How much ? 
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So here we are leaping into 2022!
I needed a string sound with LFO filter sweep, but couldn’t get the LFO speed I needed on my MX61, and decided an emulation of a historic synth wuld do the job. After having a good look, I cam across Quadra, which is the VST of ARP’s famous, and infamous Quadra. I drooled over one in its day, but as with most things I would like, it was outside my budget. This VST, from Cherry Audio was only about £36, and overcomes the limited memory system - the VST stores everything. So off I go and programme my string sound, only to find I have exactly the same problem with the LFO speed.
So off I go, this time via Plugin Boutique, who I an recommend as they can offer some cracking deals with huge discounts. I have ended up with Synthmaster Player and Sektor at a cost of £56 for the two. They both offer loads of different synthesis methods, from standard wafeforms through wavetable, sampled and so on.
There are over 2000 sounds with each, which as massive. I went for the Synthmaster Player because I was on a budget, and maybe should have spent a little more, although the programmability of the main one is colossal. Sektor is programmable, and quite easy to into, and I have actually got my LFO-swept string sound now, which is actually child’s play for the Sektor. Both programmes make some fantastic sounds, so i will be busy for a while roaming through them all. I am well happy!
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I do like Cherry Audio synths, specifically their Memory Moog and Quadra emulations.
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I bought their MemoryMoog and EightVoice. Very very exciting emulations, too bad they are cpu hog. Time Load 30 to 40% even without effects 
Having a good look at Synthmaster, running in Cantabile, I found that it keeps crashing and closing Cantabile down. And unfortunately the Set List I had been working on came out the othr side of the crashes completely changed, meaning I had to redo many of the states, including VST settings being changed, or the VST gone missing altogether. I don’t think it is Cantabile, because this has never happened before, so I will try it from within my DAW to see what happens.
Sorry, I just saw your post. I’ve posted more about how I use Unify in this thread: Amazing new plug-in Unify - Related - Cantabile Community (cantabilesoftware.com)
I use it extensively now. 99% of each track in my DAW has Unify VST instances. Speeds up my workflow as I “Unify” any favorite patch I have in any VST, and then I can use that standalone or in any DAW or in Cantabile. No more being limited to racks in Cantabile that only stay in Cantabile after all that setup and tweaking. Plus Unify has a horde of great sounds out of the box, features keep getting added, and a lot of great add-in libraries that are affordable. Love it.
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I bought and love the dco 106 ! Great sounding Synthpads and Strings
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I must be missing something. What does Unify do that I can’t do in Cantabile, or say, Cubase? Does it just host plug-ins, then present them as one plug-in?
That’s my understanding on paper, not owning Unify myself. Personally, I would like to be able to take a rack in Cantabile and host it in another VST host, rather than having another piece of software.
After watch their long video it seems to be a sampler that has a bunch of its own sounds including now a B3, and can host sample sets from other products, and can layer them, and can host regular plugins, and can save the whole mess so its portable across DAW and Live Host. Plus it seems to do a good job of distributing layers across CPU threads. Given the $79 price tag I figured its worth trying their free demo since the sounds in their demo that weren’t 3rd party sound pretty good imo. And if you get all of this other functionality to boot, it may turn out to be worthwhile. Evaluating it…
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I can’t find anything that makes me feel I need it. To each their own, but I’ll pass.
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That’s indeed also what I would wish as well.
I have and use Unify a bit like Lowell describes above. What Unify does indeed is allow creating “Unified” patches of any VST, as well as a combined patches from several VST’s in one single Unified patch. These Unified patches can be called and used in any DAW a well as Cantabile. So it does work fine, and sets Unify to be unique.
I would not use Unify to replace Cantabile (it lacks all the live tricks and binding tricks Brad built), but it has advantages to use Unify inside Cantabile and/or other DAWs.
Another thing I found is that Unify seems to do pretty good on a multicore pc, and when calling multiple VST’s; multiple VSTs with a Unify patch within Cantabile seems to be faster than when using the individual VST’s in Cantabile.
Using Unify adds one layer of complexity though in Cantabile, with possible updates issues etc, but as for now, it works fine since more than a year for me
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Primarily, Unify is a VST host, and it does that pretty well. All VST’s and/or VST3 are read without issues. It has a basic sampler function but that’s not why I have it. I do not use Unify’s own sounds much, although some are pretty good indeed. I am not much in all the BPM stuff (which Unify can do very good), but use more the pure VST’s and separate FX VST’s.
I indeed also noticed the CPU Thread advantages of Unify, also with using Unify within Cantabile
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I wonder what Unify is doing with respect to multi-core? Perhaps @brad could incorporate that functionality into Cantabile.
Thanks for all the detail on Unify. I’ve watched a couple of the videos and it looked like a fun way to delve into “electronic” type music. Some of the patches it supplies based on free VST’s sounded pretty good. I don’t really need it as I always run Cantabile but some of the arpeggiator driven patches I saw in their demo video looked like a good jump start into some fun electronic music. The idea of complete patches (synth, patch, effects) is also attractive
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Doug,
It also makes a nice Host within a Host (and it’s not limited to “electronic” or “beat” music. You can load your own VSTs and layer them with your stuff or John’s sounds (some very good instruments & sounds). He did a lot of programming for Korg (M1) back in the day. You’re only limited by your CPU.
Doug
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BTW PluginGuru (Unify) has several reverbs (they do one algo per plugin) offered separately as freebie VSTs. I’m finding some good sounds in them, so might be worth checking out if you’re not overloaded with algo based verbs. They have a Valhalla-like interface with generous parms for control.
Here’s an older BBCSO test sequence I did that I re-rendered using Unify’s Dragonfly Hall reverb. The tune has a bunch of staccato in it so makes a good reverb eval subject (imo). Its the large dark hall preset with the bass cutoff at 148 Hz and reverb size set at 30 meters. I set it a bit hot to evaluate it in context of a full mix.
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John still does sound design work for Korg. But I love that he pours so much into the native Unify libraries. He’s got a great ear for it.
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Basically, every “layer” in Unify within a patch (“rack” in Cantabile terms) is sent to a different processor thread. I’m not sure if layers in Cantabile’s racks do that as well. But Unify goes beyond just that as well. Utilizing the PolyBox feature in Unify, you can send each successive note to a separate layer (rotating), each layer hosting a single-threaded VST (i.e. Omnisphere is single-threaded, and heavy on CPU). So then I can have a single patch with 8 instances of Omnisphere (or 4 or whatever) and as I play the notes are distributed literally amongst processor threads.
Skippy demonstrates this very effectively here: https://youtu.be/Z2ZudoH7H10?t=1974
He shows how a particular patch gets CPU overwhelmed running as a single instance, and how splitting it out to multiple instances and using PolyBox, doesn’t matter what he plays it doesn’t stutter.
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When looking at Unify, you have to keep in mind that its designer, John “Skippy” Lehmkuhl, is a veteran patch designer going all the way back to the late eighties (Korg M1, Wavestation) who has designed this software to be his DREAM MACHINE, solving all the problems and deficiencies in all the platforms he had programed for spanning a career of over 30 years. So, he hired programmer Shane Dunne to develop this thing that makes his own life easier, and then shared it with us, along with oodles of amazing new patches in packages he makes available on a continuing basis.
It is a sound-designers dream machine, alright, but it also is a mighty tool for auditioning and selecting patches to use. One needn’t ever use the sound-layering and patch combining capabilities of this tool to benefit from the speed and agility they get in setting up sounds for their shows and having a place to organize setups that are entirely portable into any platform they want or need to work in. The fact that you can safely use CPU hungry synths in live shows thanks to its thread assignment abilities, as Lowell points out above, is an added benefit.
Plus, it is making orchestral libraries that are designed basically for linear composition approaches into Albion-like “jam machines” for two-handed use, terrific for mocking up ideas or for live performance with entire symphony orchestras at your fingertips! (Spitfire’s BBC Symphony Orchestra, Abbey Road Studios One, and the many free and affordable LABS and Originals collections also from Spitfire being recent additions!)
And the community is quite amazing, just like this one. The shared resources and libraries are coming in hot and heavy from the users of Unify.
Well, a full-on review really should be written up somewhere! There is a free demo of Unify one can try but be forewarned - this is a rabbit hole! The capabilities reach deep.
Terry
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