RME Digiface and Multiface soundcards give you one main unit that can connect to the computer by several methods.
If the new UAD was a cascadable 19\" rackmount unit that let you connect to an optional cardbus interface, an optional PCI interface, an optional PCI express interface, or just use the standard firewire b port and run it like a Powercore firewire rack unit.
If UA took this smart route, the new UAD2 could be compatible with whatever type of system you have, depending on which add on card you buy.
As far as the existing UAD-1 is concerned, all the existing plugs should just be rewritten for the new hardware and renamed for the UAD2 like UAD2LA2A and UAD2EX-1, just for the sake of avoid the problems and headaches that will arise from having to write drivers that try to integrate the new UAD-2 and the PCI based UAD-1 we have now. Now UAD2LA2A would be sonically and functionally identical to the existing UAD LA2A, but named different just to make it easier on the coders and give us a 1X latency solution instead of the 2X latency rule we now have.
*An option that vst hosts should have in the near future is allowing us to replace 1 (missing) vst plugin with another plugin upon load. For example. If you load an old project on and Nuendo finds that all of the UAD-1 plugs you used are missing (because you changed hardware) Nuendo should ask \"Do you want to replace the missing plugin UAD LA2A with another plugin? When you select yes and choose the new plugin named UAD2LA2A your project is perfectly restored, even though your system doesn't have the UAD-1 card. This is an option that vst hosts will have to add so it is not the responsiblility of UA, but you can easily see how it would make a neat solution to moving from the UAD-1 to the UAD-2 and having new names and plugin IDs for the plugs we are using now.
UAD2 should be designed around providing massive DSP power (for standard work at 192Khz) and minimizing latency issues on plugins like 13ms Upsampling delay for UAD2PultecPro and UAD2PrecisionLimiter delay. Latency should be the biggest factor in the design of the UAD2. If 64bit dualcore SMP systems allow us to run our systems at 1ms latency at 192Khz, the UAD2 should be up to the task and not bog us down with additional latency concerns. A chainer for the UAD2 is a must. This chainer should be designed right from scratch, so we can load fxp and fxb preset files into the various plugins loaded in the chainer plugin. The UAD2 chainer should also let us click and drag to rearrange loaded plugins.
If the new UAD was a cascadable 19\" rackmount unit that let you connect to an optional cardbus interface, an optional PCI interface, an optional PCI express interface, or just use the standard firewire b port and run it like a Powercore firewire rack unit.
If UA took this smart route, the new UAD2 could be compatible with whatever type of system you have, depending on which add on card you buy.
As far as the existing UAD-1 is concerned, all the existing plugs should just be rewritten for the new hardware and renamed for the UAD2 like UAD2LA2A and UAD2EX-1, just for the sake of avoid the problems and headaches that will arise from having to write drivers that try to integrate the new UAD-2 and the PCI based UAD-1 we have now. Now UAD2LA2A would be sonically and functionally identical to the existing UAD LA2A, but named different just to make it easier on the coders and give us a 1X latency solution instead of the 2X latency rule we now have.
*An option that vst hosts should have in the near future is allowing us to replace 1 (missing) vst plugin with another plugin upon load. For example. If you load an old project on and Nuendo finds that all of the UAD-1 plugs you used are missing (because you changed hardware) Nuendo should ask \"Do you want to replace the missing plugin UAD LA2A with another plugin? When you select yes and choose the new plugin named UAD2LA2A your project is perfectly restored, even though your system doesn't have the UAD-1 card. This is an option that vst hosts will have to add so it is not the responsiblility of UA, but you can easily see how it would make a neat solution to moving from the UAD-1 to the UAD-2 and having new names and plugin IDs for the plugs we are using now.
UAD2 should be designed around providing massive DSP power (for standard work at 192Khz) and minimizing latency issues on plugins like 13ms Upsampling delay for UAD2PultecPro and UAD2PrecisionLimiter delay. Latency should be the biggest factor in the design of the UAD2. If 64bit dualcore SMP systems allow us to run our systems at 1ms latency at 192Khz, the UAD2 should be up to the task and not bog us down with additional latency concerns. A chainer for the UAD2 is a must. This chainer should be designed right from scratch, so we can load fxp and fxb preset files into the various plugins loaded in the chainer plugin. The UAD2 chainer should also let us click and drag to rearrange loaded plugins.
