Usine is a unique piece of audio software designed for live and/or studio use. Usine was created out of the need for a flexible software solution for spontaneous electronic music creation, including live sampling, effect processing, and sound design. Usine provides the user with the ability to host VSTs, process and route audio and midi, and design personalized virtual control interfaces.

Usine is a modular environment, meaning that you can build your personal live audio control setup exactly as you want by connecting modules within a patch. See 3. My first patch.

Example of a Patch

Several patches can be loaded on a grid which is a kind of Mixing Console. See 6. the Mixer and Grid.

The Grid mode

With Usine you can create an interface precisely suited to your needs, with a powerful and flexible control layout implementation. See 10. Advanced Interface.

The Interface Builder mode

It may seem strange to hear this question coming from the Usine team, but we don’t want to waste your time!

So you probably don’t need Usine if:

• you already have audio software, and you never feel limited by its possibilities.
• It’s not an in depth multi-track recording and wave editing software. It doesn’t replace software like Steinberg™ CUBASE® or Magix™ SAMPLITUDE®, etc. However, it is possible to combine Usine with the powerfull features of these products by using the VST and VSTI versions of Usine within any VST compatible software.

At the contrary Usine will be a revolution for you if:

• you sometimes feel limited by your existing audio software.
• you are looking for a perfect interface for the control of your sound.
• you play often in a live situation.
• you like to be different, sound different and use unusual audio effects.
• you feel that other modular environments are too complex.

Moreover Usine has no equivalent if

• you want to create your own personal setup.
• you play often in surround (up to 32 channels).
• you are involved in theater or dance performance contexts.
• you are looking for powerful routing capabilities.

You will quickly learn to ask this question differently: it’s not a matter of “what you can do” but rather “how you can do it” because Usine has such infinite possibilities.

You’ll quickly discover that you can do virtually anything… the only limititation is your imagination.

• Process sound modularly: create patches with modules and connect them by virtual wires very simply.
• Analyse input or generated sound, for example pitch, peaks or dynamics to create adaptive effects which can modify any parameter in real time.
• Organize patches, sounds, and effects on a timeline with the sequencer mode. Create complex automation curves.
• Use the built-in virtual mixing table to mix the sound produced by different patches on each track (up to 32).
• Create huge, creative or stupid audio routing within the mixing table. For example, routing a patch output to another patch input, or create a virtual master effect send and return, etc.
• Manage 32 external audio sources and apply different effects to any of them.
• Create flexible Surround projects: all audio tracks are natively 16.0. The output sound can be routed to any of the 32 available outputs, depending on your sound card.
• Route audio or midi from one track to another in your favorite host (VST version)
• Create insert patches on any input or output channel. For example a master limiter or a master reverb.
• Complete VST® processing: You can use any VST instrument or effect in patches and modify any VST Parameter in real time. Create simple front-end interfaces for your VSTs.
• Complete MIDI automation: assign any Usine visual object to a midi controller very easily by using the right click midi-learn command. Complete integration of motorized external controllers.
• Complete MIDI input/output management for VSTi instruments or external expanders.
• Load up to 512 patches in memory in a grid and activate them as you want in real time.
• Unlimited scene memorization, recalled manually or according to a precise SMPTE code.
• Synchronize patches and VST plug-ins with a master tempo. Use unusual and absurd tempos from 0! To 10000000000!
• Record your creations directly on the hard disk in real time: separate tracks, inputs and outputs.
• All Usine functions are real-time, and you can resample, modify, input sound on the fly.
• Of course, save patches, complete setups, and configurations, for very quick adaptation to different projects.
• Unlimited Undo/Redo.
• Use any sample rate supported by your Asio sound card. Usine has a 32 bit floating-point audio engine.
• Unlimited number of internal Audio, Data and Midi buses
• Pascal-like scripting capabilities which allow for the creation of new audio and midi processing modules.
• Full Open Sound Control (OSC) compatibility to communicate with other computers connected to the network or Internet.
• C++ programmers can easily create new graphic and control modules using the SDK.
• Use the video tracker to modify sound parameters with a camera.
• Play videos and synchronize audio very simply.
• Usine is fully touch and multi-touch enabled.

Usine is very powerful, but conceptually limited in some aspects:

• It’s not a modular synthesizer. Fortunately, you can use Synthesis Pack by Nay-Seven or any VSTi you want like Native Instruments™ Reaktor® / Kontakt® or AAS™ Tassman®, etc.
• It’s not multi-track recording software. It doesn’t replace software like Steinberg™ CUBASE® or Magix™ SAMPLITUDE®, etc.
• Usine can’t help you to maintain a ‘normal’ family life: you’ll spend too many hours creating patches once you discover the depth of Usine’s capabilities…

To install Usine you will need the following hardware and software configuration:

• Windows XP™, Windows Vista™, Windows Seven™
• An Asio-compatible sound card or any WDM sound card plus the universal Asio driver Asio4all available at http://www.asio4all.com/.

Usine is supposed to work with any PC hardware but, to be honest–we should learn the basics of marketing–don’t expect to produce complex electronic music without:

• At least 512 Mb of RAM,
• Intel Celeron, Pentium4 or AMD processor at 1.8 GHz, a Centrino 1.2 GHz or equivalent,
• 40 GB Hard Drive,
• 1024×768 screen resolution.

A good configuration for live performance with usine would be something like this:

• Dual core CPU 1.8 GHz
• 2 GB of RAM
• Windows virtual memory disabled.