Need help with plugin direction after UA NAMM disappointment

[kittyboy]

Well, I didn't take advantage of the pre-new year's sale because I wanted to see what would happen at NAMM and I can't say I'm sorry. UAD is still a great product, but it's tough for me to make the investment (3+ cards) knowing how underpowered and due for revision they are.
So here's my situation. I'm starting to mix my solo record now and need to get some plugs soon. I use metric halo 2882+dsp, which according to many has excellent eq and compression, but are a bit of a pain to use because you have to route to each instance rather than just drop them in on the track. I can probably deal with that--the tunes I'm mixing will all be less than 10 tracks per tune, but that still leaves me with no reverb...
So I could get altiverb, which seems like a great product, but at $500+ seems a bit steep for just reverb. However, reverb is very important to me.

So here's the question: if you were in my situation and were ready to commit about $2000 to plugs, what would you do? The tunes cover several styles and range from full band to one guitar and one voice. Priorities in order of importance:

1)quality
2)ease of use
3)price

with 2 and 3 being pretty close.

All input much appreciated. I thought UAD would be my solution, but...

 

[Eric Dahlberg]

The Wizooverb W2/W5 bundle is selling for $129.95 these days. There are some other impulse reverb options but they wouldn't work for you if you're on a Mac. There's always the Powercore route, as well, which will provide better than Altiverb quality, IMO, but it may not be a worthwhile investment for you if you wouldn't be using it for its other capabilities.

All that said, it seems unlikely to me that you would run out of UAD power with three cards covering such small mixes. The guys complaining about the 4-card limit are the ones doing 24+ track mixes.

 

[djsynchro]

TC Powercore everyone's raving about the reverbs for that.

 

[Resonant Alien]

kittyboy -

First, if all of your tunes are 10 tracks or less, I doubt you would need 3 cards. You should have plenty with just 2. So, in your case, I believe that the notion that the card is underpowered does not necessarily apply.

For EQ and compression, assuming you want the \"vintage vibe\", UAD plugs simply cannot be beat IMO. To get that same kind of quality, you are going to be looking at Waves (which is overpriced and will bleed you dry with WUP) or SSL Duende, which is pretty pricey for what you get.

For reverb, UAD is not the place to look - with the big exception of Plate 140, which is stellar. Though I do like the PowerCore reverbs, I think the EQ and comps are only mediocre, so buying a PowerCore just for verbs is paying more than you need to. Look at WizooVerb or WaveArts MasterVerb. Both are under $200 and are excellent.

If I were you, I would get 2 UADs and either Wizooverb or MasterVerb, OR I would hold off a couple more months and see if UA announces the new UAD platform - which I'm sure is not far away.

 

[Kevin Reiter]

For Quality, ease of use and price you have to try

Artsacoustic Reverb. Price 189 $

http://www.artsacoustic.com

Very musical sounding. nice interface and workflow!!!!

Demo is also available

 

[Horse]

Powercore & VSS3

If it's specifically the reverb that you are after, I think that'd be hard to beat.

If you want an alternatve, there's a guy selling some very nice impulses here: KVR Studio Cat Impulse Tools Group Buy - all for a ridiculous $20.

You might find that somethng like this is going to be all you need.

H

 

[rydan]

Well, when it comes to your basic dynamics/eq, I would recommend Sonalksis if you want to go native. Not as characterfull as the UAD stuff, but veeeery good nonetheless. Also, a great compliment to UAD if you add it later.

 

[profkojo]

It's a tough one. I'm in similiar place where I need more power (one card) but am concerned about where UAD are going regarding a new card. After looking at the alternatives(Duende, Liquid Mix, Powerecore, new computer for native), the most economic way to add more power was to get anothe UAD card(although I'm getting Duende at some point). Everbody seems to be worried about the card being under-powered but I guess we forget that it's probably the cheapest quality solution out there.

It doesn't seem like you need another card to me but you'll probably find that that's gonna be the simplest and most economic upgrade. The bottom line is,is sounds like you need to make your album now. What they bring out in 6-8 months or a year is irrelevant.

 

[Tony Ostinato]

if you use the se versions of the plugins that upsample to 192k you might be fine, do you really think you need to upsample to 192k on every instance you run?

 

[Koed]

LOL ...Saying that a 4 card UAD rig is underpowerd is like saying you want to switch to a case of Behringer EQ's cause you can't make a mix with just 4 real Pulteq's :lol:

 

[emfrank]

For EQ and compression, I am digging the Waves SSL collection right now. WUP is a pain but I'd rather have a native solution than add a duende and deal with hardware problems. I have 2 UAD1 cards and can only get one to work reliably. I am having a new computer built that should allow both to work. The only reason I am not too upset was that I received a voucher that was only a few dollars less than I paid for the second card.

I really like the Plate 140 for reverb. I have tried a demo of Altiverb and like it also but it seems to cause a lot of crashes in Sonar. Another reverb that is pretty cool is Glaceverb which is free. Search for Glaceverb on google. I haven't had a chance to hear the powercore stuff so have no coments on how they compare.

 

[kittyboy]

Thanks for all the great input.

The more I look around the more I think I'll just get a couple UAD cards and maybe altiverb.

Thing is, I'm recording at 24/88.2--do you think I'll need three cards for mixes of ten tracks max, or will two cards do?

Also (I know this has been covered before--sorry) but which plugs would you say are \"must-haves\"?


Hopefully UA will take care of their UAD-1 customers when they find their new platform.

 

[billybk1]

Thing is, I'm recording at 24/88.2--do you think I'll need three cards for mixes of ten tracks max, or will two cards do?

Also (I know this has been covered before--sorry) but which plugs would you say are "must-haves"?

You may want to get three cards then. Your DSP requirements are going to double. If you look at the UAD-1 DSP usage charts they are rated @ 44k. So a Plate 140 that uses 25% DSP on one card @ 44K will now use 50% @88K. FWIW, I use 24/44 on all of my projects.

http://www.uaudio.com/support/software/UAD/charts.html

A few months ago I built a new Core Duo DAW. I took my (2) exisiting UAD-1 PCI cards, added (2) new PCIe cards and ended up with a E6300 Core Duo/4 UAD-1 card DAW beast that does eveything I need with ease. With all of the plugin vouchers I received I was able to get all of the remaining UAD-1 plugins and still have nearly $300 left, in my UA account for the next plugin releases. 8)

As far as "must haves", if I was starting over with just a basic package (Pultec, CS-1, 1176SE, Nigel, RealVerb), I would add:

Compressors:

1176LN
LA-2A
Fairchild 670

EQ's:
Neve 1073/SE bundle

Reverb:
Plate 140

If you have any money left over I would think about:

Dimension D
Precision Limiter

 

[wishingwell]

You could do as i do and not limit yourself to one or the other. Get a healthy balance of both Uad's and the finest Native has to offer. For reverbs i'd look into Classik Studio Reverb and Wizooverb as a complimentary combination, both high quality and you can get both at a price cheaper then Altiverb and imo both sound better, and both will cover a wider range. For compressors that compliment Uad's i'd look at Marquis and Soniformer and Compadre. For eq's i'd look at the 3 band Plpareq (great quality and affordable). I'd also look into the 'free' GEQ by Voxengo and the 'free' Nebula 2 effect unit. Don't let the word free fool you and cause you to turn up your nose, their excellent quality. Once you get a healthy balance of Native and Uad's you'll worry a little less about dsp power.

 

[Resonant Alien]

Thanks for all the great input.

The more I look around the more I think I'll just get a couple UAD cards and maybe altiverb.

Thing is, I'm recording at 24/88.2--do you think I'll need three cards for mixes of ten tracks max, or will two cards do?

Also (I know this has been covered before--sorry) but which plugs would you say are "must-haves"?


Hopefully UA will take care of their UAD-1 customers when they find their new platform.

Honestly, (and there are a million opinions on this and it is OT) I would record at 24b/48k instead of 88.2k and save yourself some CPU (and some cash if that makes you have to buy 3 cards). I really don't believe that the extra costs of using high sample rates during mixing (extra CPU usage, extra disk space) are worth the benefits in sound quality. I have seen several (unscientific) blind listening tests where most people could not reliably pick out a mix done at 96k versus one done at 48k. Definitely your average listener will never be able to tell.

 

[imdrecordings]

Thanks for all the great input.

The more I look around the more I think I'll just get a couple UAD cards and maybe altiverb.

Thing is, I'm recording at 24/88.2--do you think I'll need three cards for mixes of ten tracks max, or will two cards do?

Also (I know this has been covered before--sorry) but which plugs would you say are "must-haves"?


Hopefully UA will take care of their UAD-1 customers when they find their new platform.

Honestly, (and there are a million opinions on this and it is OT) I would record at 24b/48k instead of 88.2k and save yourself some CPU (and some cash if that makes you have to buy 3 cards). I really don't believe that the extra costs of using high sample rates during mixing (extra CPU usage, extra disk space) are worth the benefits in sound quality. I have seen several (unscientific) blind listening tests where most people could not reliably pick out a mix done at 96k versus one done at 48k. Definitely your average listener will never be able to tell.

hmmm.. I think you'll do more damage, going from 24- 48 to 16-44.1, than keeping it at 44.1 or going to 88.2
From what I can tell, it's better to stay at 44.1 or up sample or record at 88.2. just my 2 cents.
Check out this interview:
http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.php?t=93177


Sorry for highjacking the thread even more :|

 

[kittyboy]

All the input is welcome and appreciated.

Yeah, I do 88.2 rather than 96 or 48 for the reasons mentioned in the interview, but with 32 and now 64 point floating conversion it's my understanding that the downconverting error is pretty much marginal.

I need to do some 44.1 and 88.2 a/b testing and see for myself if I hear a difference....

 

[Resonant Alien]

Great interview, and good info. However, I didn't read anything in the article to indicate that downconverting from 48 to 44.1 or from 96 to 44.1 damages the audio, assuming that you have good converters.

He basically said that the downconversion from 48 to 44.1 might tend to dilute some of the advantages that recording at 48 gave you, but not that it would hurt the audio. He also said that more math is required to go from 96 or 48 to 44.1 than what is required to go from 88.2 to 44.1, but he also said this is generally not a big deal these days (presumably when you have good converters)

I guess the main point would be that if you are going to do a lot of sample rate conversion, make sure you have good converters. I could see that downconverting from 96 to 44.1 with low quality converters might be worse than going from 88.2 to 44.1 if the converters didn't have enough juice to do the extra math.

 

[Matt Hepworth]

Be aware that most sample rate conversion takes place by upsampling into the MHz range and then converting. There are VERY, VERY few converters that actually take advantage of even numbered math.

These days, it doesn't really matter - sample rate conversion is of good quality. Also, be aware that with a good converter with well designed filters, higher sampling rates make no difference. Of course, not all converters are created equal. If it wasn't for filters, there would mathematically be absolutely zero difference in 48kHz and 96kHz sampling rate (just like it only takes 3 points to create a perfect circle, 6 is redundant). You would simply be doubling the number of times the EXACT same thing is seen.

Here's some great info:

http://gearslutz.com/board/showthread.p ... post681053

Particularly when Mr. Lavry gets involved.

 

[Ben Logan]

Since there's lots of talk about reverb on this thread, I thought I might suggest the RS-1 - you know - the reverb engine that's included with the UAD-1 channel strip. I dismissed early on, because the decay times are so short. But, I've since come to feel that this thing does a wonderful job of suggesting just the right amount of space for tracks that you want to sound kinda \"dry\" and upfront, but not so dry that they sound tacked on top of your mix. I've had great luck with it. RS-1, and I'm done!