Unison Audio Unisynth is a new, flagship multi-engine Synthesizer plugin from the guys from the YouTube ad who were desperate to sell you a MIDI chord pack.
The golden raspberry for the most annoying YouTube music tech ad of the last 5 years definitely goes to Unison Audio and the MIDI Chord Pack. This ad was likely for many the reason to subscribe to YouTube Premium to finally stop seeing it.
They went with their marketing way too far. In response, creators have started offering free chord packs. Now, Unison is back with Unisynth, a mighty Synthesizer that might cast a better light on the company.
Unison Audio Unisynth
Unisynth is a new flagship multi-engine Synthesizer for macOS and Windows. With Unisynth, Unison Audio hasn’t just designed yet another multi-engine Synthesizer, but also offers a smart, intriguing engine.
According to Unison Audio, the development took over five years and cost them over 1.5 million dollars. Believe it or not, I’ll leave that up to you.
The Unisynth interface consists of two main sections, allowing you to switch between two operation modes simultaneously. Standard and Advanced.
Beneath the Standard operation mode lies a smart AI engine that lets you generate the exact sound you need. Unlike other synths, which are limited to randomization, you can choose your genre (ambient & downtempo… and sound type here: bass, lead, pad…
Once done, you click, and the engine generates a new sound for you without having to scroll through hundreds of sounds.
In the first demo, I’m surprised how well this engine works and how usable the results are. Often, such smart engines are very inconsistent; a good sound, a terrible… Here, I think the success rate is higher based on the initial videos.
If the results don’t perfectly match your needs, you can tweak them. You have access to the essential features of the oscillators, filters, envelope, macro controls, and effects. Parameters that even non-synthheads can handle.
Alternatively, this “Smart” mode can serve as a source of ideas or a starting point for designing your sound. This way, the basics are already done, and you can concentrate only on the finer details.
Advanced Mode
For those who find that sound cheating and prefer to delve into all the intricacies, Unison Audio also offers an advanced mode in Unisynth. This provides access to the complete engine, from oscillators to effects. And it offers a mighty engine.
On the oscillator side, it has four oscillators with virtual-analog, wavetable (350 wavetables), sampler, and resonator synthesis for each. You can freely combine the modes. Each oscillator type has different parameters on the menu.
The VA engine offers various waveforms and controls for octave, semitone, tuning, fine-tuning, phase, and more. The wavetable, on the other hand, has plenty of WT modifiers to choose from. It looks like the sampler doesn’t have granular control.
Each module also has a green button that lets you use Unison Audio’s AI engine to create custom settings for the oscillators, filter, envelopes, and more.
Before proceeding further in the signal path, you can select how to route each module. Either to Filter 1, Filter 2, without a filter to the effects, or directly.
Both filters offer a variety of types, including ladder, state-variable, and more specialized types like comb or vowel. They are shapeable with classic controls.
Additionally, you can spice them up with a fat parameter and an overdrive. Also, it’s possible to modify the routing once again. You can route it into another filter, the FX, or directly.
Modulation & FX
The modulation engine in Unison Audio Unisynth is also powerful. With simple drag-and-drop, you can assign up to six envelopes, six LFOs, two randomizers, tracker, two alternate, four macro controls, velocity, aftertouch, and more.
It’s impressive how deep these go. The envelopes, for example, have various modes, independent slope controls, trigger options, delay, and hold options for attack and sustain. Same for the LFOs. They have rate, delay, rise, trigger, direction, and release controls.
Handy is the ability to save your configurations in presets. Also, here you can find the smart buttons to generate configurations. All this is managed by a robust, fully customizable modulation matrix hidden on a third Advanced menu page.
The final stage in the signal path is a multi-FX processor with 25 built-in FX processors, including delays, distortions, dynamics, filters, modulation FXs, and spatial effects like a convolution engine, panner, reverb, space, and more.
Here, too, the parameter selection per module is anything but limited. The delay, for example, features a built-in LFO, a multimode warmth section, a filter, ping-pong mode, and more. Yes, these parameters can also be modulated.
Unison Audio ships Unisynth with 350+ wavetables and 1250 samples. There don’t seem to be any presets. But that makes sense, because the AI engine renders large factory preset libraries obsolete if everything works as promised.
Unison Audio First Impression
This looks like a very powerful and exciting Synthesizer. It offers everything a flagship synthesizer needs. Okay, granular or multi-sampling might come as an update, who knows?
But it’s a bit strange that I’m writing “exciting” about Unison Audio, a company we remember rather negatively with their MIDI Chord Pack. Things can change so quickly. One thing remains the same, though: the marketing hasn’t changed much.
A glance at the website reveals they’re still making big claims and using words from the “game-changing” lexicon. This has more the charm of a carpet vendor at a bazaar than that of a music tech developer. Well, it’s marketing.
But it seems this time the product can actually deliver. DATABROTH’s video nicely demonstrates that the synth is mighty and sounds very good.
Unison Audio Unisynth is available now at an introductory price of $97, down from $297. It runs as a VST, VST3, AU, and AAX plugin on macOS (native Apple Silicon + Intel) and Windows.
More information here: Unison Audio
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