These stored banks or "snapshots" become your reference points. Unisyn stores these banks in groups organized by device. Edit patches in a graphic editor that makes programming your synth at least tolerable and not a hair-pulling, nail-biting experience as is so common when attempted with those tiny windows on synthesizer front panels. Each synth's profile operates on the same principle: download banks of patches/programs/setups etc., from your synth. Unisyn comes with over 250 profiles, which means you can run a lot of devices with one application. Unisyn can handle hundreds of synths-theoretically an infinite number, since it has an interface framework in which an independent developer writes a "Profile" of any given synthesizer which tells Unisyn how to talk to that device. Fully Core-MIDI compatible, Unisyn filled a gaping hole in available music applications for OS X. With a rack of synths, I was greatly relieved to get it, and I have been using it ever since. Happily, the wait was over in mid-February of 2004, when Unisyn for OS X began shipping with very little fanfare, 9 months after the release of Digital Performer version 4.0. During the massive Mac-Exodus from OS 9 to OS X, Unisyn version 2.0 was first released for OS 9, as a Carbon app (cross platform), but its OS X counterpart took well over another year to be released. During its entire tenure in the "Classic" Macintosh era, up through OS 9, it only made it up to version 1.5. Unlike its more famous MOTU cousins, Performer and Digital Performer, Unisyn did not go through a lot of revisions. Sadly, Opcode and all its librarians are now history. Opcode introduced its all-in-one librarian called Galaxy around the same time. While it did not fit any particular synth as smoothly as the dedicated apps that preceded it, the advantages of programming all of your synths in "unison" greatly outweighed the minor, mostly cosmetically exposed seams in this amazing workhorse of an application. Mark of the Unicorn introduced Unisyn, their UNIversal SYNthesizer librarian, in the mid-1990s to high acclaim. So, it was only natural that someone should come along and unify these applications into one librarian that could do it all. Still, in a studio with many synths, the expense piled up rather quickly, as did the key-disks and the inconvenience of dealing with so many pieces of software which essentially did the same thing, just to different MIDI boxes. There was a time when MIDI synthesizer librarians were dedicated to individual synths, each one costing more than anyone wanted to spend, but the practicality and ease they brought to the programming of those old MIDI boxes made them essential to anyone who had tried programming through the awkward interfaces on the front panels.
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