Sell UAD and make do without it for a while, or find old g5?

[The Beatsmith]

Hi, time to upgrade my g4!

I have a budget which could get me either a NEW dualcore 2.0 (about as fast as the 'old' dual 2.3's, apparently), or i could try to find an old Dual 2.0 or dual 2.3, 2nd hand (no idea where from though... i'm in the UK).

In fact if i sold my UAD-1, i could actually get the dual core 2.3... which is the equivalent to the old dual 2.5, more or less.

Would you rather have an old dual 2.0 (or pci-x dual 2.3?) with a UAD-1 in it, or a new dual core 2.0 or 2.3 without a uad?

The hassle of trying to find a good 2nd hand dual 2.0, with pci is a lot of hassle, travelling around the country to inspect it, trying to get applecare, and warranty issues, etc, does it chrip, has it been abused?

I love my UAD-1, i use it in every track (la-2a and 1176se mainly), but i feel like going and paying what is essentially the same price (the old dual 2.0's are only selling 2nd hand for a little for a tiny bit less than a new dual core 2.0) is just silly.

But if i sell my UAD-1, i might miss out on any upgrade option UA decide to do :roll:

What would you guys do, or what have you done?

Any info appreciated

Cheers

Eddie

(PS - my other plugins consist of PSP Mixpack, PSP Vintage warmer, a couple more psp stuff.... and all the logic pro 7 plugs).

 

[Giles117 DP]

For now I would hunt down a Dual 2.0 or Dual 2.3.

I still have my 2.0 even though I have ordered a Quad. This will help ease my transition

Now If UAD would do native ilokable versions of their plugins with NO demo period

That would be fine with me.

 

[JamesR]

100% find an \"early 2005\" dual 2.0

The new dual core 2.0 is about the same as the dual cpu 2.0, with a little benefit for faster memory and so on.

but obviously, no support for uad-1.

personally, i can't imagine trying to mix without the UA 1176.

James.

 

[Ashermusic]

I have an \"old\" Dual 2.0. G5. It is fast and powerful. I would not give up the UAD plug-ins for the sake of being a little faster personally.

 

[The Beatsmith]

yes, but i am assuming that in the near future, uad will come out with a UAD-2 type card which is for pci express, and therefor incompatible with those older macs.

and in tests, the dual core 2.0 is more like an older dual processor 2.3ghz. similarly, the dual core 2.3 just about beats an older dual processor 2.5 in OVERALL performance.

UAD will make the change eventually, and then i'd be screwed.

if the older dual 2.0's were actually cheaper, then fair enough i'd be all over it. but the stupid way macs depreciate (or rather - DON'T) means that i'm going to be paying the same amount (nearly) for older technology which won't work in the near future.

i wish there could be some reassurance that UA will have some kind of upgrade scheme, a la the TC powercore...

 

[The Beatsmith]

but then every single one of my current mixed features UAD plugs... trying to open them on one of the new g5's would be a nightmare...

 

[daustin@pavilion.co.uk]

FWIW I recently upped from my old G4 dual 867 (which I'm hanging onto) and got an 'old' G5 dual 2.5 with 2gig ram and the Apple 23\" screen for £2.5k, on ebay. As the screen is worth the best part of a grand, you could say the G5 cost £1500 inc the Ram - works for me, running great with 2 x Uad's/Logic 7.

Derek

 

[Ashermusic]

yes, but i am assuming that in the near future, uad will come out with a UAD-2 type card which is for pci express, and therefor incompatible with those older macs.

and in tests, the dual core 2.0 is more like an older dual processor 2.3ghz. similarly, the dual core 2.3 just about beats an older dual processor 2.5 in OVERALL performance.

UAD will make the change eventually, and then i'd be screwed.

if the older dual 2.0's were actually cheaper, then fair enough i'd be all over it. but the stupid way macs depreciate (or rather - DON'T) means that i'm going to be paying the same amount (nearly) for older technology which won't work in the near future.

i wish there could be some reassurance that UA will have some kind of upgrade scheme, a la the TC powercore...

You are trying to make your decision predicting the future based on assumptions. That is not possible. The audio world turns on a dime. What UAD will do card wise in the future is pure speculation. It could well be Firewire.

Make your decisions as to what your best choices are NOW and in the near future. By the time there is a radical change maybe you will be doing so well career wise that the expense will not be a factor. Or not. Either way the gear police will not come to your studio in the middle of the night and take away your equipment or render it unusable.

Either way, I would not lose the use of my UAD plug-in for a little more speed and the chance that it will have a longer future. The UAD plug-ins will make your music sound significantly better, assuming you know how to use them. The faster computer will not.

 

[Trace]

Hands down i'd keep the UAD and get an old Dual 2Gig. The way i'm able to produce music now is so enhanced by the level of quality I get from my UA plugs that I could never go back to my old days using Waves etc.

I have a dual 1.8 and its giving me good performance for most of my current needs. Eventually we all need to move on, but right now unless you're getting a Quad, I don't see a need to get any of the other PCIe models and lose your UAD-1.

TRACE

 

[dix]

Everyone in this thread is on the same page. We all want to keep our ua plugins. That's the problem: how long until more of us have the same dilemma? Don't forget UA has not indicated it plans to make a PCIe card at all. They have no reason hurry either. The PC market steers this boat too I suspect. The next incarnation could be firewire or breakout box or native. If I had no ua plugins right now there's *no way* I'd invest in a uad-1 card and it's uncertain future. Not for a Mac. As of whenever Apple announced the new config, the two are essentially (though not yet officially) incompatible.

 

[The Beatsmith]

well, i'm not on the same page. i'm kinda annoyed there is no official line from UA.

i love the plugins but saying that i need to go and buy OLD and OUTDATED technology, to support something will soon be old and outdated itself, doesn't make much sense to me.

i'm still in limbo, not sure, i guess i don't have to decide until it comes to the day i have all the cash in my bank account...

thanks

edd

 

[Trace]

Everyone in this thread is on the same page. We all want to keep our ua plugins. That's the problem: how long until more of us have the same dilemma? Don't forget UA has not indicated it plans to make a PCIe card at all. They have no reason hurry either. The PC market steers this boat too I suspect. The next incarnation could be firewire or breakout box or native. If I had no ua plugins right now there's *no way* I'd invest in a uad-1 card and it's uncertain future. Not for a Mac. As of whenever Apple announced the new config, the two are essentially (though not yet officially) incompatible.

DSP is a smashing success in terms of maintaining profits for these small companies. It assures you that you won't have as much loss due to cracked software. I don't expect that UA will abandon the concept. There are some options out there for a new source of DSP power and it just might allow them to use PCIe and a single card solution. Instead of having to use 4 cards and still not have enough DSP power. I look forward to what might come down the pipe. I was mentioning along with others that the Processing plant in the Playstation 3 is a monster:

"That the PS3 would use a PowerPC-based Cell processor was already well known, but Sony yesterday revealed the chip would be clocked at 3.2GHz - matching Xbox 360's PowerPC-based three-core chip - enough to yield 2.18 teraflops, the company claimed - twice what Xbox 360 will be able to pump out, apparently. There's 512KB of on-die L2 cache, and seven AltiVec vector processing units."

"The PS3's CPU is backed by Nvidia's graphics chip, dubbed in this application the RSX, for "reality simulator". RSX connects directly to the CPU, with which it shares access to the PS3's 512MB of system RAM. The memory is split into two banks: 256MB of XDR clocked at 3.2GHz for the CPU's usage and 256MB of 700MHz GDDR 3 SDRAM for the RSX."

It sounds to me like a perfect source of processing for what we need. If the geniuses at UA can figure out a way to access it and make it work in PC's and Mac's.

TRACE

 

[Ashermusic]

well, i'm not on the same page. i'm kinda annoyed there is no official line from UA.

i love the plugins but saying that i need to go and buy OLD and OUTDATED technology, to support something will soon be old and outdated itself, doesn't make much sense to me.

i'm still in limbo, not sure, i guess i don't have to decide until it comes to the day i have all the cash in my bank account...

thanks

edd

The problem is with your definitions of OLD and OUTDATED. One year old tehnology does not fit any reasonable definiton of that. Not the latest and most powerful is a more accurate description.

On my dual 500 G4 I constantly had to freeze tracks in Logic because of the large amount of V.I.s and FX I was using. Since I bought mynow OLD and OUTDATED Dual 2.0 G5 do you want to hazard a guess as to how many songs I have had to freeze tracks in? Once.

If you cannot make really good sounding music efficiently with a dual 2.0 G5 and the UAD card then you simply cannot make really good sounding music efficiently so no matter what you buy you are sooner or later you are going to be in trouble.

I am not knocking you, only trying to give you a nudge in a direction of what I believe to be a more realistic perspective. You may disagree, as may others and of course I respect your right to do that.

So if you decide to sell your UAD card, let us know how much you want for it. If you price it reasonably I guarantee you there will be no shortage of takers here.

 

[The Beatsmith]

the point is, the price of a new computer (with education discount), and a 2nd hand g5 pci is nearly identical. so i'm paying the same price, for a slower, older computer, which will become obsolete quicker than the pci-express ones.

no?

that doesn't seem sensible for me. i cannot afford to upgrade very often and i want this computer to last as long as possible. if this g4 really wasn't too slow, i'd try to make it last until the intels come out.

i'll keep thinking about it, maybe UA will announce something in the meantime.

thanks

 

[The Beatsmith]

The problem is with your definitions of OLD and OUTDATED. One year old tehnology does not fit any reasonable definiton of that. Not the latest and most powerful is a more accurate description.

well, pci and pci-x on a powermac is now outdated. this is true, as the new ones are pci-express. obviosuly.

and they are old because they are no longer supported/used in the new powermacs

 

[brunjic]

If Universal Audio would stick to PCI interface it will not be outdated (for us users) as long as we need their plugins.

But I would HATE to buy PCI dual 2.0 MAC just because of UAD-1 and have Universal Audio to announce UAD-2 with PCIe interface on winter NAMM 2006 (or summer NAMM 2006 for that matter). And sooner or later that is bound to happen.

So I sympathise with you Beatsmith, I'm in the same boat, actually.

 

[grimleyj]

Maybe I'm dreaming here ... but what about UA making a Firewire \"black box\" which can hold a UAD-1 or two? I'm assuming that Firewire will outlive PCI, PCIx PCIe and whatever comes next.
-g

 

[The Beatsmith]

i'm definately leaning towards going for the new dual core option, but hanging on to my UAD, just in case.

as i use a motu 828, and want to get a poco compact, i'd rather they released a gigabit ethernet external unit. much more bandwidth than firewire 400 (well, 1000 vs 400) - the dual cores comes with 2 x gigabit ethernet sockets, hehe.

firewire can handle a lot, but not that much.

 

[Ashermusic]

Guys, the bottom line is that there is NO computer, NO Dsp card, NO anything audio that you can buy that there might well not be something faster and more powerful for the same price or less 6 months later. So you have to make the best choices you can make at the time of upgrade and computer speed is only one factor.

If you want to make good sounding music at the moment there is nothing in the native world that helps you do that better than a UAD-1 card's plug-ins IMHO. And that means using a Mac with PCI or PCI-X. A faster Mac without the UAD-1 card will be faster but it will not help your music sound better. And at the end of the day isn't that the goal, not to just to have the latest and fastest?

But if you disagree then go ahead and buy a faster PCI-e Mac with a Waves bundle or whatever plug-ins you think you will approach the UAD-1 quality with. My prediction is that later on when your new computer is now outdated by the standards being used here your music will not be the better for it.

Just my opinion.

 

[dix]

Guys, the bottom line is that there is NO computer, NO Dsp card, NO anything audio that you can buy that there might well not be something faster and more powerful for the same price or less 6 months later. So you have to make the best choices you can make at the time of upgrade and computer speed is only one factor.

If you want to make good sounding music at the moment there is nothing in the native world that helps you do that better than a UAD-1 card's plug-ins IMHO. And that means using a Mac with PCI or PCI-X. A faster Mac without the UAD-1 card will be faster but it will not help your music sound better. And at the end of the day isn't that the goal, not to just to have the latest and fastest?

Of course all technology is evolving. I'm happy to pay for the privilege of evolving. We simply would like to know if UA plans to make a PCIe card. If so, when? Tomorrow? 2 years from now? Any vague idea would be helpful. I think UA wrongly assumes people have a general idea of how long it takes to implement a change like this. I don't. FAIK it could be anything from a $2 adapter or a complete redo of the entire UA plugin platform.

Again, sadly, I don't think UA cares much about their Mac market. It's probably much smaller than the PC side (i think?) and they know, we're all hardcore UA junkies now and they're the only dealer so we'll wait!

...there are many reasons, both technical and business, why the quad machine is perfect for me right now - none of which are wanting to have the fastest machine on the block.