Is UAD worth it?

[Darryl Ramm]

I so wish UAD would support plugins on native and UAD DSP. It's not just cost, it's lock into their boxes and I want stuff that works on a laptop wherever I am.

I know Apogee is trying this, but they just don't have the market share UAD does.

[musicman691]

Originally Posted by Darryl Ramm

I so wish UAD would support plugins on native and UAD DSP. It's not just cost, it's lock into their boxes and I want stuff that works on a laptop wherever I am.

I know Apogee is trying this, but they just don't have the market share UAD does.

Exactly. I have a TC Powercore box sitting as a paperweight that has some lovely reverbs but isn't supported on modern operating systems.

[JFreak]

Originally Posted by ArKay99

How do you measure RTL? Just curious as I'd like to also. Studio One actually has a pinger in their hardware efx plug in, but nothing like that in PT and it wouldn't work for test I/O anyway.

Analog cable from output to input, activate signal generator, record, measure difference. That is the only reliable way to measure.

And by the way, in real world 8ms is perfectly acceptable. It is equivalent to speaker (or another instrument) being 2.7 meters away from ear. If that was a problem there would only be solo bands.

[albee1952]

Just 1 person's 2 cents; based on my own experience and reading thru this entire thread, here's my 2 cents: If you HAVE UA stuff, enjoy it. If you DON'T yet, I'd pass. Plugins don't make better music. Talent and skills make better music

[Stephen Bond]

Originally Posted by albee1952

If you HAVE UA stuff, enjoy it. If you DON'T yet, I'd pass. Plugins don't make better music. Talent and skills make better music

I think that is a good point regarding UA. They make good but expensive products. There are many excellent alternatives from other vendors but a few of the UA plugins are pretty unique. If you can afford them and want/need them then go for it. Otherwise, if you just need good studio standards then there are plenty of equally good (and far more affordable) alternatives to be found outside of UA.

Talent and skills make music, agreed. However, those with talent and skill often seem to have plenty of excellent tools at their disposal too! All that said, talent first, tools second.

Stephen

[Southsidemusic]

Originally Posted by albee1952

Just 1 person's 2 cents; based on my own experience and reading thru this entire thread, here's my 2 cents: If you HAVE UA stuff, enjoy it. If you DON'T yet, I'd pass. Plugins don't make better music. Talent and skills make better music

Yes Thank You! Spot On! We have the entire UA Plugin package and we still use 90% hardware as we do have a LOT of hardware.

But worth it? Thats an open ended question. Budgets, Needs, Wants, Functions, quality and so on ... Lots to consider. We use 4 x Apollo X8p units and love them. And as we have the X16 aswell for US we have a reason to pay for the UA plugins but starting from scratch I would say PluginAlliance as equally great (for being plugin emulations) and there are a million emulations with fancy GUI but in all honesty most in the 75-99 dollar category sound the same in the end IMHO
I mean everything has already been cloned and emulated to death and now it seem like it is the GUI’s that are what people look at when choosing. We have soo many unused emu’s of 1176/LA2/Neve etc etc and as we do have all them in Hardware and many more we have done a thousand versus bla bla bla and the plugins are basically the same all of them when in a mix and a buyer of your music sont hear anything between a Waves CLA76 and UA 1176 ... hardware is another thing and wont go there hahaha

So Get what is in your budget and NEEDS and you’ll be fine. Regarding UA and their shark processors we have to say they fill up damn quick. 4 X8p and thats 24 processor chips will fill up way too fast for the money we spent so get Native open plugins not tied to any Hardware or DAW.

All my opinion of course

[simon.a.billington]

It's not that I wish ill on UAd or its owners, but it would be interesting to see if that whole audio DSP market will start to devalue as chips like the M1 evolve over the next 5 years and more people come into their possession.

[Darryl Ramm]

Originally Posted by simon.a.billington

It's not that I wish ill on UAd or its owners, but it would be interesting to see if that whole audio DSP market will start to devalue as chips like the M1 evolve over the next 5 years and more people come into their possession.

The argument for DSP vs CPU should really not (oops edit: left *not* out) be about processing efficiency, CPUs have already been better there for years, can run VIs, sessions can be portable--don't depend on custom hardware, etc. lots of reasons to go CPU, but the historical arguments for DSP has been more that they allow low latency IO without going through a software IO buffer. DAWs can keep pushing on improvements there to run well at smaller IO, but that's not simply having a faster CPU, but we'll have to see what happens.

UAD can keep arguing it's tracking latency (with Luna or via their console) or their plugins are generally better. But meh. They and Avid are playing here with messed up marketing stories, UAD with "our plugins are better" (they'd be just as better on native CPU ) and Avid with "you have to go HDX if you want a lot of IO". Both are marketing messages that I hope the vendors walk away from for the benefit of their customers.