Universal Audio In Trouble

[Eric Lambert]

Originally Posted by briaboy

He said "many" (when it's really a few) and someone took that and changed it to "majority"

That's an awfully reckless modification. Did that surface on UA's forum or was it in this post?

[briaboy]

On the UAD forum.

[Sugarnutz]

Originally Posted by UniversalAudio

Hey Sugarnutz,
This is of course not true. Here's some details for you.

Universal Audio has made the difficult but necessary decision to part ways with 10 employees from our worldwide workforce.

How about 20? Eager to hear the answer to this!

[UniversalAudio]

Originally Posted by Sugarnutz

How about 20? Eager to hear the answer to this!

The number is 10. And our focus is on helping them during this time of transition.

[Sugarnutz]

Originally Posted by UniversalAudio

The number is 10. And our focus is on helping them during this time of transition.

All I needed to hear!

[simon.a.billington]

The problem is their technology was heavily invested in relying on the SHARC processors.

It seems while all the other chip manufacturers like Intel, AMD and even Apple now have aggressively improved the performance of their chips over time. Meanwhile, it would seem that SHARC did very little. Now 10 or so years later the modern CPU can do everything the SHARC could does well as run the OS and other apps on top of that and even have room for more.

On top of that they're so many other competitors in the plugin game. Not just the big developers, but alot of smaller ones now too. The democratisation of music creation has also meant the democratisation of plugin development too. So people could now invest less than the UAD platform and get just as much millage out of it, if not more.

It's no wonder they started investing in the Luna ecosystem, even started packaging their tech as guitar solutions and partnering up with Townsend to bring us their mic modelling solution. Though, it would seem that none of this was enough to offset the slow demise of their SHARC-based DSP technology. They could go on to reinvent it, maybe based on an ARM chip, but this may just cost them too much time and energy...

...which is probably why we've seen those layoffs.

[M2E]

Originally Posted by simon.a.billington

The problem is their technology was heavily invested in relying on the SHARC processors.

It seems while all the other chip manufacturers like Intel, AMD and even Apple now have aggressively improved the performance of their chips over time. Meanwhile, it would seem that SHARC did very little. Now 10 or so years later the modern CPU can do everything the SHARC could does well as run the OS and other apps on top of that and even have room for more.

On top of that they're so many other competitors in the plugin game. Not just the big developers, but alot of smaller ones now too. The democratisation of music creation has also meant the democratisation of plugin development too. So people could now invest less than the UAD platform and get just as much millage out of it, if not more.

It's no wonder they started investing in the Luna ecosystem, even started packaging their tech as guitar solutions and partnering up with Townsend to bring us their mic modelling solution. Though, it would seem that none of this was enough to offset the slow demise of their SHARC-based DSP technology. They could go on to reinvent it, maybe based on an ARM chip, but this may just cost them too much time and energy...

...which is probably why we've seen those layoffs.

Hey Simon, maybe it's because I've only had my UAD system for a year and a half now but, the UAD chips are more than enough for me as long as you have a great computer (New Mac M1 chips). True, you have to get more cards, I've mentioned this on Gearspace, I have yet to run out of CPU power and I only have 5 Quad cards (3 Satellites and 2 PCIe cards). If you need more cards/power, get more or save up to get more. The reason I got so many is because I kept hearing this fallacy about UAD plugins take up all this power and I was like, I better get a lot of power on the front end.
I received my first QUAD satellite and pulled up plugins and I agree, one will not do it at all. Once I received the other units and saw how they implement the power, it all made sense and I had more power than needed for now.
The heaviest plugin was the Lexicon 480L taking up 16% on one chip of a quad.
Once I added another unit, that went down to 8%. Added another, that went down to 4% etc. Now I pull it up, and it only takes 1%. Now, with that said, a 1176 in stereo takes up 1% (which in reality is 2 units) same with LA2A. Some plugins especially in "Legacy" which I use mostly cause they sound great and I can get 5 on 1 chip (1176) or 6 on 1 chip with (LA2A).
Now, could I do a full mix with 5 Quads, YES! They just don't have everything I need plugin wise so, that's where Native plugins help big time. Now with the M1 Pro Macbook Pro, I have yet to use more than 60% on the Macbook Pro and 50% on the UAD system. I'm doing a mix right now, using 264 plugins, mostly high-end plugins no legacy on this one and I'm only using 37% on the UAD and 59% on the Macbook Pro M1 Pro. This is a really huge session with a lot of vocals that I didn't mix down and a lot of music.
27 instruments, 24 busses, 20 EFX Busses with (Lexion 480L, 224, Pure Path, AMS RMX, EMT 140 and 250, UAD Capitol, Ocean Way Reverb) and many more, and 62 vocal tracks. Plus more stuff that I'm not mentioning.
I could easily get more than 500 plugins with a breeze if needed which I would never need.

So, this fallacy of UAD2 not being enough or that the cards are old etc is just nonsense to me. I'm not sure how everyone else is mixing but, you guys must be using 700 plugins a mix or something like that.

JusMyOpinion, Marc

[James Steele]

Originally Posted by M2E

The heaviest plugin was the Lexicon 480L taking up 16% on one chip of a quad.
Once I added another unit, that went down to 8%. Added another, that went down to 4% etc. Now I pull it up, and it only takes 1%.

I'm interested in how you can get it that low. I have a TB3 Satellite OCTO I bought only last year and I love the UAD 480L (for which there is no UADx version yet). However, when I add an instance (in DP 11.21) the 480L uses 58% of one of the SHARC processors. See the attached screen capture from a project where I opened just one stereo instance of UAD 480L. I would never need that many, but it means 8 would be the max on my OCTO.

I'm using a an M1 Max Mac Studio, 64GB/2TB, macOS 12.6.3 and my hardware buffer is set to 256, but I don't think that has any bearing on the percentage of the SHARC processor a plugin will reserve for itself, does it? Again, can't figure out how the same plug takes up so much less on your QUAD??? Also I just checked and Hitsville Chambers requires just over 80% of a SHARC processor.

I do like the UAD plugs a lot and I think the Satellite will be supported for a few more years at least and continue to work thereafter for a bit, so I'm actually of the mindset I may pick up another cheap if there is panic selling on CL, etc.

[LDS]

Originally Posted by M2E

So, this fallacy of UAD2 not being enough or that the cards are old etc is just nonsense to me. I'm not sure how everyone else is mixing but, you guys must be using 700 plugins a mix or something like that.

JusMyOpinion, Marc

People don't call UAD underpowered because they want to run 700 plugins in mix. They call it underpowered because almost $5k of UAD DSP will only host 60 instances of API Vision Channel Strip, while my native CPU can literally handle 1000 instances.

And my computer only cost $1500! There are definitely benefits to UAD-2 DSP like tracking through plugins on the way into Pro Tools or Unison Preamps, but there really is no getting around the fact that economically, UAD-2 has the worst plugin-instance-per-dollar of any platform out there. And it isn't just worse by a little bit. It is worse by magnitudes.

[LDS]

Originally Posted by James Steele

I'm interested in how you can get it that low. I have a TB3 Satellite OCTO I bought only last year and I love the UAD 480L (for which there is no UADx version yet). However, when I add an instance (in DP 11.21) the 480L uses 58% of one of the SHARC processors. See the attached screen capture from a project where I opened just one stereo instance of UAD 480L. I would never need that many, but it means 8 would be the max on my OCTO.

I'm using a an M1 Max Mac Studio, 64GB/2TB, macOS 12.6.3 and my hardware buffer is set to 256, but I don't think that has any bearing on the percentage of the SHARC processor a plugin will reserve for itself, does it? Again, can't figure out how the same plug takes up so much less on your QUAD??? Also I just checked and Hitsville Chambers requires just over 80% of a SHARC processor.

I do like the UAD plugs a lot and I think the Satellite will be supported for a few more years at least and continue to work thereafter for a bit, so I'm actually of the mindset I may pick up another cheap if there is panic selling on CL, etc.

My experience echoes yours - I have never seen UAD-2 plugin instances use less DSP just because more DSP is added to the system. I suspect what M2E is describing is really just the effect of UAD Loadlock being disengaged.

If you have Loadlock turned off, the 480L will only use about 14% of a single DSP chip for the "B" machine algorithms. They are delays, rather than reverbs.

Similarly, if you have Loadlock turned off an 1176LN Rev E will use 14.7% of a DSP chip under normal gain reduction. If you then hit the "OFF" pushbutton below the meter settings, it drops to 1%. It also means the plugin is doing no gain reduction at all.

DSP Loadlock is UAD's attempt at adding some degree of dynamic processing to DSP plugins.