While each group of functions in Alchemy is organized into a control panel or sub-panel described elsewhere in this Manual — see the table of contents in the right-hand margin — several types of controls are found throughout the interface. These include knobs, buttons, and value fields.

Alchemy also provides more specialized types of controls, such as the MSEG breakpoint editors and the graphical Source Editors. Each of these is explained separately on its own page in the Manual (MSEG, Source Edit, and so on).

Working with knobs

Many parameters are controlled via knobs. When you adjust a knob, its value is displayed and updated in the large Parameter Value display towards the top of the interface. Several useful techniques let you work with greater speed and accuracy.

• To inspect a value (without changing it), simply hover over a knob (without clicking it).
• For fine control of a parameter, shift-drag its knob.
• For coarse but rapid control of a parameter, hover over its knob and roll your scroll wheel.
• To reset any knob immediately to its 12 o’clock position, double-click it.
• By default, all knobs in Alchemy respond to linear dragging: drag a knob upwards to increase it and downwards to decrease it.
  • You can alt-drag (PC) or option-drag (Mac) a knob to have it respond momentarily to circular dragging: drag a circular path around the knob, clockwise to increase it and counter-clockwise to decrease it. One nice application of this technique: you can set a knob instantly to the position you want by alt- or option-clicking that position.
  • If you prefer circular dragging as the default behavior, you can edit the AlchemyConfig.txt file. Insert the following line for circular default behavior: ‘KnobCircular= 1’. To restore linear default behavior, change this line to ‘KnobCircular= 0’ — or delete the line entirely. AlchemyConfig.txt is located in the same folder as the Alchemy.dll file, within your VST Plugins folder (PC); or at
    /Library/Application Support/Camel Audio/Alchemy (Mac).

• To access a contextual menu offering various knob actions, right-click or control-click a knob.

Working with buttons and value fields

Operating buttons on the Alchemy interface is straightforward: simply click them. Many buttons behave as toggles: click a button once to turn a function on (button is lit) and click it again to turn the same function off (button is unlit). Some groups of buttons are mutually exclusive: turning one on turns another off. Some buttons contain pop-up menus: click one of these buttons and then choose a more specific command from the menu.

Value fields display their current value in a text field. Clicking in this field opens a pop-up menu from which you can choose a new value. Many value fields also provide forward and back buttons, so you can browse through the available choices.

Scrolling and zooming

Several of Alchemy’s displays can be scrolled left and right to bring more controls or data into view, and many of these displays can also be zoomed in and out, so you can focus on small details or see more data at once.

• To scroll, click the scroll bar and drag it left or right.
• To zoom in, click a zoom handle at either end of the scoll bar and drag it inward. To zoom out, drag it outward.
• To zoom all the way out, exposing a maximum amount of data, double-click the scroll bar.

MIDI Learn

1. Right-click (control-click) any of Alchemy’s knobs and choose ‘MIDI Learn’ from the contextual menu.

2. Move a control on your MIDI keyboard/controller.

Alchemy will automatically ‘learn’ the MIDI control and assign it to the knob. Now you can adjust the onscreen knob by operating the hardware control.

• Every one of Alchemy’s knobs can ‘learn’ a MIDI control in this way.

• Alchemy’s XY Pads and Remix Pad (see the Performance controls page) ‘learn’ in almost the same way, except that there are two options in the pop-up menu. ‘MIDI Learn X’ assigns a control to the pad’s horizontal axis. ‘MIDI Learn Y’ assigns a control to the pad’s vertical axis.
• Once a MIDI control is learned, the assignment persists each time you load Alchemy. You can undo an assignment by right-clicking the knob and choosing ‘MIDI Unlearn’ from the contextual menu.
• The current set of MIDI-learn assignments is stored in a file called ‘MidiMap.txt’, which is located in the same folder as the Alchemy.dll file, within your VST Plugins folder (PC); or at
  /Library/Application Support/Camel Audio/Alchemy (Mac).