Unisyn: a Great MIDI Librarian for OS X

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

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Groovepusher Sly
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Post by Groovepusher Sly »

It's kinda hard to think that MOTU would be able to gets its hands on MIDI devices to create profiles.
I know it's not right, (to come from the hardware mfg.), but now days, seems like I should be able to call Roland, Yamaha, Alesis, etc. to get what amounts to a text file, that contains their instruments patch info.
I guess it would be too much like right.
MOTU should make the latest Unisyn version available for download, and at least let users post links to known profiles (Yeah, I know, that's a can of worms). It's just a thought. And, it's a moot point in my case because some earth scum relieved me of ALL my hardware synths and equipment in Jan. 2004, (when the OS X version of Unisyn came out). Since then I've been feelin' the MIDI vibe less, except for input and minor control.

The point made above about high speed connectivity (USB or FW) for MIDI has a ring of truth. Maybe Unisyn could make a comeback if a new standard and protocol were agreed upon.

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MrVideo
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Post by MrVideo »

I have only (hardware synth's) Roland SC-88 and JV-1010. Does having a MIDI Librarian gain me much when most of my instruments are VI's?

Been fighting this for years!
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Michael Sexton
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Post by Michael Sexton »

Well, here it is almost 3 years later than the date on your post, and I'm hoping you are still around, as your concise assessment of Unisyn is as appropriate today as then. The fiction of Unisyn working "seamlessly" with DP is .....well, let's leave it at absurd. The patchlists in DP seem to always accurately reflect the currently loaded patches in my dinosaur synths(Yamaha TX802, TX81Z, Roland D-550, MKS-50) and the much newer Yamaha S-90....but Unisyn might as well be on a different planet. I really would like someone to take pity on me as a totally abject incompetent and show me the light. I seem to recall a program from Opcode I believe years ago that did what Unisyn purports to do now...and it did it on a MacPlus.
Sorry, enough ventilation. It's just that everything else I have both hardware and software from Motu has performed well.
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Post by SixStringGeek »

Michael Sexton wrote:Well, here it is almost 3 years later than the date on your post, and I'm hoping you are still around, as your concise assessment of Unisyn is as appropriate today as then.
Yeah, you'd think they'd opensource it or something. Heck, I have some time coming up and could take it on on a contract basis. Hello, MOTU? I'm already all over the modern MIDI interfaces doing JambaLaya.
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Post by exdc »

maybe unisyn has been (:twisted:) taken hostage by those fruit people, since they are the ones most adept at end-of-life-ing standards (scsi, MIDI, soon firewire).

so motu gets a better shake from the fruit people if they just let that unisyn thing go away, same graveyard as diver thank you very much...

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Re: Unisyn: a Great MIDI Librarian for OS X

Post by Shooshie »

It's five years since the last post in this graveyard/forum for Unisyn, and nine years since my first upbeat review of it. I don't know why I'm poking around in here, but Unisyn was once a fine app that just needed some fixing up around the edges. Someone actually DID that, but MOTU never released his new version. Someone at the top of MOTU must have just said "That's it. That's all. No more Unisyn. Period. MIDI hardware is dead!" Who knows?

I haven't opened Unisyn in so long I can't remember it. (nor can I, since it doesn't run on Intel machines) I haven't used my MIDI rack gear in almost that long, though I do remember firing up a Kurzweil clarinet one day when I couldn't get a suitable sound from the VI's I had at the time. Mostly, that rack gear just sits up there and looks cool while my studio has moved deeper and deeper into that big aluminum box known as a Mac Pro. (along with similarly serious looking external hard drives distributed up on top of the rack gear) It's probably time to make some real changes around here and convert those racks into cabinets for miscellaneous gear that floats around my desk and shelves without a real home.

I'd offer an eulogy for Unisyn, but it's been dead so long now that I doubt anyone would notice. Its carcass has long since rotted into the bits and bytes of old hard drives decommissioned years ago.

Many of my predictions about MIDI have come to pass, but we still use it as the message system for our VIs. It doesn't travel along MIDI cables anymore, but is transferred via USB for the most part. My input devices still use MIDI (through cables and MTP-AV), though more and more of them are going direct to USB. This whole system feels like a monster assembled with spare parts. Nothing works quite as it was planned, but it works. USB has been a decent networking system for MIDI peripherals.

Nobody has come up with a universal librarian for VIs, because each one of them is a proprietary device speaking its own language to its own sample file formats, and hardly anything can speak to them outside of their proprietary interfaces. Mach V.3 makes a good effort. I can't say whether it can actually run any of them, but it tries to be able to, if someone would just write the scripts for them. Not going to happen. Universality has long since been forgotten, as each developer makes the ultimate luscious interface for those sounds, and the script for their behavior is buried in that interface somewhere. Kontakt probably handles more than any other "universal" sampler app, but that doesn't make it the best one out there.

Well, it's a brave new world. I think I made reference to that even all those years ago. But now it's here, and yet we still seem to be moving in some direction, but not toward unification. Now we move toward the most expensive, thorough libraries possible. VSL dwarfs the contents of old hardware samplers by so many times that it squashes even active imaginations. We're into a new paradigm of even tracking the abilities of a library, of mapping into its controls, making it express music. It's really something.

Nothing to say. Just babbling about the changes, while looking over the remains of this place where time stopped five years ago, but never really got going after the changeover 9 years ago. So long Unisyn. So long MIDI Gear, cables, and such. Maybe I won't remember you fondly, but I won't forget you, either. Who could? I've got a ton of books full of hexadecimal charts and codes… MIDI was never all that friendly, but it provided jobs for those of us who could figure it all out and make these sprawling musical networks come to life. DP was the heart of such systems back then. Now it's still the heart, but the system is something else. Something better. Something that can sound like a real orchestra or band of people, all playing real instruments -- or synths, analog or digital -- so that now we're really dealing more with the music and less with the technology. That has to be a good thing.

And so it is. So long Unisyn, as I was saying. You served your time and place. Barely. I waited a quarter century for what we have now, so I'm not about to say that I wish you were here. I don't. Things are good. The world is a better place now. I mean… this niche of the world. Out there is chaos. But in here in this cozy little musical niche, things have gotten really cool. I'm glad I lived long enough to experience it.

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Re: Unisyn: a Great MIDI Librarian for OS X

Post by nk_e »

Nice post Shooshie. I gotta say it's pretty on target too. The studio I have, the power of the instruments available, are breathtaking by any reasonable standard. I'd say that I dreamed of this back in the mid 80s when I had a teac 244, a few pieces of gear, and an Atari 520ST -- except that would be untrue as I couldn't imagine this type of power and convenience.

But...

Back then I also used Galaxy to manage my libraries and edit sounds on my hardware. It was a superior experience compared to the many varied, often cryptic small interfaces found on the units. The convenience of being able to edit in a more visual context meant I was more likely to experiment with the units' sound creating capabilities.

With the death of Unisyn and similar programs, all but the most current HW units are at a serious disadvantage compared to the glorious interfaces of well designed VSTs. The Roland Integra7 and its iPad interface is an interesting attempt to address this (as is the Access Virus VST). However I find that even with the iPad, integrating the Integra still has "extra steps" when compared to using VSTs. These are not show stoppers by any means -- the one that comes to mind is making sure that program change messages are saved in sequences -- but they are extra steps. Then there is the fact that managing the library of sounds on HW still involves navigating the menus of the unit and often without easy system centralized library functions.

Soooo....they don't get used as much. It's easier to call up a VI and just run with it.

But what if I could have a visual interface? What if I did have librarian functions? What if I had an up-to-date Unisyn? Would I use the hardware more? I think so. I really do. I think it is a shame that the economics of the market don't seem to support it though.

As far as I know, MidiQuest XL is the only thing left on the market that tries to do this. There's a lot of chatter online as to how well this works. Some swear by it; others swear AT it. I bought it awhile back to give it a try. Initial (and I do mean initial) efforts seemed promising. It correctly detected the modules in my rack and downloaded the presets. But that is as far as I have gotten in truth. Given the day job, family, classes and lessons, my time in the studio is limited. Sorting this through is on my list of "to do" over the summer.

This is a great subject really. I may write something up on my blog on this too (citing this thread and your post as the catalyst for the posting of course). Thanks!

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Re: Unisyn: a Great MIDI Librarian for OS X

Post by stubbsonic »

I think for folks of a certain "vintage" this is a deep topic (not Unisyn, specifically), but the particular shifts we've made in the last decade around workflow, VI's, and the creative process.

First, a quick toast for MIDI itself. The folks that designed and implemented it nailed it. It has paved the way for so many amazing things. It opened up a huge world of opportunity. I was listening to some interviews around the 30th anniversary of MIDI. There was something about the combination of cooperation of manufacturers on one hand, and the vision of a few key people on the other, that made the spec work as well as it has for so many years.

The idea of taking all that gear and trying to tie it all together for the sake of workflow is commendable. Unisyn was a noble effort. But as tech evolves, I can understand why MOTU dropped Unisyn (it is weird that you can still buy Unisyn in the MOTU shop). There is that point where the weight must shift from the back foot to the front foot. Supporting/updating software like that can't be cheap-- especially with the expanse of hardware it would need to accommodate.

The workflow challenge is remains and is similar. With a DAW and with VI's there are so many different types of instruments and sounds-- and there is an overwhelming wealth of options. In a DAW, the VI's were technically all in one place. Even then, as Shooshie said, it was not easy to keep it all organized. If anyone is using an iPad to add some sounds, it is getting even messier.

I'm straddling different worlds. I'm still just tinkering with the iPad, but not using it in studio or live work. My laptop is the center of my studio, but I want to play real instruments as much as possible.

My live rig and the approach that I'm continuing to develop is around expressive MIDI-based controllers (esp. breath) and instruments that can be programmed to respond to controllers. I plan to continue to use Kurzweil for live work for the foreseeable future.

I have no particular desire to move away from MIDI. Apart from two small Korg MikroKey controllers, the rest is MIDI capable. Of course that would all depend on what needed to talk to what.

I got Unisyn years ago, but the timing was such that I never quite got it into my workflow.

I recently picked up a working G4 in order to install my UAD-1 card (I invested too much in the software so it will be nice to access those plugs when I need them), and to meet my need for accessing older software on occasion.
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Re: Unisyn: a Great MIDI Librarian for OS X

Post by Michael Canavan »

Of course flying in the face of all this is the resurgence of small analog gear that relies on your DAW and USB MIDI to store and recall presets. Moog Minataur, Korgs three new synths, Arturia, Dave Smiths offerings, Oberheim, Novation, and Waldorfs new products.

There is a market for a one stop librarian that offers a better tagging system than free SysEx programs, but....
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Re: Unisyn: a Great MIDI Librarian for OS X

Post by Shooshie »

Michael Canavan wrote:Of course flying in the face of all this is the resurgence of small analog gear that relies on your DAW and USB MIDI to store and recall presets. Moog Minataur, Korgs three new synths, Arturia, Dave Smiths offerings, Oberheim, Novation, and Waldorfs new products.

There is a market for a one stop librarian that offers a better tagging system than free SysEx programs, but....
Maybe it's time to revive Unisyn, along with a sample cataloguer along the lines of CD Xtract, but all updated to work with everything, including a categorical catalog for loops and snippets sort of like the way Apple catalogs its loops in Garageband.

Something where MIDI meets USB, and all of it becomes easy to classify, easy to back up, and very Mac-like. (unlike Unisyn, which really violated Mac programming guidelines) While I don't expect to see anything like this, at least not any time soon, I can see how a need for this is growing.

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Re: Unisyn: a Great MIDI Librarian for OS X

Post by billf »

Shooshie wrote: Maybe it's time to revive Unisyn, along with a sample cataloguer along the lines of CD Xtract, but all updated to work with everything, including a categorical catalog for loops and snippets sort of like the way Apple catalogs its loops in Garageband.
I would snap that up quickly that if it were offered.
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Re: Unisyn: a Great MIDI Librarian for OS X

Post by wdegillio »

I just used Unisyn yesterday as a matter of fact (which I can do, since I have a 2.1 Mac Pro and am still running Snow Leopard). I found some free patches for my Yamaha TG-33 on the Rekkerd site, and by alternating between SysEx Librarian and Unisyn, sent the patches to the TG-33, then imported them into a Unisyn library a bank at a time. Even with the existence of the hardware manufacturers' dedicated editors/librarians or a non-MOTU universal librarian, we will still be missing the ability to see our current hardware patch banks published in DP. As much as a combination Unisyn/sample and loop librarian would be amazing to see, I'd salivate at the even the thought of a "dumbed-down" version of Unisyn which could not edit synths, but would at least publish their patchlists to DP. This would require us "hardware holdouts" to program our synths using the hardware interface or a manufacturer's editor software, but at least we would have SOME means of integrating our old dusty boxes into DP.

How ironic it is that we have so many phenomenal softsynths and sample libraries currently available, and at the same time modular synthesizers seem to be all the rage right now!
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Re: Unisyn: a Great MIDI Librarian for OS X

Post by cuttime »

Still on DP 7.24. Does DP 8 still provide Unisyn Snapshot support under the File Menu?
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Re: Unisyn: a Great MIDI Librarian for OS X

Post by wdegillio »

The "Unisyn Snapshot" command seems to be missing in the current version (8.01) I can't find a mention of it in the manual either. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
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Re: Unisyn: a Great MIDI Librarian for OS X

Post by cuttime »

wdegillio wrote:The "Unisyn Snapshot" command seems to be missing in the current version (8.01) I can't find a mention of it in the manual either. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
It's still there in 7.24, but there's no mention of it in the 7 manual, either. However, it still works.
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