I'm not against UA doing any plug they want. That was part of my point. They should make what they feel they can do well and make money on. I'm not against people wishing they would do some other plug or this or that either. But bitching because they put out another killer EQ plug instead of X gets old. There are other plug manufacturers out there, we can buy their products too. If UA can top something someone has already done, that's awesome (the Neve was a perfect example - their Neve blew URS Neve out of the water IMO), but doing something that has already been done well....
UA's niche seems to be modeling classic analog gear. Everything they have done has fit that model - either \"name brand\" analog emulations like 1176, LA2A, Neve, Roland, Helios, Pultec, Fairchild, Plate 140, or un-named generic, but still based on analog principles like Cambridge and the Precision series. I have no idea what their strategy is, but they seem to stick pretty close to this philosophy.
There are very few analog reverb units that can be emulated. The EMT 140 plate is an analog device, so that made sense (and I LOVE the Plate 140 BTW). I don't really count DreamVerb and RealVerb as \"UA emulations\" because they were not done by UA, but by Kind of Loud before UA took over. The Space Echo, Dimension D and Boss were analog devices, so that was cool as well. They could model a Fender spring reverb box, but that doesn't sound too interesting. Other than that, reverbs mainly consist of modeling different types of rooms and spaces rather than physical hardware units. Altiverb and Wizooverb have that pretty much nailed. I wonder if UA could make a digital reverb that sound anymore like a real room than Altiverb? Even if they could, how much DSP would that take? (and then everyone would complain about that).
With delays, it is kind of similar. Almost all non-tape-based delay units that could be modeled are digital (TC, Lexi, Eventide). Based on their past output, it doesn't seem that UA would be interested in digitally modeling a digital device. Besides, TC isn't about to let UA model their units officially since that would cut into PowerCore sells. PSP Audioware has an official Lexi delay which is awesome, so could UA really bring something else to the table?
I think something that would fit their niche and be uber-cool at the same time would be modeling a complete Studer tape machine - and I don't mean just modeling the saturation and compression characteristics, which is what most people refer to when they talk about this. I mean allowing you to do things with the plug that you would do with actual tape machines, like flanging and delay, in addition to using it to saturate your tracks. So it becomes sort of a multi-effects kind of plug where you can use 2 instances to add real-time tape flanging by clicking and dragging on one machines reels, or do real-time tape delay, or you can use it to add tape saturation, or you could switch out different types of \"tape\" or different virtual heads for different EQ......ahhhh that sounds nice
. I would also love to see another mastering-eq that's better then precision if there going to constantly do eq's.
