KVR Audio

MrMeister · Post by **MrMeister** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 8:45 pm

How does a UAD-1 plugin talk to the UAD card?
Anyone know how this works?

I'm interested in a project to peform the UAD-1 computations on a GPU instead of the crappy uad card. I have the GPGPU stuff under control, I'm just not comfortable with VST (-if the UAD are really VST based?) and was wondering how this is done. - or if this is possible without the source code. -

Cheers

buscemi · Post by **buscemi** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 9:39 pm

Aren't they licensed only for use with the card, would have to be reverse engineered and decompiled/recompiled to allow use on Intel/PPC/other CPUs, as well as the clause in the licensing agreement for the plugins that states you clearly can't do said reverse engineering and decompiling, etc:

You may not modify,
translate, adapt, reverse engineer, decompile, create other works from, or
disassemble the Software or any portions thereof.

That, and... IBTL.

MrMeister · Post by **MrMeister** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 9:58 pm

yeah didnt really think of the legalities

, but yeah i figured you'd have to work backwards and it would be impossible.

beej · Post by **beej** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 9:58 pm

And they are written (the DSP part) in Mpact native GPU machine code, not regular Intel C or anything easy like that...

buscemi · Post by **buscemi** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 10:01 pm

It would be nice to have it "either way" as I think of it - run plugins (even just some) or have versions that are native, or allow third party plugin development but alas neither is in the cards (yuk yuk). Still enjoy having one of their cards, definitely great plugins worth the investment.

Christian Budde · Post by **Christian Budde** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 10:45 pm

You could also do another approach, measure the behaviour and modell a plugin, which behaves exactly like the UAD plugin. That would also avoid legal issues and you are free to implement the algorithm on any processor you like. However, a good knowledge of digital signal processing is inevitable.
In the end you'll find several limitations, which can be done better. I did some measurements a year ago. In the end the algorithms used are probably plain simple. At least you can achieve similar things quite easy. This is reasonable, since those cards do not have much horse power to compute extraterrestrial math.
I ended up finding several flaws of their emulations. Some of them even very audible once you can spot them. And I'm speaking of digital artifacts here, not modelled analog problems.
So you better use your knowledge to create even better emulations.

Christian

living sounds · Post by **living sounds** » Wed Aug 13, 2008 10:57 pm

Christian Budde wrote: I ended up finding several flaws of their emulations. Some of them even very audible once you can spot them. And I'm speaking of digital artifacts here, not modelled analog problems.
So you better use your knowledge to create even better emulations.

Christian

This corresponds with my experience mixing with those plugins.

realisation · Post by **realisation** » Thu Aug 14, 2008 11:25 am

living sounds wrote:
Christian Budde wrote: I ended up finding several flaws of their emulations. Some of them even very audible once you can spot them. And I'm speaking of digital artifacts here, not modelled analog problems.
So you better use your knowledge to create even better emulations.

Christian
This corresponds with my experience mixing with those plugins.

The same goes with the powercore, i think native plugins have came a long way since DSP cards first came out.