Big Announcement Coming

[Sid Chigger]

New Webzine Link:
http://www.uaudio.com/webzine/2006/september/index.html

Text of Announcement Teaser:
121st AES Convention
AES returns to San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center this year from Friday, October 6 to Sunday, October 8. UA has not one, not two, but THREE major product announcements to make, but the people making the products are smart enough not to tell the people making the WebZine what they are... Watch this space for more information

Nice look at the coming Neve Compressor too in this months webzine..

 

[RWIL]

Yeah! Another hype is rigth front at the door!

RW

 

[Eric Dahlberg]

Will's trailer guitar scares me.

 

[KaNeT]

[...] one stereo instance [of the 33609] takes around 70% of a UAD-1 processor at 44.1k! You can barely fit two mono versions as well. [...]

UAD-2 please...!

 

[saemskin]

arent bus compressors meant to be used on sub-groups, not individual tracks? Why. What is it in their architecture that makes them benefit from this?

 

[makinghits]

yeah, 70%, you gotta be joking

 

[NuSkoolTone]

Hmm, UAD100 extended too. Big Announcement?

With 70% usage for this new plug, Man in a way I almost hope it's NOT the UAD-2, just dropped on the expert pak. But with that kind of usage it sure would make a lot of sense!

Well I take that back it would be nice to have the UAD-2 assuming it's reasonably priced. I hope I didn't just drop nearly the same money on the Pci-e. Though I did in essence get the card for free with the incentives. Time will tell.

 

[Tony Ostinato]

Yah, you can blame me, i'm the one who begged UA to make heavywieght emus that take up a whole card back around the time dreamverb came out.

Hey but at least they give us a Neve 33609SE Plug-In.

 

[neil wilkes]

Can't see a UAD-2 being based on a different chip - it would mean everything would have to be ported.
What would be nice is a new card with 2 chips & double the RAM on it. Then I can buy card #4 as one of these, and gradually change the older Mk I versions to the Mk II.
What we need to happen is a way of boosting the insane 4 card limitation.
It's this that is killing me and many others. I wonder if a special chassis (developed by UA?) would work where it is possible to keep adding cards, as long as you have the slots in the chassis, and the PC will simply \"see\" it as one, large F-Off card and not have a hissyfit about exceeding 4 devices (Which is definitely a system limitation, not an arbitrary UA one as you cannot have more than, say, 4 RME Audio cards either.
It has to be possible for a single chassis to be used, where there is a control circuit showing up to 8 or 10 cards as one, large unit.

 

[A Gruesome Discovery]

Wow, I was going to buy the new PCIe card this weekend... now I guess I'll just wait for the big announcement. I'd hate to buy something that immediately goes obsolete, and there's just not enough room in my closet to junk a UAD-1, what with all the LaserDiscs and Apple™ Newtons.

 

[neil wilkes]

The UAD-1 is not about to go obsolete.
Neither is the UAD-1e.
My guess is that 2 of the 3 new products to be announced will be the Neve Compressor & the final Neve EQ.
The other one will probably be a new piece of hardware - UA make much more than DSP cards & plugins, so why do we assume a new product announcement is going to be computer related?

Personally - I still want to see either a surround wrapper, or support for up to 8 channels.

 

[guitarz]

Wow, I was going to buy the new PCIe card this weekend... now I guess I'll just wait for the big announcement. I'd hate to buy something that immediately goes obsolete, and there's just not enough room in my closet to junk a UAD-1, what with all the LaserDiscs and Apple™ Newtons.

I think it's safe to assume that whatever they come up with will be compatible with the current cards - AND the UAD-1 will still run the older plugs fine, so it's not going to become obsolete if a newer card comes out. ...But, yeah I'd wait too...

I am hoping a new card will allow the used price on a UAD-1 to drop a little...

 

[guitarz]

My guess is that 2 of the 3 new products to be announced will be the Neve Compressor & the final Neve EQ.

"UA has not one, not two, but THREE major product announcements to make, but the people making the products are smart enough not to tell the people making the WebZine what they are... Watch this space for more information."

I dunno... This reads like the three new products are in addition to the Neve compressor, as the new plug has pretty much been announced already (not a secret).

Besides what your ears tell you, another indicator of the sheer magnitude of modeling such a complex analog circuit is the fact that one stereo instance takes around 70% of a UAD-1 processor at 44.1k!

This, however, reads like a sales quote from a yet-to-be-released ad for a UAD-2-type product!

 

[makinghits]

I say here come the 'Nevuende\", uad's answers to SSLs duende. that and a new converter and some new pre/channelstrip.

 

[Eric Dahlberg]

Didn't someone mention here before that UA was planning to do their own expansion chassis? I seem to remember them getting told this at the summer AES show. It would be bad business for them to release a replacement for the UAD-1 so soon after releasing the PCIe cards, though I suppose it might be possible if the new card is priced significantly higher - creating a new price-based class to differentiate it from the current cards - or is an external device.

 

[dugman]

Uncle E - I was actually gonna say the same thing regarding the expansion chassis. My prediction is for a PCIe-PCI 7-slot chassis (UA branded, made by Magma) that will be locked to UAD-1 PCI cards. UA will change the 4-card limit to 7 cards and let us load that chassis up... Wishful thinking? Maybe, but I also see that as a prudent business strategy and if it were me in the UA think-tank strategizing for the future that is exactly what I would have been working on for the last year or so... Makes perfect sense:

1) The engineering is already done for such a chassis, either for PCI-PCI or PCIe-PCI. Maybe a little work would need to be done by the Magma folks if UA wanted to do something like restrict the chassis to only use UAD-1 cards. If they went that route, what would be even cooler is if they could force the chassis to give the same IRQ to all 7 slots, which would go a long way towards guaranteeing that all the UAD-1 cards inside would play well with each other (and the other PCI devices in the host computer). That approach right there would alleviate a large majority of the problems with people having to become full-fledged computer techs to use these tools... Make it easy to use and the masses will buy more of them.

2) UA has the technology down cold for the UAD-1, but this is based on a chip that isn't being developed anymore. It isn't brand new and isn't the most powerful thing on the block anymore, but again the engineering is already done and they have a relatively stable and robust system that they can obviously still make best-of-class plugins for. The only problem is that the better the algo, the more DSP it usually takes up. This means more cards are needed to use these great tools at higher sample rates or track counts without resorting to workflow-killing tricks like freeze. I remember reading somewhere that UA probably still has a mountain of these Chromatic Research chips which means UAD-1 cards (whether PCI or PCIe) are much cheaper for them to continue making instead of starting completely over with a new engine. Put another way, what makes better business sense - expensive R&D for building and porting everything to a new platform or extending the life of the existing one as long as possible?

Basically, give us another few years of life with the UAD1 by letting us increase the card count in an easy to use manner and that way they can extend their R&D window for the next gen while maximizing profits from the current one... Hell, if they can make it work, I'll max out a chassis with 7 cards. I'm sure a lot of other folks here would too


Thanks!
bax

 

[Sid Chigger]

I sure would! And all the talk of raising the limit has me thinking about getting some more cards, NOW!! LOLOL If only I had some extra $$$

 

[mightymike]

Didn't someone mention here before that UA was planning to do their own expansion chassis? I seem to remember them getting told this at the summer AES show. It would be bad business for them to release a replacement for the UAD-1 so soon after releasing the PCIe cards, though I suppose it might be possible if the new card is priced significantly higher - creating a new price-based class to differentiate it from the current cards - or is an external device.

I think it was a whole load of us saying UA should release such a unit! Also some made a graphical mock up of a possible unit!

mm

 

[RobPain]

Given that the new Neve compressor takes 70% DSP at 44.1kHz, can you actually run it at higher sample rates if you have multiple cards? If not, maybe UA are working on a solution that that problem, be it a chassis or multiple-DSP card?

But I think it is fairly obvious given UA's business that not all annoucements will be UAD-1 related.

You never know, they may be announcing some new plug-ins that will be developed under the Roland colaboration. Or perhaps maybe even a new tie-in with an as-yet-unknown hardware manufacturer?

 

[guitarz]

But I think it is fairly obvious given UA's business that not all annoucements will be UAD-1 related.

I don't think anyone implied that all three new products would be UAD related. Just that at least one would address the need for more power - especially in light of the new Neve plug's appetite.

I reeeaally don't see the solution as a UA-branded chassis. I think it's what those of you with investment in multiple cards would like to see (need to see?)... but the new Neve plugs are just too power-hungry for UA not to come up with a better DSP solution than that.

I concur with another poster's opinion I read that the UAD-1 will stick around for entry level users, while a more powerful UAD-2 will cater towards professional, power-users ($$). The only obstacle I see to this plan is creating plugs compatible with two different chips. Then again... they'll have a bit of practice doing this for G5 and Mac Pros... /crystal ball