Unlike many, I personally don't particularly like the URS plugins and remain suspicious of that company in general. When I last looked, URS was
an \"internet only company\" which had the plugins made by a third party offering cheap coding services...and URS appears to be essentially a husband/wife marketing operation linked to Bobby Nathan's defunct
http://www.uniquerecording.com/ studio. It's a bit like
Roger Nicholls and his much lamented foray into \"buying out\" the Elemental
Audio plugins, rebranding them and flogging them for higher prices -
marketing, pure and simple.
At least UA do their own coding...but I hear from reliable sources (which must remain anonymous) that even UA sometimes use bloated, DSP hungry generic code (and various wrappers) within their algorithms - I have no way of verifying or discounting this however, (unless \"Doctor\" David Berners Lee cares to participate in this thread) but it seems to make some sense, given the speed with which UA release cross platform software...
Making superb code takes a LONG time, which mostly doesnt fit within marketing imperatives. Algorithmix, as one example, took years to design their EQ algorithms. As a result, the Algorithmix EQs are light years ahead of any plugin EQs on the market, period. But Algorithmix could only manage this by having monetary \"buffers\" generated from various unrelated OEM projects during the development period.
UA have a continual process of dev/release, dev/release, seemingly every few months. To me, this seems too fast to allow for the absolute best in algorithm quality and efficiency. In this respect, UA is as much about marketing as URS. That said, I fully respect the need for software companies to do this in order to survive - it is all about cash flow, eh? There aint no subsidies or incentives out there for companies to take the time really required to develop algorithms of the quality of (say) Weiss or Algorithmix. The only thing companies such as UA and URS need to achieve is beautiful looking interfaces plus fairly good audio processing quality - this keeps the vast majority of the market happy and ensures the most important thing of all to software companies: re-sales to their existing customer base.
Dont get me wrong here - I own 4 UAD1 cards and have paid for all the plugins. I regularly use the dynamics tools. I'm not particularly fond of the EQ tools, but then I own all of the Algorithmix plugins - the new Blue sets a high quality benchmark for analogue modelling, with the simple, brilliant GUI used for the Red and Orange (no need for expensive, cumbersome facsimiles of hardware faceplates/controls). Even so, I have found uses for the UA EQs.
Perhaps the Neve plugins will set a new \"quality\" benchmark within the UAD range. After all, they MUST surpass the URS versions, or the release will be seen as a failure. Soon enough, we will know.
Sean
You don't need to do your own research, you don't need to invest much of your time. Outsource everything, even your dsp. Generic code is probably good enough for anything. And work for hire is the way to go these days, since as Frank advertises: