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U&I Software
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kevin@uisoftware.com
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uisoftware.com / support@uisoftware.com
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23210 57th Ave #482 Mountlake Terrace WA 98043

Our mission is to provide creative artists with tools that encourage discovery and liberate them from the constraints of traditional software and techniques. Our applications provide environments that nourish creativity and exploration by providing both paradigm-breaking functionality and aesthetically-inspiring user-interfaces that are themselves works of art.

Whether you are interested in music, graphics or video, you are sure to find something of interest at U&I Software.

Products by U&I Software

Latest reviews of U&I Software products

ArtMatic (Designer+Voyager)

Reviewed By interozitor [all]
February 20th, 2022
Version reviewed: CTX 1.2 on Mac

If Macintosh-based 3D landscape generators were a solar system, first, it would be rather sparsely populated, and second, it would have two main planets: Terrragen and Vue; plus a few minor planets, such as Terraray.

And, of course, there would be a sun that would dwarf everything: Artmatic Voyager.

Honestly - when I discovered the early versions of AV by chance years ago (version 1.2 or so), I was immediately overwhelmed: finally a program that was as easy to use as the legendary Bryce (R. I. P. - your loss leaves a painful wound to this day), but in contrast to that unforgotten 3D jewel could create literally endless worlds, the sight of which took your breath away. Wow.

Meanwhile, AV has evolved magnificently. Admittedly, Terragen can also be used to create quite nice landscapes - but this is all connected with an enormous, sometimes unnerving amount of time and work. And at the latest, if you want to give your Terragen scenes a bit more magic and dreaminess (up to non-realism, for example green skies and yellow seas), the program is hopelessly overtaxed.

Vue is also quite good, but can't keep up with AV when it comes to "magic picture mood". Another disadvantage: You can only rent it, not buy it. I hate and boycott business models that enslave me financially like that.

That's why AV is by far the best thing out there for artists working on the Mac (and who voluntarily puts themselves through a torture instrument like Windows?). You can tell right away that AV was and is designed by artists: fabulously easy to use, combined with stunning results.

Just to explore the included presets alone is not enough for a human life. The same goes for Artmatic Designer. AD is a program without equal - in the Mac realm and even more so in the realm of evil (Windows). It is very easy to use and creates dreamlike images that knock the viewer off his chair.

For me an equally important plus point: For AD and AV you only have to pay a very moderate and fair one-time price. No exploitative subscription system!

Last but not least, I have to praise the personal support in the highest tones. I had a problem with the CTX version (caused by Apple's paranoid security mania), and Kevin from UI Support (assisted by Spiritus Rector Eric Wenger) personally raised heaven and hell to solve it for me. For that I say here best thanks and appreciation.

Conclusion: Both Designer and Voyager are fabulous programs that are addictive. No matter if you are a hobby user or a professional: With AV and AD the design possibilities grow to infinity!

Here is my still growing Pixabay account which is featuring my AV and AD pictures:

https://pixabay.com/de/users/interozitor-25735928/

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MetaSynth

Reviewed By Editmsm [all]
March 16th, 2021
Version reviewed: CTX 1.1 on Mac

I've owned this since around 2008, but hadn't used it for a while until the current updated version appeared.

I won't repeat the features, as you can read all about those in the specs listing. But what I will say is that if you're a genuinely experimental musician - if you want to enter into a musical environment that will generate unexpected and startlingly fresh results, and trigger new ideas and directions to go in - then this is for you. If you only want to make music that sounds like other music then you might struggle.

I previously used Metasynth mainly as a secret weapon, to augment sounds I'd made as part of conventional tracks in Logic etc. The Effects Room is an excellent suite of tools for doing this.

Getting back into it now though, I'm startled by the sheer density of what's on offer. Each of the 'rooms' is stuffed to the gills with features and unexpected parameters. I've only just begun to scratch the surface, and thinking about the potential for creativity is dizzying. And it's all organised and easy to use: the UI is excellent.

I will reiterate that it's not a platform to come to if you aren't willing to be surprised, and aren't open-minded or of an exploratory nature, but if you are there's riches here to keep you going for years.

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MetaSynth

Reviewed By alienistcog [all]
March 2nd, 2021
Version reviewed: CTX 1.1 on Mac

Metasynth is a truly unique application. Chances are good that you've heard of its claim to fame: the odd 90's era IDM gimmick of converting pictures into sound and embedding the resulting unearthly noise in music. Can it do that? Yes! But that's far from its only value. Metasynth is a rich, complex audio development environment with many layers of rich functionality and a distinct personality.

The Image Synth alone -- Metasynth's best-known asset -- is worth the price of entry by itself. The fact that it can convert an image to sound is due to the incredible flexibility of its visual to audio mapping. If you think about it, the piano roll in every DAW is also an image-to-sound engine in a way! The great insight of Metasynth's developers is that there is no qualitative difference between a piano roll and a spectrograph; both are ways of mapping vertical space into pitch and horizontal space to time.

Fundamentally the Image Synth converts a grid of pixels via a mapping into sound, using a choice of any of several synthesis methods. The fact that the vertical mapping can represent anything from a whole-tone scale to the finest-grained microtonal scale, or anything in between, including user-defined mappings, makes the image room a tool that lends itself equally well to crafting musical phrases, synthesizing new instruments, and developing previously unheard soundscapes - and blurring the line between all of these.

Metasynth's functionality has also grown and evolved over the years: the Effects tool provides a number of sound editing and mangling options, from simple delays and reverbs to complex granular and spectral weirdness, all integrated with a unique envelope editing system unlike anything I've seen in another audio app. The Image Filter uses the same image-to-audio mapping used for composition and synthesis in the Image Synth tool to implement an incredibly complex time-varying multi-band filter. The Spectrum tool (which could easily be marketed as a separate app worthy of investigation by itself) provides a way to break down and recombine the spectrum of a given sound and use it for creative re-synthesis. And the Montage and Sequencer tools provide just enough multi-track editing / mixdown and bread-and-butter note sequencing functionality, respectively, that you can write whole tracks end to end in Metasynth without ever reaching for a separate DAW, if your heart so desires.

That isn't to say that Metasynth is the right choice for everyone: its design is idiosyncratic, absolutely the brainchild of a specific vision integrating the visual and audio realms in a unique way. Some basic UI affordances most of us take for granted, like multi-level undo and ubiquitous context menus, are missing, and some parts of the app like the Montage room, although handy, are a little underdeveloped. Most importantly, although you can get good (and very weird) results without so much as cracking the startup guide, truly mastering the app and adapting to its quirky personality takes a significant investment of time and mental energy. But for the musician or sound engineer committed to exploration, it is an investment well worth making, and will pay off for years to come.

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MetaSynth

Reviewed By hkrabye [all]
February 25th, 2021
Version reviewed: 1.0 on Mac

The new MetaSynth CTX is compatible with the latest MacOS 10.15 (Catalina) and 11 (Big Sur), and it has all the cool features and possibilities that we got used to in the previous versions of MetaSynth. It's even more powerful now, and we can import or create 16-bit graphics in the Image Synth (where graphic shapes are transformed to audio). When exporting the resulting audio file, you can create a 44,1 or 48 kHz AIFF or WAV in 16 or 24-bit, or even a Core Audio Float 32-bit file. For sound designers and music artists that want to create their own unique sound, sound effects, musical loops or just some sounds never heard before, I can't think of a better tool.

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ArtMatic (Designer+Voyager)

Reviewed By owlbert@icloud.com [all]
February 22nd, 2021
Version reviewed: CTX 1.0 on Mac

I have found no other program quite like this.. and the inbuilt potential of simultaneous sound and image-animation.

is such an intriguing quest and challenge that the program allows endless exploration of ..I like combining and contrasting the machinic and traditional animation and editing applications. the following are two examples of experiments using the program to respond to sound and to actually generate sound and animation ...

Dis Hop by Tatonic. uses sound responsive animation systems in Artmatic-edited and recomposed with traditional editing softwares.

https://youtu.be/Pb9AGucdl0E

and "Alien Brain Therapy" a simultaneous construction of sounds and image -audiovisual synthesiser using the "Listen to" room in the latest version of Artmatic Designer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pP4-LwH38E

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