KVR Audio

RapRogue · Post by **RapRogue** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 10:52 am

Gigalan with a few boxes and you set. The rest is up to
the developers.

bmanic touches an interesting subject, it might be
that the continuous analogue stream with added
compression 'steps' is harder to pick up. Then the
already 'chopped' up sample stream with more steps, as
we tend to pick up patterns even when we don't want to (like a loop).

bmanic · Post by **bmanic** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 11:18 am

I think the point with the UAD cards has never been the DSP card itself, at least never for me. It's the quality of the plugins and they have matured to a level where I think it's hard for them to ever "grow old and useless". Unforunately for the user, the DSP card will most definately grow old and useless which is a damn shame if you ask me.

This is why I think Native is the only way to go for longevity and I'm pretty sure UA needs to figure out a better way to distribute their plugins in the future.

Cheers!
bManic

grizzlyX · Post by **grizzlyX** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 11:28 am

I dont have UAD but I have powercore and emu1212 which comes with dsp plugins as well. I did some tests between 3 vst platforms. Eq the same material with 1 parametric band with similar settings. Sonalksis, waves, urs etc, tc eqsat, oxford eq and emu parametric eq. The winner is definitely EMU. Smooth, clear sound with great resonance. No mud at all. I use mostly synth sounds though. With acoustic music the results might have been different. In comparition URS eqs overall sound good but are less clear, lack the gorgous resonance and can't shape the sound as much. But as I said, that might be actually a good thing on acoustic instruments.

Angus_FX · Post by **Angus_FX** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 11:44 am

This is why I think Native is the only way to go for longevity

I broadly agree...

... but try telling that to people whose favourite plug-ins are stuck on OS9, or will become stuck on Mac-PPC, Win32 and OSX/x86-32 over the next 3-5 years or so.

The key for longevity is for companies to stay in business, or for the code to be clean and maintainable Open Source.

olafmol · Post by **olafmol** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 12:58 pm

"Another great thing about UAD plugs is beautiful sound is a no-brainer. The controls are simple, and you almost can't get a bad sound from them. "

i think this is the key. They have chosen classics that have a very good user-interface, where all the parameters are finely tuned to get optimal results with a minimum of controls. You just can't do anything wrong

Olaf

AndrewSimon · Post by **AndrewSimon** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 4:38 pm

I think a lot of people have a problem seeing UAD as a bargain because of it's relatively high starting price.
But let's look at the Project Pack - $399
Top notch Reverb
2 top notch compressors
Top notch EQ

By now in the native world you would have already used up your $399 but with UAD you get a bunch more top notch plugs and a DSP card as well.
And as a nice bonus you can run all these plugs (lot's of them) without taxing your CPU.
So it's like a horsepower upgrade to your PC as well.
Think about it..... it's really a great bargain if you ask me.

funkynuts · Post by **funkynuts** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 4:58 pm

AndrewSimon wrote:I think a lot of people have a problem seeing UAD as a bargain because of it's relatively high starting price.
But let's look at the Project Pack - $399
Top notch Reverb
2 top notch compressors
Top notch EQ

By now in the native world you would have already used up your $399 but with UAD you get a bunch more top notch plugs and a DSP card as well.
And as a nice bonus you can run all these plugs (lot's of them) without taxing your CPU.
So it's like a horsepower upgrade to your PC as well.
Think about it..... it's really a great bargain if you ask me.

I have to agree here ,i own the equivalent of the ultra pak having originally bought an older card then added the newer plugs and now it will only cost me £300 to double my plug in count by adding a second basic card.
How many people can get a 200% performance increase by spending £300 on their p.c.
However i also agree that an upgrade to the dsp,s on the card would also be very welcome.

Cheers
Funk

omo · Post by **omo** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 6:31 pm

I have finaly played with UAD-1 plugs a bit longer and I have to say their compressors are very good ones in native world. 1176 wasn't on the same level with hardware as many claim, in fact far from it. I suspect the same applies to other emulations, tho I haven't had a chance for a shotout. It's rather boring like most of digital comps. Back to competition, those comps are nice. Dreamverb is nothing special and there are much better reverbs in vst. Plate 140 is great if you need it, but it's just a plate. Good package, but I still didn't come to the final conclusion if it's worth it to me. Gotta play a few more days.

drinelli · Post by **drinelli** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 10:29 pm

LiteOn Wrote: RoomVerb (it's in every pack - DreamVerb is lacking from StudioPack). It's meant to be a room simulation

In my studio Pak, there is DreamVerb, Realverb pro,

And a demo of Plate 140, so either you are wrong about this, or there is more than one Studio Pak option.-

LiteON Also Wrote :And: I have the AAR - just try the demo, tells its own tales...

I have It. The real Thing.

wsaidah · Post by **wsaidah** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 3:05 am

Voxengo Analogflux Suite is a good team player for the uad-1! TapeBus and AFDelay are the gems

C00kie · Post by **C00kie** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 7:51 am

Software plugins are volatile. I can guarantee you in about ten years you will have nothing left of your current plugins folder. The software companies will fold, and microsoft will invent new stuff that forces you to reconcider the software you use.

Hardware cards like UAD/POCO are tricky also. I have a box full of various ISA and VESA bus cards in the cellar, totally unusable because the new PCI bus standard took over. Some day a new bus standard will come up, and some years later you're lucky to get one lousy mocked-about PCI slot.

Now concider hardware; real 19" rack-mountable hardware. Yes, it costs some more than plugins. Yes, it's "as is" and you don't get firmware refills forever.

[big]But it will last you forever![/big]

Silent Mind 2005 · Post by **Silent Mind 2005** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 8:04 am

You mean, microsoft wil make software that looks like other good software, but it isn't really that good, but they have extreme marketing force, and so people are eventually brainwashed into thinking these products are better, and so they start buying them, and so the original softwaremakers go out of business, and so WE who really LIKE GOOD SOFTWARE, suffer because our softwarepackage is no longer available, and then we have to use shitty monkey MS version.

Uncle E · Post by **Uncle E** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 8:23 am

C00kie wrote:I can guarantee you in about ten years you will have nothing left of your current plugins folder. The software companies will fold...

Or even give up on the product. It's incredibly frustrating when a shareware company is still around but assumes that because they've lost interest in a product, you have, too.

Hardware cards like UAD/POCO are tricky also. I have a box full of various ISA and VESA bus cards in the cellar, totally unusable because the new PCI bus standard took over. Some day a new bus standard will come up, and some years later you're lucky to get one lousy mocked-about PCI slot.

This is indeed an issue with DSP Accelerator cards like the UAD-1 or Powercore but the Pulsar/Scope cards, Korg Oasys, & Lexicon cards will still be able to function if you keep a dedicated system for them. Oasys PCI cards sell used for under $200 & I'll bet most everyone here probably has or knows someone who has some retired old system rotting in storage that would be perfectly capable of running them, yet new Triton's & Oasys keyboards still sell for around $2k & $5k, respectively. Sure, it's not as convenient as having everything running natively from within your system but those Oasys PCI synths will still blow away most VSTi's out there so the reward may be worth it.

Even for the UAD-1 & Powercore, won't there be a Magma chassis or the like that will allow them to run on future standards? I think the concern should be more about whether the companies will continue to support the cards as operating systems change or orphan them the way Korg did with the Oasys PCI, which, btw, is also an issue for native software (as mentioned above).

Aleksey Vaneev · Post by **Aleksey Vaneev** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 9:42 am

C00kie, your 19" rack may burn after company produced it goes out of business. And you'll have nothing left at all. But with OS and even platform upgrades old programs can be usually run without a hassle, through a wrapper or something like that (e.g. AFAIK 32-bit Windows VST plug-ins can run with 64-bit Windows applications through a wrapper). Of course, what Apple is going to do by moving to a completely different platform, WILL give much headache and expenses to almost everyone using Apple computers.

AndrewSimon · Post by **AndrewSimon** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 10:43 am

I have a few 19" rack FX.
They are all less 10 years old and they all just sit collecting dust.
They are all dinosaurs by now.
16 bit some 20 bit.
Some were cutting edge just 5 years ago, now outdated and can't keep up even with the new VSTs.
I hook them up occasionally and I always wonder how the poor reverb, that comes out of it, sounded so great just a few years ago.
I am also amazed about how I never seemed to notice that the signal to noise ratio is so bad on these.

Now true if I had some very expensive FX's they would probably be great today as well but the average entry level stuff I have is simply worthless by now.

Working in the digital domain spoils you as well.
You drag and drop fx, you reroute stuff with a few clicks, all this without any hassle or any introduction on noise in the signal path.
Who wants to start rerouting patch cables again?
not me.

UAD digital plugins vs KVR developers brightest minds!