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here's 2 of the 3 AES announcements... both hardware.

peter893

Active Member
I find it completely insulting how UA ignores it customers. Im not sure how long we've been asking for a more powerful card, but its been a long time.

Everyone is always sucking up UAs ass, I have yet to see them respond with a new more powerful card. Its clear it needed!

Don't tell me to buy a bunch of cards
Dont tell me to purchase a magma chassis

I want ONE flippin card in my mac, from UA, NOT 3 or 4. I like to use other PCI/PCI cards beside a bunch of UAD.

WTF is going on over at UA!
 

taylor

Active Member
while we KNOW UA are aware of peole's needs and desires for a more powerful card.. and we can assume that they are working on it and that it takes time to do.. (ie, we should cut them some slack).... i DEFINITELY get the vibe around here (and elsewhere, gearslutz, eg.) that UA is losing a little bit of its popularity and respect. at least there is definitely some restless folks out there that are showing signs of impatience...

i think most of us here can safely say that the UAD plug ins have changed the way we mix ITB, improved our sound and that we hold them in the highest regard... however, with so many more great sounding options out there (waves ssl, duende, urs, massey, etc) it seems the glory days of UA's digital line are on a decline.

let's hope they can rescue themselves. it's probably safe to say that they have about a year before a lot people completely jump ship....

with that said, however, i'm still using only ONE card (a mackie branded one, at that) and am totally happy with my system.
 

BTLG

Established Member
I'm pretty satiated between native plug-ins and the UA stuff, but I feel they lack two things:

a) Power (i agree with Peter. I'd rather pay 800 for one card than buy 4)

and

b) general use plug-ins for EQ/Dynamics

I know a lot of people are going to disagree with me on b). Some people like the channel strip/ex-1, but I feel those plugs are far too extreme sounding, and not in a good way. It seems like unless they're emulating something else, UA lacks the innovation to come up with anything original and practical (aside from MAYBE the precision bundle, but I'm talking general usage here, not mastering).

Problems I have with the ex-1/channel strip:

- No way to compress before EQ'ing without using 2 plugs
- The auto makeup gain is awful and not conducive to work flow
- The EQ's are tinny and grainy (at least to me) and the bottom
is 'flubby'
- no gate/expander on the EX-1 OR the CS-1
- no side chain filter
- and last but not least, the GUI's are terrifying.

On top of that, I think they either ought to make it Cheap ($50 max!) or just give it to us. I know it sounds extreme, but it's a pretty basic need that I'm sure we all could use.
 

contramark

Active Member
peter893 said:
I find it completely insulting how UA ignores it customers. Im not sure how long we've been asking for a more powerful card, but its been a long time.
Well I find it insulting that a group of people on this forum feel they can represent the entire range of UA customers. I feel I have pleanty of processing power with only 2 cards. Id much rather be getting new plugins like the 1081 than some new card that will probably cost a small fortune.
 

peter893

Active Member
the majority is all that matters my friend.
huh, well I guess not to UA :wink:

Your doing the same by the way, assuming my needs are the same as your needs.

1. I don't need 2 dongles or 4 for that matter using up valuable PCI-e slots
2. I want to be able to run at least 4 instances of the neveEQ plus the other plugins I payed for.
3. Do I dare say I want to work at 96k in the near future.
4. I dont want a magma chassis. No other companies would suggest this. They would have the balls to put the power on at least one card.
 

Mark Edmonds

Active Member
BTLG said:
Problems I have with the ex-1/channel strip:

- No way to compress before EQ'ing without using 2 plugs
- The auto makeup gain is awful and not conducive to work flow
- The EQ's are tinny and grainy (at least to me) and the bottom
is 'flubby'
- no gate/expander on the EX-1 OR the CS-1
- no side chain filter
- and last but not least, the GUI's are terrifying.
Point 1 - yes. A pre/post switch would be really useful.

Point 2 - auto makeup? Is it actually there?????

Point 3 - in a recent blind test, some people were prefering this EQ to PEQ!!! Go figure! In general, I do think there is too much psychological bias against EX-1 because it is a "standard" plugin, a first release and not modelled on any famous brand hardware. Light on DSP too. A better plug than most people give credit.

Point 4 - yes.

Point 5 - yes but this is hardly unique to the UAD. Hopefully it will be improved in the future but the current VST spec is a problem for external side chaining.

Point 6 - terrifying????!!!! Joking surely? :) Easy clean GUIs to me. If you want terrifying, you can always load a Voxengo! :wink:

Mark
 
quite yer whining and complaining...
 

Mark Edmonds

Active Member
peter893 said:
4. I dont want a magma chassis. No other companies would suggest this. They would have the balls to put the power on at least one card.
Which is exactly what they have done!!!!!!!! LOL! :D

Mark
 

guitarz

Active Member
peter893 said:
I find it completely insulting how UA ignores it customers. Im not sure how long we've been asking for a more powerful card, but its been a long time.

Everyone is always sucking up UAs ass, I have yet to see them respond with a new more powerful card. Its clear it needed!

Don't tell me to buy a bunch of cards
Dont tell me to purchase a magma chassis

I want ONE flippin card in my mac, from UA, NOT 3 or 4. I like to use other PCI/PCI cards beside a bunch of UAD.

WTF is going on over at UA!
Yeah, I can see where the latest Neve plug is a bit of a slap-in-the-face, with only one instance per card. They should have come out with a more powerful solution before releasing plug-ins requiring so much power. But I still like my UAD-1 and the "older" plugs, of course. I just won't bother buying those hungry Neve plugs. Not worth juggling DSP, freezing tracks etc...
 

BTLG

Established Member
Mark -

I think you're a bit confused by what I mean with side chaining.

When I mention a sidechain filter on a compressor or gate, I'm referring to internally keying the gate with a filter (hp, lp, or band) that sets a frequency to trigger the gate or eq. It's incredibly useful for getting a gate/expander/comp to sound natural AND punchy (especially in the digital realm). It's a pretty common feature on most (and less expensive) plug-ins. External sidechaining IS possible in the current VST spec, you just have to think your way through it similar to how you would do it on a console - routing through busses and sends.

There is indeed an auto makeup at the output of the compressor. Heavily compress something and you'll hear it. I understand what they were trying to do, but I think it was a bad idea, since the makeup gain has a habit of uncomfortably raising the level. I'd even settle for an 'auto' setting of the makeup gain (like most compressors have).

I think you miss my point. I WANT a generic channel strip. In fact, I want it to LOOK like a channel strip and FUNCTION like one. Not like some discombobulated amalgamation of knobs. Do we need a \"delay/chorus/reflection emulator (WTF?)\" on a channel strip? I don't think so. I just want EQ/Dynamics with some form of flexibility with a decent amount of DSP headroom (so I can run more than 2 of them).

I don't think you can make an argument saying that UA provides that right now, and I think it's an important feature to have.
 

Nightowl

Active Member
UA has taken so long to come up with a new hardware solution that when they do finally release something it had better be supurb. I mean seriously, look at the new Fairlight card ... UA should be able to drop something that is at least 8-10 times more powerful than what they have now ... The UAD-1 has been out for years, and its onboard chip had been out for years when the UAD1 was first released.
 

stonefree

Member
I'm immensely disappointed. I thought for sure we'd finally get it thus time. I'm going to the AES today (it's right by my house!) and I'll definitely try to extract some official \"unofficial\" information.

I've been holding off upgrading my prehistoritc 2.4 P4 system because of the dilmea of what to do with my even more ancient UAD cards. All for nothing!
 

F5D

Active Member
I can run 7 neve compressors per card and I will add another card soon. Forget the dsp hungry non-SE version! That's for guys who wanted UA to make such a plugin...

It's funny that at first some people wanted UA to make a plugin with the best possible modeling, no matter if it needs the whole card to run if it's good. Now we have such a plugin and it's UA's fault that the card can run only 1 of them? :D

Yeah, I would like to see a more powerful card too but currently I'm happy with SE- and some other plugins. Anyway, I haven't purchased an Ultra pak or all the uad1 plugins because the uad1 cards cannot handle all the plugins at the same time. I have bought only some of the best and also use powercore + native plugins.
 

dusty

Active Member
Sorry for the stupid question fellas.. but if UA can't make/or don't have the time to make a more powerfull card, why they don't just pay some chinese company to develop a new chip?

I don't understand why they don't come up w/ a FW800 solution.. SSL and TC are doing just fine w/ FW400..
 

F5D

Active Member
In fact the TC Powecore Firewire is not as stable as Powercore PCI cards. It needs more native cpu to transfer the data to and from powercore. You can see this very easily in your host sequencer's cpu meter when loading plugins. You also have to use higher latencies to avoid dropouts & powercore synchronization lost errors etc which never happen with pci powercores. You can run more plugins with less native cpu usage at lower latencies with powercore pci, element and pci mk2. In fact the pci cards very rarely have any problems but the firewire has in many cases.
 

BTLG

Established Member
Yeah, I think on average there are more issues with firewire solutions than with any other platform in DAW audio (other than USB in the early tascam interfaces)

In general PCI would be the way to go I think, they just need to make a more powerful card. If this ones lasted x amount of years I'm sure even tripling the power would go a long way with current users.
 

Eric Dahlberg

Purveyor of musical dreams fullfilled.
peter893 said:
I find it completely insulting how UA ignores it customers. Im not sure how long we've been asking for a more powerful card, but its been a long time.
Did you ever stop to consider that there might be other factors involved? When Toyota doesn't release a hybrid vehicle that gets 100mpg, is it because they're ignoring customer's requests or could it possibly be that there isn't a cost effective way for them to do it yet?
 
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