How does it compare with Galaxy?

Discussion of issues related to MOTU's Sysex Editor/Librarian program.

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Porkchop
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How does it compare with Galaxy?

Post by Porkchop »

I lost my sy77 and Galaxy patch editor in a fire recently. I replaced the sy77 with a tg77 and I'm wondering about unisyn as a replacement. I've read the good and the bad on this forum. But I must say, I REALLY liked Galaxy's editor. How does Unisyn's stack up? Galaxy's implementation came configured right out of the box.

Am I right in thinking that with unisyn I will have to 'teach' it via sysex every single knob and slider on the tg77? :shock:
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mhschmieder
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Post by mhschmieder »

Sorry to hear about your loss, but glad you were able to find a TG77.

There aren't many controls on the TG77, so hopefully a manual process of "teaching" the CC's wouldn't take long.

I'm not familiar with the Galaxy patch editor, so cannot compare.

But there is another freebie TG77 editor, which I think was linked from Yamaha's European website.

I sold my own TG77 recently and deleted all of my associated utilities afterwards. But I do remember grabbing a few resources off of the "Yamaha Europe" website. It might take a little bit of digging to find, but it's there.

That said, at $149 to $175 street price, Unisyn is a good deal. I would buy it if I still had any vintage synths that it applies to. I keep hoping they'll add the Oberheim OB-12 to the list, and maybe the Yamaha CS6x.

You might want to check the list to see how many synths you have that are covered by Unisyn, to see if it is worth it to you. Magic Dave recently chimed in to say that it is UB-compatible, so that shouldn't be an issue moving forward with newer Mac architectures.
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Porkchop
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Post by Porkchop »

Thanks for the info!
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Porkchop
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Post by Porkchop »

I didn't find anything on the Yamaha site but I came across this

http://www.squest.com/Windows/Instrumen ... index.html

Anyone know anything about this company? The product doesn't have links into DP but then from what I've read here, neither does Unisyn.
Richard Smith
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Unisyn vs Galaxy

Post by Richard Smith »

Hey Porkchop,
I used Galaxy Plus and loved it. When my IIci crashed it took my last install of Studio Visions with it but I still have ONE install of Galaxy Plus. I keep an old LC3 around just so I can access the libraries I created in system 8 (wow). I recently took the plunge into the DP5 world with Unisyn mainly so I could capture this library and continue using it. I had a lot of trouble with Unisyn at first but I finally got past that (bad MIDI cable or somthing, not Unisyn's fault) but now that I have it up and running I do miss Galaxy's ease of use and clear programing features. Also, Galaxy offered that hexidecimal program that offered the real nuts and bolts of synth programming. Alas, Unisyn is compatible with DP so I recommend getting the whole package. You'll find that DP is no where near as user friendly as Visions if you used that, but it appears to be able to do many things once you put in the 100 hours for the learning curve. Good luck.
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Post by Porkchop »

I miss dragging envelope parameters with the mouse! Without a good interface I just don't see the point in even attempting to program a TG77. The info in that regard is missing from this forum. Librarian functions, yes. Patch librarian functionality, no.
stephen1212b
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Post by stephen1212b »

I remember sorting out my library of DX7 patches with a stand alone editor / librarian on my MAC Plus and watching the computer grind to a halt under the impossible burden of several thousand patches.

Galaxy worked for the most part. It organized, stored, sorted, and randomly generated sounds for almost all of the contemporary synths at the time. It also worked well with Vision. ( I admit to jumping ship from DP to Vision before coming back to DP. )

Unisyn was more ambitious trying to add synth editing and integration with DP. It unfortunately lacks the ease of use, reliability and even integration with DP that would keep more people interested in hardware instead of virtual synths.

Cherry Picker can handle the patch naming if the patches are stored in ram in the synth itself and provides some of the missing basic integration with DP.

Wouldn't it be great if somehow the folks at MOTU could integrate the pioneering efforts of Opcode to recreate Unisyn to fulfill its promise. As has been stated before we need a universal librarian that would allow us to store and recall the patch information including names for any synth with the sequence information so that the sequence will sound the same whenever it is played if the hardware is still present . The editor functionality is secondary at best.

I think I am going to see if I can resurrect Galaxy.
Mac OS X version 10.5.8 / DP 7.12 / Dual 1.25 GHz G4 2GB DDR SDRAM / MOTU 2408mk3 / Powerbook G4 / traveler
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miket
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Post by miket »

I was ans still am a Galaxy plus Editors fan.
I think it was and will remain the best Editor Librarian running under mac OS 7.x - 9.2.

Perhaps it could be still usable under Classic mode if the MIDI interface is a USB type (not serial).
I can say it because I succeeded connecting my Yamaha S90ES through USB port and make it recognizable to OMS 2.3.8 and AN1x Editor, AN1x Expert Editor running under Classic Mode.

Assuming the same reasoning true, if OMS recognizes an USB istrument, it can also recognize i.e. a MIDI Express 128 where also "old" MIDI instruments are hooked. And for the same reason, Galaxy plus can run.

Best regards
Michele
Life without music would be a mistake
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MacPro 10core i9 10850K MacBookPro 16" i9 DP11 2 16A 2 828mk3 2 8PRE Ultralite mk5 3 MidiExpress 128
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