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    *          EverySynth           *
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    A multi-timbral AudioUnit to control external synthesizers.
    
                        http://github.com/talanis85/EverySynth
                        (c) 2010 Philip Kranz

I. HISTORY

This plugin was originally created in an effort to be able to
use external synthesizers with Apple MainStage (shipped with
Logic Pro since version 8).

Shortly after I finished the first version (which was mono-timbral),
Apple released version Logic Pro 9 together with MainStage 2.
That version had that "External Instrument" feature that promised
to accomplish exactly the same thing, so I dropped the development
of the plugin because I thought everything would be solved.

But Apple failed gloriously!

The external instrument feature worked until you wanted to use more
than one of the 16 possible layers of a multi-timbral syntesizer.
Developing such a feature with only mono-timbrality in mind is like
broadcasting black and white TV in 2010.

Yes, you CAN try to get MainStage to use more than one MIDI channel,
by using several instances of the external instrument channel strip,
but it's a gigantic pain in the ass. You will be unable to set the
volumes of the individual channels, you will have to click about ten
buttons to disable a certain sound and you will despair finding the
right patch no / bank MSB / bank LSB for the sound you are trying to
use.
And you will be the complete idiot when you try to do all this during
rehearsal sessions.

Oh, and did I mention that they broke it in version 2.1.1, where you
could not do bank select any more? (who cares, nobody wants to use
something else but bank 0 anyway!)

Okay, so I commenced development again.

II. FEATURES

 o 9-channel multi-timbrality in one instance of the plugin (*)
 o Automatic Bank/Patch select
 o Mix volumes of individual channels
 o Simply activate/deactivate them
 o Support for displaying bank/patch names for known devices

 (*) Why the hell 9 channels?? Yeah, because of a bug in Leopard that
 causes a host to crash when it has to display too many parameters.
 This was fixed in Snow Leopard.

III. TODO

 o Move from Carbon to Cocoa for the UI, since essential parts of
   Carbon are 32-bit only.
 o Maybe handle the audio signal from the synth directly in the plugin,
   so that you don't need an extra audio track for the input.
 o More control over the individual parts:
    - filtering of sustain/modulation/velocity/etc.
    - some common midi cc's like reverb, chorus, expression
 o The killer feature: Additionally support patch select by midi patch dump,
   i.e. you program a patch in your device, then you send it to the plugin,
   the plugin saves the SysEx data and transmits it back to your device at
   patch select. => Infinite number of patches!

IV. HOW TO BUILD

Dependencies:
 
 o Xcode 3.2.2
 
The Xcode project should build out of the box. If not, please tell me!
Looks like Apple likes to move the AudioUnit SDK directory around in
different DevTools versions, this might be a problem.