@ddw_music good question - hadn't really thought about why I always find myself going to it (or something like it) even tho I could use PD for everything - it is a lot like an oscilliscope vs a PD as a multimeter for the timestamp (and the one that lights up what channels/systex/mtc are sending/receiving)

but also it's a dedicated tool that I've used for decades that's been reliable vs a programming environment that I have to program - that's just code wiff experience - Its great to visualize what is happening for debugging and acts as a sanity check, PD requires you to program it and could possibly have weird edge cases across itself and the low level midi code it uses in the various operating systems. So they make a great team.

A funny thing I just realized looking at it over on a mac - the version of wine thinks of the mac's core audio roland gm soundfont as though its like the ms one you can connect to - that's why it was so easy to connect and use it like its just a midi port instead of having to summon a AU Vst (it's got near zero latency unlike the windows one too)