Dear All, esp. Music Student.

I apologise for not being clear - and I'm trying everyone's ideas out even as I type this, just wanted to clarify stuff before I forgot (head like a machine-gunned sieve, me!)

I've got a standalone Kontakt, a standalone UVI Player (which is basically like Kontakt except it only plays UVI libraries. Which are great but EXPENSIVE!! You DO get a few nice free sounds with it though to whet your appetite - the entire set of sounds is SEVEN HUNDRED BUCKS near enough.....!! But like I said the free ones are nice.

I've also got a couple of other softsynths that are standalones - got their own virtual keyboards you play with the mouse and everything. They're all 64-bit. And I've got my lovely Quick Score Elite, which is a MIDI program, you put in notes with the mouse onto staves. Dunno if I can show you a pic., but just imagine a piece of A4 manuscript paper with lines and stave and everything, only each stave is a separate instrument.

Now I've got a bunch of proper VSTs but they're.... not the world's greatest. Freebies most of them, some of them darned good freebies, none of them up to Kontakt standard. So I got the latest version of Kontakt, and the others, cleaned myself out a bit doing it - and discovered they didn't have 32-bit plugin-versions when you installed them. I'd assumed - wrongly - you'd get the option of 32-bit or 64-bit. Yup - teach me to read websites better before pulling out bank cards, won't it!

So I was sitting looking at my DAW and these standalones and I wondered if there was a way to take the MIDI info. output by the DAW and shove it into the standalones which, as far as I know - I'm a composer, not a computer scientist, and not a good composer at that! - were designed to use MIDI. I hadn't heard of JBRIDGE, I'm going to try that. I wasn't after free ways to do anything, it's just I'd no idea what to go for. Then I read about Vienna and that seemed like the kinda thing that might do it. And I read about something called Unify.

I've read and re-read the Unify blurb and I still don't really understand it. What I THINK it is, is a VST you can put other VSTs into. So in your DAW you load up Unify, then you open up Unify and put your other VSTs into it. I'm not even sure if I'm right about that. But if I AM - I couldn't find out if Unify ITSELF has a 32-bit version you can put 64-bit stuff like modern Kontakt into. I THINK it can take 32 or 64-bit VSTs itself, but I'm not sure if UNIFY is 32 or 64 bit!

By then, my brane had 'ad enough and was trying to crawl out my ear and hide. So I came over here for advice, which you nice gentlemen have given me. This isn't to say I no longer would like to know what the heck Unify is (am I thinking of it right?)

Jim - I'd never heard much about Band in a Box other than to do with Applemacs. I thought it was Applemac only, like Logic is these days (believe it or not I possess the last ever PC version of Logic somewhere! It is ANCIENT!) I know absolutely zero about BiaB, I'll look it up and thanks for the info.

Music Student - as you run Unify in your DAW, you could help - is the thing 32-bit or 64-bit, if the latter is there a 32-bit version? And is it basically a box to put other VSTs in, as I've put above? If so can it hold 32-bit AND 64-bit VSTs simultaneously in a 32-bit DAW? I've read and re-read the blurb, not too sure what it is. Would love you to tell me.

And I'm going right now to the link rharv gave me, just stopped long enough to write this (which some will probably rightfully think was far too long!!)

Yours with thanks to all - especially Music Student if he, or someone, can help me wrap my head around Unify -

Chris.

Last edited by ulrichburke; 08/22/21 08:40 AM. Reason: Spelling booboo!