast-quality peak readout.
• Signal Generator, sine / square / noise for testing wires.
• Tuner, fundamental-frequency detector; pair with a front- panel SwTuner widget for performance-distance readout.
• Metronome, synth click + bar / beat state stream; pair with a front-panel SwMetronome widget.
• Boolean Control, single-button toggle whose value can drive any plugin's bypass via the back-canvas bypass gate.
• VU Meter, analog-style level needle.

Edit / lock

By default the back canvas is locked: an Edit toggle on the topbar guards structural changes so a mid-show drag can't disconnect your rig. While locked:

• Wires can't be dragged from ports, cards can't be moved, and the marquee (group-select) doesn't start — these gestures are edit-only and are blocked at the source, cursors included, rather than reverting after the fact.
• Everything you need live stays live: clicking a card to select / focus it, every control inside cards (plugin editors, mixer faders, mutes), panning (space-drag, middle-drag, wheel), zoom, and the minimap.
• A subtle Locked chip over the canvas explains why edits are being refused.

Prefer everything editable all the time? Settings ▸ Back panel ▸ Always unlocked removes the toggle entirely. The companion Start locked at launch switch decides which state a lock-by-default session begins in.

Keyboard shortcuts (Back panel)

Shortcut	Action
Space + drag	Pan canvas
Middle-mouse drag	Pan canvas
Trackpad pinch	Zoom (cursor-anchored)
Wheel	Pan (Wheel mode = pan) or zoom (Wheel mode = zoom)
Marquee (drag empty canvas)	Multi-select cards
Shift-click card	Add / remove from selection
Drag selected	Move every selected card in lock-step
Right-click card	Card menu (rename, bypass, remove)
Right-click wire	Wire menu (disconnect, splice)
Cmd-A	Select all
Cmd-Shift-R	Restart engine