MidiBox (triggerable MIDI file player) and Jitter Box also add unique capabilities. Plus he shows off how he accomplished making the BBC Orchestra plugin from Spitfire a full-ensemble player, among other things.
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Have you finalized this outline? Years later I’m exclusively using Unify everywhere… in Cantabile and any DAW. I used to spend a lot of time building racks in Cantabile, making sure I had each layer set up well and the effects set up as I expected. A “rack” in Cantabile is essentially a “patch” in Unify.
But one of the limitations I would come across before using Unify is that if I wanted to use that Cantabile rack in a DAW I’d have to go and rebuild it all in the DAW. Rinse and repeat for a different DAW or whatever. That’s useless, repetitive, and tedious work. Worse, say I’d go and tweak that rack as I got a new effect or maybe would add in a new instrument. Anywhere else I’d want to use that, I’d have to replicate that work.
Now that I build all of these patches in Unify I can just use them anywhere, anytime. Unify also operates standalone so I can build out my patches outside of anything else, favorite them or save them in my specific library, tag them so they’re easily searchable, add descriptions so I can list out custom things in that patch such as custom macro knobs that I’ve assigned in the patch, and so on.
I’ve still got some old songs that have Cantabile racks set up and not all of them are linked racks. I had an issue where some Kontakt update borked the instrument I was using in some of these racks. Instead of having to go into every single song, open it, check if I was using a rack with Kontakt, fixing the sound, I deleted the rack and just replaced it with Unify and the patch that I had set up there. If it ever borks I just fix it in the one Unify patch and that’ll work everywhere I’m using that patch.
So it’s still saving time, helping me organize, build, track, and tag my favorite patches and reduces problems. Also, many of the libraries John builds and sells very affordably are excellent; his sound design skills are still very sharp.
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Between John’s consistently gorgeous libraries and the “Unified” synths collections, I have just shy of 30,000 patches in Unify to access now. Like you, I use multiple instances of Unify in Cantabile and in my DAWs.
Also, I do have one instance of Unify often used in Standalone mode fed into my DAWs via a loopback because the standalone version can be manipulated using my Maschine Jam controller via a template found in the forum. Knobs and volumes already mapped to it! That is mostly used when recording in the DAW, as naturally it cannot see patch changes in standalone. Another great use for it in standalone mode is feeding it into Camtasia for making tutorial videos about VST plugins, since it can use Windows Audio nicely and can be seen by Camtasia, which cannot use ASIO.
The ease of using Unify as a librarian and its great CPU efficiency make it a great match up with Cantabile. I still use states and songs to bring up changes and such - works simply fine that way!
Terry
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Can you give a CPU difference (Time Load) value between a song without/with Unify?
Paolo
By CPU efficiency in Unify, I was referring to the fact that Unify sends each “layer” - be that a sample player or a VST - to alternating CPU cores, to put it in the most simplistic way of describing it.
I have not tested it for song-load. That sounds like an interesting exercise!
When using “states” to load a new sound, it is very fast, but naturally still depends on the VST being loaded - for instance, Alecia’s Keys or the Waves Grand Rhapsody HD is going to take some time to load. Cantabile gets around that problem by permitting one to load every song contained in the set in advance.
The two pieces of kit work very well together. It has increased my enjoyment of integrating sound design into my songs and state configurations, plus having the librarian aspect of Unify is simply fantastic, as VST’s present issues to Cantabile. The “Unified” VST instruments one can download from the Unify page at PluginGuru have done all the arduous work for us, at least for the factory patches of various popular VST instruments.
Terry
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I can’t tell the difference in time between loading a direct VST and the VST within Unify. So with that in mind, I benefit a ton from the capabilities of having a VST (pretty much always a group of them per patch) in Unify.
Just the workflow benefits alone are huge… being able to very quickly get to ALL of my favorite patches across tens of thousands of sounds amongst VSTs means I spend more time composing or prepping songs and less time searching endlessly through VSTs that have varying (or none) capabilities for favoriting sounds.
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I also re-read your post… you weren’t talking specifically about load time of a VST vs. that VST in Unify but rather song load. That also seems to be no different, but it’s been a long time now since I’ve been using straight-up VSTs other than Unify in Cantabile.
Either way I always use the preload option so switching songs is super-quick.
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Actually, no. I was talking about the Time Load parameter, which indicates how much the processing time of the audio buffer affects performance.
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This illustrates why Cantabile as a plugin was, and is, seen as a solution for having complex setups available in any DAW application.
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Ah, so the test would be to look at that value with Unify enabled and with it absent/disabled. I will check.
Cantabile as a plugin would be pretty dreamy.
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Ok, here are two tests. In a full-on setup, Unify made nearly zero difference. Here are pics with 1 instance and with six instances of Unify:
Pretty impressive. (And Unify 1.11.2 is being released this week, which promises even more optimizations from Shawn Dunne, the author.) Mind you, only the “Default Patch” (a sine wave) is loaded here. Diva in Divine mode will be a different story!
Terry
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and a useless waste, according to Mark Barton.
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I didn’t say I WOULD!!!
(ok, I have…)
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I added it to the wishlist 
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Terry,
Thanks for the test. You have cleared up a doubt I had about Unify.
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Skippy said in the past they plan on releasing a “premium” version with audio inputs implemented. This would allow ComboBox to function the same as Metaplugin and host things like guitar sims and general FX chains. I wonder where that stands? I’d definitely pay a bit extra for that, its a fantastic platform.
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Hm, yeah, I’m not sure. I haven’t run across the need for audio inputs so I haven’t been looking for any progress in that area.