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: https://www.dropbox.com/s/x92zx25nsxiyaym/Unified%20-%20discoDSP%20OB-Xd.guru?dl=0

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: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vpss3sleg5r8f0y/Unified%20-%20discoDSP%20OB-Xd%20%28full%29.guru?dl=0  

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.