Unified Libraries - Status

You're a machine! Seriously, though, thank you for the many Unified libraries!

Cheers @heyjosh

Are there any that you would like me to Unify? 

@zinct

I would love to eventually have Roland Zenology Pro Unified.

I also love the OB-Xd by discoDSP but I hate the patch library menu, so Unifying would help make it more accessible. These are my top 2 for now.

Not sure if either fit into the automation you have set up, but cheers if they do!

@heyjosh 

That's a pity; my Roland sub just ended in June and I decided not to renew so I won't be able to do Zenology Pro. They also seemed to be adding content to it all the time, so Unifying it might have been a never ending task! I liked the sounds but just wasn't keen on the subscription model (or  Roland Cloud Manager).

I don't own OB-Xd either so sorry can't help there. 

@zinct I hear ya. What if you did own OB-Xd? I may or may not have just bought a new license a few minutes ago. What is your email address? Or am I missing a way to DM in this forum? 

@heyjosh 

That might work 🙂  I don't think you can DM on these forums and I'm never keen on publishing email addresses on public forums.

I am too new but give me a few and I will up my "karma". heh.

@heyjosh @zinct 

It appears that OB-xb is free (?) when I look at the web site. I've downloaded it and can give it a go unifiying it if the weather isn't to good 😎 . What do you say Jeremy, do you want me to do it?

@thsve 

Go for it Thomas and thanks 👍 

@thsve

I just had a look and it doesn't look free to me. Are you looking at DiscoDSP OB-Xd? 

@zinct

Maybe I read it a bit to fast, it says "OB-Xd Desktop is free for non-commercial use." So, the plugins aren't free? No problems downloading and running. I can't find a way to register/authorize.  

It is not a plugin that I actually need so if I misunderstood, I will remove it.

According to this article, it is free if you wish, but are encouraged to support, etc.

https://www.musicradar.com/news/discodsps-free-ob-xd-vst-synth-plugin-has-been-updated-and-it-now-looks-more-like-a-classic-oberheim-than-ever

OB-Xd IS available for free from DiscoDSP--just click on the appropriate icon above where it says "Download"--but only "for non-commercial use".

The $49 paid download is unrestricted, and also includes AAX plug-ins. If you want to use OB-Xd outside of Unify, especially for commercial work, I strongly recommend the paid version. DiscoDSP founder George Reales was kind enough to allow us to bundle a version of OB-Xd with Unify, and provided invaluable help to the whole developer community by sharing hard-won knowledge about Apple's often inscrutable notarization processes. George needs and deserves your support.

Ok. As I said, I don’t need it so I will keep it so I can Unify the libraries and then I will remove it. I will probably have a first unified version ready tomorrow. Seems quite easy to do with a simple script.

I forgot that this is one of the built-in instruments in UNIFY, there are so many "OBx clones" out there 😊 .
Feels like it would be better to unify the banks that are in the built-in version than to install another version of the same VSTi. Unfortunately, the built-in version has some limitations when it comes to browsing patches that the "new" version does not have. That complicates unifying with scripting quite a lot. I have to think a little about how to solve this. Seems unnecessary to install a VSTi that already exists in UNIFY.

Posted by: @thsve

I forgot that this is one of the built-in instruments in UNIFY, there are so many "OBx clones" out there 😊 .
Feels like it would be better to unify the banks that are in the built-in version than to install another version of the same VSTi. Unfortunately, the built-in version has some limitations when it comes to browsing patches that the "new" version does not have. That complicates unifying with scripting quite a lot. I have to think a little about how to solve this. Seems unnecessary to install a VSTi that already exists in UNIFY.

I had also forgotten that a modified version of this is included in Unify 🙂

@getdunne 

Would it cause any issues with Unify having both installed (the Unify version in its normal place and the $49 version in my standard VST folder)? I am thinking back to the crashing issues I had when I had a separate installation of Dexed co-existing with the Unify version.

Installing registering the vst-version (2.4) in Unify seems to override the builtin version. I haven´t seen any problems having this version installed.

Did a quick test on one bank (000 - FMR OB-Xa Patch Book) for testing purposes.

No category in name yet, just named as the OB-Xd names.

Feel free to test and come back with feedback. What is your take on including all banks in one library or different libraries for each bank?

Download: Link deleted

Thanks @thsve

I know this is for @heyjosh but I hope you don't mind a couple of my thoughts:-

- This seems to work fine (using the paid version of OB-Xd).

- When I installed the full version it got installed to my standard VST2 folder. The Unify version is left untouched at C:\Program Files\PlugInGuru\Unify\VST. However, you are correct in saying that any Unify patch that uses the built-in OBxd now uses the updated one. All of the Unify patches that I tried do seem to work Ok though.

- My opinion would be to have all of the banks in one library with some way to distinguish each bank (bank name in tag field? or comment field). You could even use the bank number e.g. 000 in the patch name - so the first patch in the first bank might be called "KEY - 000 - Accordion OB-Xa" and the third patch in the second bank "SYNTH - 001 - Camera" etc.

Just my two cents.

You are welcome @zinct. Of course I want your input 😀.
I was thinking of including bank number in the patch name as you suggest but I really don't like long complex names with a lot of hyphens.
I'm waiting for input from @heyjosh before continuing.

The sun keeps shining here in Stockholm 😎.

@zinct @thsve

Hello, thanks for digging in a bit. I would say it would be cool but not critical to capture the bank number, but definitely the bank name in the category, then standard Unified name thereafter. So the example mentioned earlier would be "KEY - Accordion OB-Xa" and the category would be "000 -  FMR OB-Xa Patch Book". Thoughts?

Posted by: @zinct

Would it cause any issues with Unify having both [versions of OB-Xd] installed (the Unify version in its normal place and the $49 version in my standard VST folder)?

In general it should be OK to have both installed. One thing I haven't yet added to Unify, which would be useful to have, is the ability to specify which version Unify should choose when loading patches. According to @thsve, the newer one seems to take precedence, at least in this case.

The reason I'm not already on top of this is that Unify's plug-in management code is inherited from JUCE's, which is very complicated.

@heyjosh

It will take longer that expected. Due to lot of duplicate names over the banks and special characters i names etc. there are a lot of manual work to do finish this.

I've decided (for now) to add banknumber (001) after the patchname (BRASS - Blade Runner Brass Pad (003)) to handle ducplicate names. I will add bankname in the description (Bank: 003 - KVR Brass + Synths) and in Tags(003 - KVR Brass + Synths).

@thsve and @heyjosh

When I did Analog Lab V one of the reasons for adding the bank name in the patch name was to avoid duplicates (it was a big headache with Analog Lab V which also has 20 or so banks so lots of duplicate names if you don't include bank name). This comes back to what you were saying in the other thread about no two libraries being the same to Unify!

Let me know if you want me to help out @thsve

One option is to go back to making individual libraries for each bank.

@zinct

I'd love to check out what you have on Analog Lab V if that's cool. Especially if Unify gets it load any faster than it does(n't).

@heyjosh

I abandoned Unifying Analog Lab V at about the half way point (3600 or so patches) when I noticed that it took up around 1Gb of hard disk space. I estimated that the final thing would be over 2Gb which just didn't seem worth it! 

Ugh. Such great sounding synths with such horrible technical execution.

@zinct and @heyjosh

OB-Xd (discoDSP) library done (1528 patches).

Download her: link deleted

If you have installed the first test version, delete that folder in UNIFY library folder before installing this one!

I have tried to categorize the patches but I think it is difficult and subjective, so just change as you like.

Bankname is in Tags and Comment. "001 - J3PO Factory"

Patchname has bank number as suffix "BASS - 808 Vibes(001)"

This library requires that the vst-version of OD-Xd is registered in UNIFY. The builtin OB-Xd doesn't work!

Enjoy! 

@thsve Great work, thanks Thomas! 👍 

@thsve

Wow, thanks! This will help tide us over until the UB-Xa is released. 😀

@ JeremyH. How is the converting of the remaining 1800+ of the Halion6 library going? Are you also Unifying the Halion6 libraries that come with the Absolute4 bundle?

@PhilBel

Sorry for the delay, I have been away on holiday and working on other projects so I haven't made any more progress with Halion 6.

When I start work on it again it will only be for the factory library as I don't own Absolute.

Waldorf PPG Wave 3.V is currently on sale 19.99 on audioplugin.deals. It has very cool sounds BUT preset browsing is just awful. I mean really horrible! If someone has time to Unify it I suppose that plugin would have many happy users. 

DiscoDSP OB-Xa is on sale @ Audio Deluxe for $29, as well as few other cool things (SSL Native Drumstrip for $20, etc.)  https://www.audiodeluxe.com/products/keys-synth/discodsp-ob-xd

I had been using the free version for a while, I grabbed a copy of OB-Xa to get AAX support, but mainly just to support the developer. The native patch browsing on it is a buried/hidden menu (how does one access, see or search 23 banks!?!). Overall quality of OB-Xd is great but the patch management and browsing forces me back to using Arturia OB-Xa V. The Guru library totally breathes new life into the plugin and makes it way easier to use.

@thsve THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!

@urbaneric 

Thanks! I just picked it up.

And thanks to @thsve for the unification.

Is there any update when Unified Serum, DS Thorn and NI stuff are available? I really appreciate your work for making these available in Unified format so thank you! 

@zinct

I just got Kilohearts' Phase Plant this morning, as part of a very wallet-friendly bundle from Audio Plugin Deals. If ever there was a soft-synth to make me want to buy a more powerful computer, this is it. A bit CPU heavy, but well worth it.

I immediately did a search here on the Forum, to find out if anyone was working on unifying Phase Plant, and found this thread. I think it really cries out for unification, because it has macro controls (just like Unify), but I find them very hard to use with the mouse. They move too quickly and are hard to control. Connecting their macro parameters to Unify's macro knobs gives better results.

As with some other plug-ins such as Serum, Phase Plant allows the macro parameters to be renamed per-patch. This can complicate unification, because the names change, UNLESS you use the following trick, which I have just realized is NOT currently in the Unify manual. (Note to self: fix that.)

Unify normally references plug-in parameters by name, e.g. inst/1/plugin/paramName, but also allows using their 0-based index, e.g. inst/1/plugin/#0 is the first parameter (regardless how it is named), inst/1/plugin/#49 is the 50th, etc.

If you hold down ALT (Option on Mac) when clicking the "+" button to add a new macro-link, you can select the parameter in the usual way, by name, but Unify will automatically substitute the appropriate index instead of the name. You resulting parameter paths can be created for one patch, and re-used for others where the actual parameter names might be different. (And you don't have to count; Unify will fill in the index number for you, avoiding off-by-one errors.)

@getdunne

Congrats on your purchase Shane! It's a great synth for sure.

Funnily enough it was one that I started to Unify, but then I realised something about those macro knobs that made me put it on ice. They are pretty much different for every preset. For example, Analog FM (the first Bass Attack patch) has Mod Wheel, FM Amount, Phase, FM PW, Q, Filter Env, Attack, Decay and Release on the macro knobs. For the second bass patch (Citric Acid) they are all different again, and using the same macro knob parameters as the first patch in Unify doesn't work.

I spent a while looking at what parameters Phase Plant makes visible to Unify and there doesn't seem to be a standard way to access those Phase Plant macros other than by the name that it uses, and that it makes visible to Unify. That would mean manually creating macro knobs for all of the presets! I kinda hoped that there would be a standard way to address, say, the knob in slot 1 of Phase Plant which might be used for Filter Cutoff in one patch and Ambiance in another. At least then the Unify macros knobs would work across all patches, even if the naming of them would have to be done manually.

Well it looks like you might have a solution but I will have to re-read your message a few times 🙂 !

@zinct

Phase Plant's eight macro parameters will be /inst/1/plugin/#7 through /inst/1/plugin/#14 (assuming Phase Plant is on INST1 in Unify).

Update: Yay Shane! You are a legend! That works great 👍  

You have spurred me on to continue with the Unification 🙂

While I think about it, there's a free Phase Plant bank called Grattis 2021 which is worth grabbing.

The download is here...

https://kilohearts.s3.eu-north-1.amazonaws.com/various.grattis2021.bank

Posted by: @getdunne

@zinct

Phase Plant's eight macro parameters will be /inst/1/plugin/#7 through /inst/1/plugin/#14 (assuming Phase Plant is on INST1 in Unify).

@getdunne

In the example screenshot above, I have just found that Mod Wheel comes back as #16 and FM Amount as #7, and when I  switch to the second patch those same knobs still operate in Phase Plant using the same knobs in Unify, so this should work! 

@zinct 

Hi Jeremy, I downloaded the demo and had a quick look. I think I have a AHK script, I used before, that relatively easy could be adapted to handle this including setting the macro buttons with initial values. I can give it a try tomorrow if you want?

@thsve

That would be great! Thanks Thomas 👍 

Let me know if you need anything from me. The only issue I had was that the preset names are stored in .bank files so I had started OCR'ing the preset names from the screen. If you have a way that would avoid the need to OCR that would save a lot of time.

@thsve

If you don't already have Phase Plant, check out the wallet-friendly bundle from Audio Plugin Deals I mentioned (just click that link now).

@zinct 

I’ve look at it a little more and it should be no problem doing this with reusing earlier scripts. OCR is not needed.

At the moment I am doing some beta testing😀, but will start unifying after that. It will requier several steps and some minor manual tweeks in between, but no problem. I will send you the finished result. Probably sometimes during the weekend.