Is UAD worth it?

[Southsidemusic]

Originally Posted by deanrichard

I won't be one of those flaying you, and I use UAD myself. I have no doubt using familiar analog emulations gives a strong comfort level, especially to long time engineers who have used the HW. It's human nature. I also believe that making the UI identical, or nearly so, has a strong psychological effect.

Agree with both of you guys and we have every plugin they have done to date along with 6 Apollo and Satellite units...

Never thought about the familiarity aspect but i think you are spot on there Noiseboyuk

They do sound awesome but as you said - We have some fine equally great alternatives that run natively and uses far less CPU aswell as costing a third.

[mikeyman]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk4M75QLq4E

[Gemylon]

For me, UAD is worth every penny, every cent.

And yes, I am not going into any discussion on this.
I've seen too many threads on the cons and pros.
Not going anywhere ...


Btw ...
These days I am downgrading the ITB part of my studio setup.
So I am selling out most of my Native Plugins.
Simply don't need (most of them) no more.

But I am keeping the UAD.
Its just better ... for me.

[zion]

Originally Posted by Gemylon

For me, UAD is worth every penny, every cent.

And yes, I am not going into any discussion on this.
I've seen too many threads on the cons and pros.
Not going anywhere ...

I agree 100% I have a lot of plugins just see my signature. The list goes on an on but UAD are the main ones I use second would be Softube.

[Gemylon]

Originally Posted by zion

I agree 100% I have a lot of plugins just see my signature. The list goes on an on but UAD are the main ones I use second would be Softube.

Funny you mention it, Softube would be my second as well

Along with Console 1.
Great unit, both for UAD and Softube plugins.

[PatriotsBiker]

Originally Posted by Drew Mazurek

The MKIIs are definitely worth getting IMO. Your example about the LA2 in particular. The MKII has the emphasis screw which allows you to roll off some bottom in the side chain only which to me makes it much more usable and smooth on low frequency content. And the 1176MKIIs model the entire signal path including all non linearities, which is especially important for the Rev A which is the dirtiest one.

As for Unison, not sure if it's because it's new, but the new Helios channel is really great. Not only in Unison mode, but even when you drive the line input during mixing, I've found it to be a really great color.

These most recent plugs (Helios, SSL Channel, Distressor) have raised the bar IMO, and I think we are finally achieving real analog feel/sound ITB. I know, I know, people have been saying that for years, but at some point it will actually be true!!

I finally had good enough of a sale to take yours and guitardom's (and others advice) and got this Helios plug. This thing is great. It is what I've been expecting from all of the high dollar plugs that have advertised the whole analog tube warmth thing. Too bad I only have a duo.

So thanks again for the tips everyone!

[Drew Mazurek]

Originally Posted by PatriotsBiker

This thing is great.

Awesome!! So glad you dig it!

[Wall2Wall]

I went from an HDX2 to a UAD setup that eventually grew to an Apollo Quad + (3) Octos. Now, I just have 1 Apollo and use 90% native plugins. Mostly PA and Slate working at 96khz.

[TNM]

Originally Posted by Tobias Eichelberg

I own quite a bunch of UAD-Plugins and I'm using an Octo PCIe card alongside my HDX 2.

In essence I agree with Stephen Bond, although I think the audio quality of some of their plug-ins justifies putting up with the DSP nonsense, when you want to buy in, wait for Black Friday or any of the 50% off offers.

I'd add one more significant downside to using them though - the latency means I can't use UAD plug-ins before bouncing stuff into Melodyne and offline bounces will be speed limited to 2,5x instead of 10x-16x depending on your CPU. This is a really bugging me. I'm using a lot of the Plugin-Alliance stuff instead, they have a few top notch processors that are even AAX DSP.

I'm very curious to know how much minimum latency each UAD thunderbolt satellite plugin adds to pro tools HDX. I am definitely going HDX in the future to replace my apollos and analog mixers to have everything in Pro Tools as a turnkey solution, but there are some UA specific plugins I'd still like to use when mixing, for example Oxide.
You are in a unique position to answer this so I really hope you see this post.

I understand all the individual plugin latencies of all UA's plugins, what I am after is the base latency. You can easily test this by inserting an older UA MK1 plugin into the HDX mixer, as the MK1 plugins are not upsampled and don't have additional latency.. Therefore the latency will only be whatever the latency is to deal with dsp to dsp system..
So, the scenarios I am after is one UA plugin inserted on an audio track with no other plugins, and one UA plugin inserted on a different track in conjunction WITH a hdx aax dsp plugin, where I think the latency will be higher.

I want to make sure that the low ADC value of pro tools is enough to take care of being able to at least use a couple UA plugins on a track if I want to. I can work out the rest myself as I know all the individual plugin latencies, and I can add them to the base latency after to work out what will be usable and what won't be.

Would really, really appreciate this.. Knowing this will determine whether I sell my 4 satellites and all my UAD plugins along with them.

Cheers

[Darryl Ramm]

It’s HDX... there are no “low ADC”values... unless you mean 16k samples is low?

The latency depends on your use...Additional latency above any in the UAD plugin should be 2X the buffer size. So 1k samples? x2 Hopefully you are careful with plugin ordering and do not interweave UAD and HDX/DSP plugins

You are running large sessions right? With all tracks live/no freeze/commit? Do you understand how many HDX cards you will need?