UA Ultimate to Complete 2 upgrade worth it?

[twolights]

I bought into Ultimate bundle a while back and love it. UA plugins are still the best in the game for my money. Been eyeing the new complete 2 upgrade that has been on sale and thinking about pulling the trigger. But I noticed it’s mostly plugins not made by UA, some I’m familiar with and definitely want for Apollo, like AMS and Softube stuff and Cedar, but not totally sure about the rest.
Anyone else upgrade to the UAD complete and love it or regret it? I feel like with how much mileage I’ve gotten out of Ultimate would love to unlock the full collection for 2024 but just curious how others feel

 

[Philomyth]

One thing to think about is that UAD will probably NOT be porting these to native; many already have native versions sold by the companies that wrote (Sonnox) or ported (Softube, Brainworx) them.

Worth thinking whether you want the DSP or native versions. I picked up a bunch from plug-in alliance at very low prices, and others in the Black Friday/New Years sales. Some of the Sonnox plugins are on sale now at Audio Deluxe or Plugin Boutique and other resellers at pretty attractive prices ($50 for the EQ and Envolution).

You can also use the 2 for $99 custom bundle to buy from UAD; if you repeat with thank you coupons, this brings the price down to $37.50 each, which is pretty good.

There is some good stuff there, but I ultimately didn’t need it all.

 

[Alexxon]

I'd suggest if you are not heavily rely on UAD-2 system you should buy the individual native plugins, because they'll never port to native since they are from third party developers, instead of UA themselves. And the 2 for $99 is way better for the money you'd spent since I don't think you'll need every single of them(and some of the third party plugins are lack of UAD-2 support and update, like a compressor comes from a company name starts with "S").

 

[wfm]

I think Complete is for corporate or well funded organizations that want one Purchase Order, imho.

OR you have a UAD-2 based system and love using all of UAD's great DSP plugins, and you can $wing it, why not?

twolights: It's true the AMX, DMX, Neve Plugins, Cedar products are still exclusive DSP and awesome.

I second Alexxon's advice about 'filling in the native gaps' with native 3rd party AND using the 2 for $99 etc. And when he mentions some users (with various computer specs) have to deal with bugs/dropouts on a few very specific DSP plugins . So before you go all in, demo them all and do some listening (to see if the issue would affect you).

For native equivalents: Plugin Alliance has their highest level subscription (Mega XXL, currently $199 and always that price if you have Pro Tools - currently via voucher code) gives you 10 plugins a year to own(any plugins). And Softube's Volume 6 has some of the "cross-branded" plugins and others separate and you'll see Vol. 1 - 5 for sale used. Finally, Arturia has modeled some of these plugins too, so if you already have their FX Collection 4, their Culture Vulture and 33609 clones are both pretty nice, albeit different coding, of course.

If I had the bread, and wasn't already invested in other options, I could see buying Complete.

 

[smashit]

interested in updating to complete as well not sure if I will do it I purchased the ultimate 6 after buying appolo hardware and the sphere mic I didn't get any kind of deal when I asked they told me I should have got all same day I did purchase weeks apart I got a 50$ coupon I didn't know as it was my first set-up . is the new subscription sparks good does it have all the plugs ? maybe a better idea just pay monthly when producing and can take breaks I am so close to pulling the trigger but I don't see much of a deal/discount $ 2500.00 right now it says usually sells for 10 k ....even after I own more than half of them and is it USD as well? that's usually a low blow for me being in Canada

 

[Bruce_Sokolovic]

Just wasnt worth it for ME. All I was really missing was guitar amps. For half the money, I got the PA bundle and got all those guitar amps plus boatloads of other great plugins.