BitHeadz Unity Session 3.0

This is a note to do two things:

1) to warn potential buyers of ANY BitHeadz product (some are still on the market), new or used, to avoid it.

AND

2) to expose the principals of BitHeadz for the negligent, uncaring, and unprofessional sorts they are (which could explain why Bitheadz is now dead).

I say this because BitHeadz is now belly-up. Dead. Kaput. That may or may not be a shame, depending on your experience with the company (mine was none too good). Be that as it ma. No one at what once was BitHeadz has done ANYTHING to help those many money-paying users who are now stranded.

If nothing else, one would think the BitHeadz owners would provide a way to unlock the software permanently so registered (aka LOYAL) users could use it those many times they need to reinstall it. Now they can't.

Hundreds of dollars down the drain. Hours and hours of frustration. Thanks BitHeadz. Thanks.

I found Unity fairly easy to use once I got the hang of digital performer 3, then once I updated to digital performer 4 the ease was a bit more complicated. Unity didn't function that well in the upgrade of dp4 nor it it's own upgrade from Bitheadz.

The new features on individual mixing boards are a plesant surprise. However, when opening NEW files the INSTRUMENT TRACKS seem to merge with the settings of previous files you may have created. Example: Outputs and Patches will cross over to different files and will not start fresh.

The patch sounds are terrible. Hardly any realistic sounds at all. Most of the patches are doubled, some don't even work. It's very frustrating to get a realistic sound out of Unity.

No, very unrealiable. Unity, in OS X, should not crash your system...but it does. Without warning.

Poor, limited hours and not a full 24-hour tech support. Often have to leave messages to get back to you. It's like waiting for cable service, you have to sit by the phone because you'll never know when they will call you back.

No, I plan on discarding Unity from my system once I upgrade. I've heard of much better programs. I'm going to switch to MOTU MachFive eventually.

Using Version 3.03. Very slow and buggy.

Lots of features, but again the program responds really slowly. It does not read giga 2.0 samples correctly and trying to correct the problem with the editor is terribly slow..... a lot like the old days when you had to work with a floppy disk.

Weak. I do a lot of albums and the sounds (at least the ones included) are pretty flat. Not very original either.

Terrible, buggy, slow. Enough said

Very nice guys. However when I asked why the RTAS plug didn't work correctly, they said "Just use Direct Connect". The RTAS problem was never resolved. To be fair they did state that the plug would work correctly sometime in the future.

I have nearly every single music application made. Some are amazing, some pretty good. Session is the first one I literally every removed from the hard drive and threw in the trash.

Unity Sesson is basically Unity DS-1 Sampler, Retro AS-1 (Now called AS-1 only) and Physical modelling system under one roof.
If you are familiar with using DS-1 and AS-1, Unity session is easy to use, I am using Unity Sesson with MAC OS-X, the look and feel of Unity under this operating system is very pleasing.To the complete beginner, Session does take a little bit of learning, The manual is in PDF format not hard copy so this is a down side to learning unity session, especially if you learn by nightime reading like I do.

Unity Session has plenty of features, up to 256 not polyphony (enough for anybody). You can now combine samples, analog patches and physical models into one patch called an instrument. There are more built in effect to choose from including multi effects like Delay/Chorus. With OS-X you use Coremidi, make sure that whatever interface / usb keyboard etc has compatible OS-X drivers. I use an Evolution MK361 USB keyboard which works very well. Unity also interfaces with all the major sequencer brands, You'll probably have to install session under MAC OS9 to use your sequencer as I don't think Logic, Cubase, Performer etc are not OS-X compatible.

The sounds are brilliant, the analog section (AS-1) is truely great sounding, I rate it better than a nord etc (which I've owned in the past)You get a 2 gig sample library with Unity Session and the quality is superb. The physical models patches need to be tweaked a little but are still good, I look forward to additonal models in future software updates. Unity can accept tons of different controller commands, which you can setup in its control panel. Overall a very great sounding package, and alot better than reason, although reason does look cool.

Here's the down side. Unity Session for OS-X does seem to have a few bugs. Some time you can select a sound which makes no noise whatsoever (could be a bug in the sound library) Unity can lock up times. I'm using a new iBook laptop 600mhz CPU/640mb RAM/ 20gig HD and mostly works well, when using some piano multi-samples and playing fast, it does lock up and crash. (never did this on previous version of DS-1) The coremidi input should launch when you execute a unity program (ie mixer,player,keyboard) but has to be launched manually, even though its specified as default in the control panel.

I did contact Bitheadz Technical Support, but with no answer so not good on this score.

Well to sum things up, Unity Session is an excellent concept, it does need a few updates which hopefully won't be too far away. Once it works the way I hope it will, Unity Session will be the only thing I'll use along with Logic 5 OS-X. I'm giving it top marks as the library alone is worth the money. Unity Session really is an all-in-one digital studio, its like having 4 Korg Triton's accept alot more flexible.