Bitheadz's Unity and Retro Programs

[cris is bliss]

Hello,
The company Bitheadz went out of business a couple of years ago and I'm just finding out now because I've upgraded my computer and to the latest DP. I have a wonderful sample library that I created over the 6 years of using Unity and I love many of the sounds that are in Retro. However the programs are for power mac and I'm now and intel mac. To complicate things further the Unity format is in .uds, something unique to Bitheadz.

So does any have a solution to salvaging my library and using Retro. Any programs that may convert uds.

[Shooshie]

Hi, welcome to Death valley. Pull up a tumbleweed and have some mescal until the stagecoach comes through. Maybe someone will be on board who knows some answers.

I looked in the Mach5.2 manual and found no mention of Unity, Bitheadz, or .uds format. There is ufs, but no uds. It makes one hesitate to invest a lot of time and money into samples of any sort, knowing that eventually most companies will probably go out of business or sell out to the "other side." Mach5.2 does read a LOT of formats, and is a little like a Swiss Army knife among samplers. It just doesn't do them all. You might learn what you can about that audio format and see if just changing a header might turn it into something usable. Could be lots of work. You might also try UVIWorkstation.app and see if it can recognize them. It seems to be the heart of Mach5, but possibly more up to date. It just might. A new version of UVIWorkstation.app was posted just Friday. (September 26, 2008) I don't mean to give you false hope, but you have to try things sometimes. Besides, you can't possibly try UVI Workstation and not find something to like. It may not LOOK like Mach5, but it's got much of M5's functionality, and is based on the same engine. Essentially, they're the same app taken to different extremes, with different interfaces.

http://www.uvisoundsource.com/uvi-works ... cles_id/39

Shooshie

[James Steele]

I think your best bet might be Chicken Systems Translator:

http://www.chickensys.com

They list Unity as one of the supported formats here:

http://www.chickensys.com/products/tran ... lable.html

They list Translator Pro for $149, but they also has special editions for $79 that are less money because they give you one output option only. So in theory you could buy a version that will translate other formats into MachFive2 for example:

http://www.chickensys.com/products/sw_i ... l+Editions

Any way, Unity does appear to be supported with this. Sometimes these things aren't foolproof. I had mixed results trying to port Ensoniq EPS 16+ stuff to MachFive2.

[mackid]

But be warned, The Chicken stuff doesn't really work. I would see if their free version works before spending any money with them. I have owned the full version of their software for 3 years, and they still can't get it to work correctly. I bought it to translate my ASR-10 stuff to Mach5, and it kind of works, but not the way they advertise or the way I would like it to. Their tech support sucks. Stay away.

mac

[James Steele]

Yeah... well give it a try with a free version. I was just throwing it out there. I had mixed results as I said with moving the EPS 16+ to Mach Five and I actually ended up having to use the Windows version to get things to work right as I recall. Maybe there's a way to test this. Garth who runs the company is pretty cool and you might see if you could email them a patch or something and ask them to convert it for you as proof it will work prior to spending the $$$.

[cris is bliss]

thanks for the feedback I will give it a try

[cris is bliss]

I was on the Native Instruments site looking at Kontakt and it had a list of the software formats that it will import and .uds is one of them. However, it also said that it will not import encrypted or encoded .uds libraries. I'm not sure what the exactly means but its sounds promising-- i hope

[Eleventh Hour Sound]

Ahhh Bitheadz Unity Session.

Do you know that I still have an old version that no longer works installed on G5Quad? I loved that thing and even thought of it as the Mellotron of it's time. Such an innovative company, it's really a shame that they didn't give their registered users lifetime authorizations before they went out of business. I think I still have a working version on on old powerbook that's in storage.

I hosted a site called AfterBitheadz for a while after they went out of business, hoping they would come back. I wonder if their technology became part of Garage Band or something. I can't image them just going bye bye for nothing.

I want to say that there may have been an export feature in Unity Session that could get you into a format that MachV or something could read. I reluctantly bought Kontakt2 a few years ago, and while it's powerful, it's no where near as user friendly.

Let me know if you find something out!

[Eleventh Hour Sound]

Hi, welcome to Death valley. Pull up a tumbleweed and have some mescal until the stagecoach comes through. Maybe someone will be on board who knows some answers.

I looked in the Mach5.2 manual and found no mention of Unity, Bitheadz, or .uds format. There is ufs, but no uds. It makes one hesitate to invest a lot of time and money into samples of any sort, knowing that eventually most companies will probably go out of business or sell out to the "other side." Mach5.2 does read a LOT of formats, and is a little like a Swiss Army knife among samplers. It just doesn't do them all. You might learn what you can about that audio format and see if just changing a header might turn it into something usable. Could be lots of work. You might also try UVIWorkstation.app and see if it can recognize them. It seems to be the heart of Mach5, but possibly more up to date. It just might. A new version of UVIWorkstation.app was posted just Friday. (September 26, 2008) I don't mean to give you false hope, but you have to try things sometimes. Besides, you can't possibly try UVI Workstation and not find something to like. It may not LOOK like Mach5, but it's got much of M5's functionality, and is based on the same engine. Essentially, they're the same app taken to different extremes, with different interfaces.

http://www.uvisoundsource.com/uvi-works ... cles_id/39

Shooshie

Reminds me of back in the old west when there was no anesthesia ... if you had to have a bullet cut out of you, you would just have a few shots of whiskey while you bit down on a dirty piece of cloth. That's probably how Bitheadz expected us to deal with converting our libraries. <Grin>

[cris is bliss]

Thanks everyone for the feedback

Kontakt reads Unity, no luck for Retro tho

[Eleventh Hour Sound]

Thanks everyone for the feedback

Kontakt reads Unity, no luck for Retro tho

Kontakt reads Unity? That would be amazing. What procedure did you use to transfer them?

[cris is bliss]

Thanks everyone for the feedback

Kontakt reads Unity, no luck for Retro tho

Kontakt reads Unity? That would be amazing. What procedure did you use to transfer them?

in the kontakt browser window, I select the Unity file and then choose Import

[Eleventh Hour Sound]

Thanks everyone for the feedback

Kontakt reads Unity, no luck for Retro tho

Kontakt reads Unity? That would be amazing. What procedure did you use to transfer them?

in the kontakt browser window, I select the Unity file and then choose Import

Wow, I've got to try it. That would be so amazing to be able to use my Unity Session files... Thanks!