Cables, ports, buses

The wires on the Blueprint canvas are typed and bundled. Two non-obvious rules:

1. Type-aware. Audio cables are circles, MIDI cables are diamonds. The canvas refuses to connect an audio output to a MIDI input (and vice versa), the wire simply doesn't latch.
2. Multi-channel bundles. A stereo cable is ONE wire carrying two channels. You don't draw two parallel lines for L/R. Expand a port (right-click → Expand) to split into per-channel sub-ports when the destination needs them split.

Ports

• Left side of card = inputs.
• Right side of card = outputs.
• Top / bottom edges = MIDI in / out for plugins that accept / produce MIDI.
• Bypass port = a dedicated input pin on each gateable plugin that accepts a boolean signal from a BooleanControl plugin. Wire a BooleanControl's output to drive bypass without using a front-panel widget.

Hover a port to see its name + channel count. The hit-region is generous (~14 px) so wiring is forgiving.

Drawing wires

• Click-drag from an output to an input. Type-mismatch shows a red preview; matching shows green.
• Click-drag from an input back to an output is also allowed (handy when re-wiring an existing destination).
• Mid-cable right-click → Disconnect, Insert plugin, View source.

Drop-on-wire splice

Pick up an unconnected card and drag it OVER an existing wire. On drop, the engine splices the dragged card inline. Channel counts have to match (a mono plugin can't splice a stereo bus without an explicit channel-split first).

The mirror gesture (drag a card OFF its wires onto empty canvas) auto-stitches around it, the A→B→C pair becomes A→C.

Wire visualization modes

In the top toolbar, pick:

• Simple, static wires, no animation.
• Activity, wire pulses when audible signal flows. Best for "is anything coming out of this plugin?" debugging.
• Levels, wire stroke color shifts green → yellow → red with live signal level. Best for gain staging without opening a meter on every node.

dBFS hover

Hover any audio wire and Stagewright shows the current level in dBFS as a small tooltip. Read both channels for a stereo bundle. Wire mouse-out clears the tooltip. Works in all three visualization modes.

Buses

A "bus" is the canvas's way of describing N-channel wires. A mono cable is a 1-channel bus, stereo is 2, 5.1 is 6, a mixer's input row is N. Most cards expose their bus structure to the wire type system, you can wire a stereo output to a stereo input without any extra config.

Where the channel counts genuinely differ (a mono plugin splicing into a stereo bus), the canvas refuses the connection and shows the mismatch on hover. Insert a Channel Mixer or split the bus explicitly.