An update is in the works for Mountain Lion. Read More...

Tags: updates, Software, unitor

The Lion updated Unitor 8 Preference Pane is now available on the downloads page. Enjoy! Read More...

Tags: updates, Software, unitor

I’ve spent the last 4 months, 3 of those in NYC, working for Barnes & Noble on the Nook Kids iPad book reader. I am proud to announce that it is available in the iOS App store starting today! With 150 kids titles, many with audio content that will allow the books to be read to the child, it’s sure to be a hit! I’m sure iBooks will be copying our features soon enough, but there additional great features coming in the next few weeks. Read More...

I like to think that my editor and recent Unitor Driver Checker had something to do with this, but I’m sure it’s just Apple finally coming to their senses. The most recent Unitor driver for Intel, version 2.5, is now available via the Apple website for everyone to download. You can get the download here. There is no requirement to purchase Logic, or iLife, or Garageband any more!!!

Rejoice. Read More...

Tags: unitor

I wrote an application that checks your installed USB MIDI driver, and offers you options for where you can get updates to the driver. Its now included with both the Leopard and Snow Leopard versions of the preference pane.

So it looks like the Unitor Preference Pane is working fine in Snow Leopard. System Preferences will switch to 32-bit mode for the panel, but it does work fine. I'll update it to 64 bit compatible in the next release.

If it gets stuck (beach ball forever) the first time you run it, simply force System Preferences to close then re-open it. The pref pane will work perfectly from here on out. I'm trying to track down what causes this, but I haven't been able to recreate the situation yet.

UPDATE:

As it turns out there is very little reason to update the preference pane to 64bit. The MIDI system in OS X requires all of the drivers you have to be 64-bit, or it will not run in 64-bit mode. Only Logic Studio 9 includes a Unitor/AMT USB midi driver that is 64-bit capable, but if any midi driver on your system is 32-bit, then you'll be taking a trip back to 32-bit System Preferences. I have not been able to create a situation where System Preferences will run my pref pane in 64-bit mode yet. It's mysteriously difficult to debug 32-bit preference panes on Snow Leopard, so it may be some time before I'm able to find out what's causing this.

Tags: unitor

It seems that a recent OS update has caused a bug where the preference pane will search very quickly for a connected device and respond that no device is found. I’m working on a fix and some new features that will probably be released either today or in the next few days.

In the Patch Input/Output grid I have made the column and row selectors work, so entire rows and columns can be toggled.

A new version of the Unitor8 Preference Pane is now available.

Thanks to the awesome help of panel user Art C., the panel is now known to be working with 8 devices chained together. That means you can now configure 128 MIDI ports! Read More...

A lot of people have be sending me emails asking how to get their Unitor8 or AMT8 working correctly. Just to be clear, the Unitor8 Preference Pane is not a MIDI Driver. If you can’t see your interface in any midi applications, then you have a driver problem.

To help people out as best as I can without having to answer a million emails on it, I’ve written an FAQ about how to install the drivers correctly for each type of Mac. I hope its simple to follow.

The end is in sight!

I’m still plugging away at the Unitor 8 preference pane. The SMPTE timing panels are very difficult to deal with. There are lots of customs bytes with lot of small pieces of data all packed together, and many values that are only valid when other values are set.

Of course, I want to make sure I don’t make any stupid mistakes and not make any rash decisions that might cost me time later. I’m estimating a day to two to completion, depending on whether I get distracted playing WoW.

Tags: unitor

What’s new:

Version 0.8.5 (current)

• Support for AMT8
• Support for 8 chained Unitor8’s or AMT8 in any order
• Improved support for the actual Unitor8 midi specification

Go check it out!

This may seem like only 3 new items, but this is really a huge deal. You can now configure up to 1024 midi channels!

16 channels per port * 8 ports on each Unitor/AMT * 8 Unitors = 1024 !!!

Tags: unitor

Thanks to a very kind gift from the gods out there, I now have pretty much all the information anyone could ever want about the midi protocol for the Unitor8 and the AMT8.

I’m in the process of updating my code to better support both devices as well as 8 of them chained together!!

The excellent news is that I haven’t found any errors with the protocol as I’ve understood it so far. So it’s pretty safe to use. Even if you have an AMT8 attached. The UI will just be all grayed out while it seeks for a Unitor.

If you have been thinking about getting one of these interfaces on eBay, and you have a newer mac with 10.5 or greater on it, now is the time to buy them. By the time it arrives, you’ll have a working configuration app, even if you buy 8 of them.

Tags: unitor

What’s new:

Version 0.8.0 (current)

• IO patch editing works!!!
• Patches can be named (names are only stored in the preferences).
• 32 customizable IO mappings.
• Copy, paste, and initialize IO patches.
• Displays the Unitor version number when valid input and output are selected.
• Recognizes most settings dumps that are sent from the Unitor.

Go check it out!

Tags: unitor

While I continue to build midi apps that few people will use, I’m building a software architecture behind scenes that will allow me to basically piece large portions together to create new and interesting midi applications. Read More...

Tags: unitor, cocoa

This weekend I’ve made great progress with the Unitor Preference Pane. I added patch configuration. Unfortunately it’s brought my attention to the fact that I have yet to request any information from the Unitor. The latest build initializes all the patches and can copy, paste, customize, and send them to interface, but it never requests what the interface has. So if you have custom setting already stored, they’ll be overwritten. I’m not posting this build because of this. If I was certain that no one cared about their patches that are currently stored in their Unitor, I would release it, but its better if I just fix it first.

Tags: unitor

I should have read my own blog a little better. I never noticed until now that the text for the Unitor and microWAVE XT blog entries was all mixed up (fixed now).

Anyway, tonight I went to the Lake Forest CocoaHeads group meeting to see what a discussion about using Cocoa to write games might be like. It was pretty cool. I wish I could say that my immediate future held doing anything game related with Cocoa, but it definitely does not at the moment.

Tags: cocoa

For weeks I have been working on creating a modern, functional, replacement for the Emagic Unitor8 MkII USB MIDI Interface. To accomplish this I’m reverse engineering the midi system exclusive messages that are sent to the Interface by SoundDiver and Unitor8 Control. Apple has made it clear by now that this is near abandon-ware. While they have amazingly provided Intel based drivers with Logic, the Unitor8 control and SoundDiver applications have languished in such a poor state that I consider them to be nearly unusable.

Follow along here.

Tags: unitor

I’ve written an app that communicates with Waldorf microWAVE XT synthesizers, requesting all the patch names, then placing them on the clipboard or in files so they can be pasted into Apple’s Logic multi environment objects.

Read more about my work on this application here.

Tags: waldorf

Last night I wrote some code to allow a high resolution optical encoder to work on the midibox platform. Here’s a link to my post there.

Tags: Midibox