Unisyn: a Great MIDI Librarian for OS X

Shooshie · Post by **Shooshie** » Fri Jun 03, 2005 5:51 pm

I'm bumping this review to the top again, because I altered my original review. I'm saddened that MOTU has not addressed any of the problems in Unisyn since it was released nearly 18 months ago.

Shooshie

Jim · Post by **Jim** » Fri Jun 10, 2005 10:50 am

Me too, Shooshie. It's practically useless for what I need it to do... publish patch names in DP. I want my money back. Wahh!

.

<small>[ June 10, 2005, 01:50 PM: Message edited by: Jim ]</small>

zandurian · Post by **zandurian** » Thu Jun 30, 2005 11:31 pm

Shooshie,
One real e having with current unisyn version is that I have a lot of 1.5 files where I saved the equivilent of a "snapshot " by saving all the data in the modules window. It was SO COOL because I could click on the one file and a specific state of ALL MIDI gear would be sent out, including performances/patches for a couple of TX802's and a jv2080, 4 d-50s. 3 dw8000s ect. Just click and (after it sent everything out) push play on the corresponding song in dp and BINGO - it was a thing of beauty. The new version works fine EXCEPT when I click on a former unisyn bulk file like those mentioned, the new version just crashes. I hate to have to go and manually build those again, do you know of any options?

timjim10 · Post by **timjim10** » Mon Jul 18, 2005 5:48 pm

Well Shooshie, how does it feel to be THE Unisyn guru? I think it could be better if MOTU put more support in to it judging by the posts here. I'm a long time DP user and your review really makes me wonder - What CAN Unisyn do for me? Can it really take a "shapshot" of my MIDI setup/patches that are being used with a DP project to be recalled later? Is there an advantage to puchasing this to use with DP is the heart of my question and I would welcome any and all users to chime in.

Thanks,
Jim Dennis

waterstrum · Post by **waterstrum** » Tue Jul 19, 2005 8:51 pm

Unisyn is pretty flakey for me.
I keep buying the upgrades and being disappointed.
I don't think MOTU cares too much about supporting it.
The latest version crashes pretty often.

toppo · Post by **toppo** » Mon Dec 12, 2005 4:25 pm

timjim10 wrote:Can it really take a "shapshot" of my MIDI setup/patches that are being used with a DP project to be recalled later? Is there an advantage to puchasing this to use with DP is the heart of my question and I would welcome any and all users to chime in.

Thanks,
Jim Dennis

Yes you can take a snapshot for reload of your total MIDI setup ... at least I can (JV1080, TG77 and a Nord Rack)
I haven't used the DP4.5 menu item Get Unisyn performance (or whatever it's called) but don't see why that wouldn't work ... it's not greyed out.
I find this Unisyn very stable & powerful ... but it took quite some head scratching at first ... and of course it is so much more extensive than just using Patchlist publishing in DP4 ... (though that seems to work fine in my DP4.6 despite bug reports on other threads).

cagedartist · Post by **cagedartist** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 8:42 am

It makes me sad to read messages that were written in 2005 concerning Unisyn bugs and deficiencies that I fixed back in 2004. I don't know why, but it appears that MOTU never shipped version 2.1.2, which was completely ready to go (installer and all) in December of 2004. Below is a list of new & modified profiles. I also went through all of the profiles and .midnam (XML) files to ensure that they matched up properly, so that patch names would be correctly updated by Unisyn -- a major effort that probably would have made a lot of people feel more satisfied about Unisyn. I wonder what MOTU is/was thinking? (I wondered that a lot when I worked there, too.) -Bob

••• The following profiles had bug fixes:
Line 6 AX2
Line 6 AxSys 212
Oberheim Matrix 1000
Roland MKS-70
Roland JV-1080
Yamaha TX7, etc.

••• The following profiles were new:
Dave Smith Evolver (version 2 software)
Dave Smith Poly Evolver
Access Virus b
Roland Fantom-S
Roland JV-1010
Roland XV-88
Roland XV-2020
Roland XV-5050
Yamaha Motif ES
Yamaha Motif Rack
Yamaha SPX1000 (librarian only)

••• The following profiles were enhanced:
Roland XV-3080 (effect editing)
Roland XV-5080 (effect editing)
Yamaha Motif (editing)

npatton · Post by **npatton** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 3:38 pm

Are you saying this stuff is sitting there waiting to be released while their tech support takes call after frustrated call from us over the same issues? What a waste of their time and money! I know I could really use that XV-5050 profile in my work. Yeah, it came with an editor/librarian, but I have a system already in place with my other profiles in Unisyn, and it's a pain to open another program to go rooting around in when I'm in a hurry.

And, yeah, life could be a lot worse, too. But as long as I've paid for the product, I'd like to get all it has to offer...

RCory · Post by **RCory** » Tue Jan 31, 2006 6:43 pm

*yikes!* a version from 12/7/04?!? They've never released this... Why wouldn't they!?

C

qo · Post by qo » Wed Feb 01, 2006 12:23 am

Wow, Bob, thanks for the insight. There does seem to be a budding trend at MOTU that one might sum up with "MIDI is dead. VI's are the future."

This would explain why so many folks are experiencing more MIDI issues with later versions of DP (see other threads). It would explain why DP5 has multiple new VIs (keeping up with the Jones, uh, Apples). I don't recall a single MIDI-specific feature in DP5's marketing debut. It would explain why MIDI Cannon was never implemented on OSX. And, why MOTU hasn't come up with a new MIDI interface in ages. And, yes, why Unisyn is an orphan app.

Maybe MOTU is right. Maybe MIDI is dead.

cagedartist · Post by **cagedartist** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 9:19 am

npatton wrote:Are you saying this stuff is sitting there waiting to be released while their tech support takes call after frustrated call from us over the same issues? What a waste of their time and money!

Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying. Hopefully, I still have a contact at MOTU who will tell me if this was a conscious decision or if, perhaps, someone dropped the ball and it rolled under the sofa and was forgotten.

qo wrote:Maybe MOTU is right. Maybe MIDI is dead.

MIDI lives on in the world of ring tones. And it's still an important protocol for passing musical performance information between software processes. The concept that is dying is the MIDI-connected network of specialized musical devices. For this concept to have any hope of survival, the manufacturers had to agree on a backwardly-compatible, high-speed standard - and they didn't.

Bob

npatton · Post by **npatton** » Wed Feb 01, 2006 11:50 am

Thanks for the info. Well, if you had the time to pursue that connection, I'd love to hear what happened to that last update. Maybe more than you want to deal with in what is likely a busy life, but I think we're all curious out here as we drift in our state of "Uniconfusion"...

pangmaster · Post by **pangmaster** » Mon Feb 13, 2006 9:33 am

cagedartist wrote:It makes me sad to read messages that were written in 2005 concerning Unisyn bugs and deficiencies that I fixed back in 2004. I don't know why, but it appears that MOTU never shipped version 2.1.2, which was completely ready to go (installer and all) in December of 2004. Below is a list of new & modified profiles. I also went through all of the profiles and .midnam (XML) files to ensure that they matched up properly, so that patch names would be correctly updated by Unisyn -- a major effort that probably would have made a lot of people feel more satisfied about Unisyn. I wonder what MOTU is/was thinking? (I wondered that a lot when I worked there, too.) -Bob

••• The following profiles had bug fixes:
Line 6 AX2
Line 6 AxSys 212
Oberheim Matrix 1000
Roland MKS-70
Roland JV-1080
Yamaha TX7, etc.

••• The following profiles were new:
Dave Smith Evolver (version 2 software)
Dave Smith Poly Evolver
Access Virus b
Roland Fantom-S
Roland JV-1010
Roland XV-88
Roland XV-2020
Roland XV-5050
Yamaha Motif ES
Yamaha Motif Rack
Yamaha SPX1000 (librarian only)

••• The following profiles were enhanced:
Roland XV-3080 (effect editing)
Roland XV-5080 (effect editing)
Yamaha Motif (editing)

Anyone thinking of buying Unisyn right now should take pause after reading this. Why put money into a product that is ignored? I came here looking for some insight about Unisyn, hoping that it could replace SoundDiver (since Apple seems to have killed it). However, I'm not sure Unisyn will be any better if updates are written but never released...

It makes me sad to see support for old MIDI hardware fading fast, but it seems to be inevitable.

RCory · Post by **RCory** » Mon Feb 13, 2006 10:46 am

Agreed...

Maybe Unisyn just didn't sell that many copies... I keep going to it and using it... I wish it wouldn't be forgotten...

Saintmatthew · Post by **Saintmatthew** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 12:48 pm

Well, ccagedartist, where would that patched version be.....*wink, wink, nudge, nudge *

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Unisyn: a Great MIDI Librarian for OS X

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