Thinking of selling my UAD and my Powercore PCI, am i crazy?

[kylen]

Yes - I've thought about this briefly now that you mention it erminardi. Much as I argue that it's all just 1's and 0's normally I can't help wondering what trade-offs in sound quality our native plugs give up to optimize alrogithms to run on my 2.6MHz P4...granted the gap is probably closing but whereever there are limits there must be compromise of some sort (?)

[Jason Brian Merrill]

it would be neat if there were a new, superpowered, quad chip pci-x or somethingorother UAD card that would actually be worth it.

[stag]

it would be neat if there were a new, superpowered, quad chip pci-x or somethingorother UAD card that would actually be worth it.

When UAD was released first a single card had the same or even more power than the current CPU of that era.
Laptops at the time could not be taken as a serious option, not anymore.

To get UAD to stop looking (and feelling) like a huge dongle,
they should consider the actual context of technology.

An external DSP with at least 4 times the power of the current cards is something UAD should aim at short, because on the long run, well not so long, in a year even those would became obsolete.

I reckon the Pultec, LA2A, Fairchild et all are great, I wouldn't say the best, those things relly a lot on the ears, sensitivity and knowlledge of the man behind the box,

I have mixed feellings aabout it but one thing i'm sure: i would like UAD to release native version of them plugs.

Bye.

[erminardi]

Guys, does anyone tryed Minimax, Pro-12, B4000 or Prodyssey ASB from Creamware? They are an hardware version of plugins inside Scope.
They sounds simply a-ma-zin-g!!!
Only Virus can compete (but I find virus a little colder than ASB).
It worth

ps. I'm not an endorser from Creamware

[mike goodwin]

thanks for the post kritikon, the thing is that I am in a situation where it looks like I am going to have to replace my motherboard for one that is not a VIA chipset. It sucks but the UAD cards just dont like other chipsets.

Only like VIA? Bullshit. Who's feeding you that line of crap? I've had mine on an Intel chipset and an NVidia Nforce3 Ultra chipset without issue.

Devon

I should have given more informaton. I am using a AMDX2 4400 and I am not about to sell it and my motherboard to go to intel.

taken from the UAD website....

AMD Dual-Core CPU (X2/Opteron) with NVIDIA nForce4 / nForce3 based chipset

Symptom: Choppy Audio, CPU spiking.
Systems may work fine with PCIe audio device
(or FireWire device connected to PCIe>FireWire adapter)
Use Asus A8V series as a possible alternative. (Via K8T800/K8T890 chipset)

I currently own the A8V and am trying to work with matrox video cards. LONG story short the matrox video cards will not work with Ableton Live and this motherboard. I have tried everything so please just let it rest. I have been very happy with matrox and they are going to send me a PCIe version of one of there cards and I am either going to go to a Nforce4 or a ATI chipset. I have never used a ATI chipset and to be honest I dont know anything about them. I am just starting ot do my homework.

[mike goodwin]

I was glad to see that there was some feedback on this when I came back to the forum. There has been many valid points on both sides of the fence. The things that keep me thinking that I just want to get rid of them is the long term dependancy that you build on these DSP cards. I took both the uad and the powercore out of my system a couple of weeks ago to see how I would get along without them. It has been interesting that is for sure. I kept reaching for my LA2A and my 1176le from the UAD and the two verbs from the powercore. And they where not there. Has made me think of new ways of working. All of a sudden I was going for elements in my software that I had nout used much before. For example I started going for the compresors in Kontakt and rely trying to get good sounds from them. Also the convolution reverbs in kontakt started becoming very important. I started turning to all this freeware that has just been sitting around for the most part, digitalPhishPhones comest to mind. A hole session ended up coming out of Kontakt this week just because of its huge selection of FX. I also started to look to Reaktor another huge set of fx that I did not rely consider for bread and butter fx.

I hate the idea of being stuck with these hardware dongles. The uad truly feels that way to me. A huge anoying dongle that is picky about where you put it. The CPU on that card is way to slow. Im sure that uad will come out with some new killer card in the near future but then guess what? If you want to be able to use there newer software or even more than one plug at a time on a single card when running at 96K you will have to pay big bucks and upgrade. Same with Powercore. I would rather spend lets say $1000 bucks on a new motherboard and cpu in a couple of years and keep all my software than spend about $1000 on anther dsp card and have to consider all conflicts. Then to do the same thing wity my powercore. It is just getting to a point where it is much more cost effective and time effective to go native. There is way more demand for AMD and Intel CPU products so they get quicker faster and come down in price faster. Even today with a AMD X2 4400 you can get allot going on before you bonk out. This is even before you start thingking about overclocking it, and you can overclock these chips with ease.

As for Scope, I think I would rather just pick up the Muse hardware.
On the downside. I dont know how much I would get for either my powercore or my UAD but I am guessing that I would not be that much. I may just keep them and run them in a magma chasis when magma chasis are dirt cheap. Just think soon UAD will put out a Super dooper PCIe card with six times the power and all the uad1 cards will start selling for a hundred bucks, pick up four of them and a chasis for say six hundred bucks. I would not be suprised.

Thanks for all the input!

[aMUSEd]

UAD have put out a PCI-E version afaik but not upgraded the chips. I'm not sure if they even can upgrade the chips without a radical overhaul of the plugins - the chip is an old graphics card chip (not really DSP I suppose unlike some of the others) and I'm not sure its even in development any more (unlike the Sharcs that power Scope stuff - they are audio dedicated and have used a more powerful version in the new ASB boxes and even more powerful ones are available - I just wish they would hurry up and switch for the cards too).

[Kalamata Kid]

How soon might a new super DSP card become available?
Are any in the pipeline? I need more power but do not want to
spend money on old technology. The wait is in months or years?

[JeffSanders]

I sold my UAD-1 a year ago and do not miss it.

It gets to be an illness. Having to buy every new plug they release like a fiend. Each one taking up more processing power and costing more than the last. Then it's a second and third card.

And silly buffer messages, system time resets...bleh.

[friteuse]

Maybe it's more a comparsion between number formats: float against fixpoint, 32 bit vs. 64 bit etc.?

There are differences between those, but they all can be used by native plugs, if the devs want it, just a matter how much cpu the consume.

From what I know (but maybe I'm wrong) DSPs use more fixpoint and native more float (because of the efficent FPU instructions).

I recently did a quick test regarding summing on native system (Logic7.2 using float) and ProTools (using fixpoint). I was quiet surprised that there was a very noticable difference.

That could also explain why some plugins sound different on ProTools/native. But otherwise, I read that some developers use fixpoint for native, too.

So, in conclusion, mathematically, the plugins *can* be identically on both platforms, dsp and native. Nobody knows if they are, though. Btw, when comparing the different versions, the host may have an influence, too.

One cannot say that generally native sounds worse.

[mike goodwin]

That is interesting friteuse. The most logical reasoning that I have heard as to why DSP may sound different or even better than native. I hard that at one of the music product shows eg. NAMM or like like UAD where running one of there plugins in native mode. Sooo make of that what you will.

I downloaded kjaerhus(anyone other than me find that hoard to spell?) GCO-1 last night, that thing is a monster. I mean there are soooo many ways to tweak it. I found it a little overwhelming. It is not a bad thing to have optioins as long as you know when not to spend your entire day making settings on one compressor. I am used to the LA2A, two knobs LOL. I fond the same thing with the voxengo Marquis. As for sound quality they both sound very good. I also did a quick listen to the PSP mix pack. That software hit me with that WOW factor for sure! I gues it is just the way it sounds, personal taste. I also checked out the vintage warmer for the first time. I love that thing.
Seems like if you want a more transparent sound than the GCO is for the job and if your want more tone then go for the PSP. I cant belive I am going to say this but the PSP stuff almost has to much tone. I am happy to have found them and I think I am going to pick up the Mix pack from them. I could not belive the price.

[DevonB]

thanks for the post kritikon, the thing is that I am in a situation where it looks like I am going to have to replace my motherboard for one that is not a VIA chipset. It sucks but the UAD cards just dont like other chipsets.

Only like VIA? Bullshit. Who's feeding you that line of crap? I've had mine on an Intel chipset and an NVidia Nforce3 Ultra chipset without issue.

Devon

I should have given more informaton. I am using a AMDX2 4400 and I am not about to sell it and my motherboard to go to intel.

taken from the UAD website....

AMD Dual-Core CPU (X2/Opteron) with NVIDIA nForce4 / nForce3 based chipset

Symptom: Choppy Audio, CPU spiking.
Systems may work fine with PCIe audio device
(or FireWire device connected to PCIe>FireWire adapter)
Use Asus A8V series as a possible alternative. (Via K8T800/K8T890 chipset)

I currently own the A8V and am trying to work with matrox video cards. LONG story short the matrox video cards will not work with Ableton Live and this motherboard. I have tried everything so please just let it rest. I have been very happy with matrox and they are going to send me a PCIe version of one of there cards and I am either going to go to a Nforce4 or a ATI chipset. I have never used a ATI chipset and to be honest I dont know anything about them. I am just starting ot do my homework.

You don't need Intel to get this to work. I own an AMD 3800+ X2 with an MSI Neo2-F Nforce3 motherboard with a UAD-1 card. Works fine here. I've heard the same thing you've stated above, but it's not always the case for all configurations evidentally.

I also have the A8V motherboard in my other DAW machine. I'm not all that happy with it, especially trying to get higher performance memory to work with it at the speeds they're rated for. Normally, Asus has always been a very positive experience for me.... At least mine only has a heatsink for the northbridge chip.

Devon

[bugs]

After considerable research and thought, I have decided to go all native. The ability to control the quality of source sound (I use almost exclusively VST instruments) means there is very little nee for corrective measures. I use effects almost comletely as sound design tools, often off-line. The power of modern computers is more than adequate and the quality of native plugs is more than adequate. The DSP cards are really archaic transitional technology and in some ways the worst of both worlds.

My $0.02

[kritikon]

Mike...here's one thing you may not have considered. How about keeping the DSP cards and simply buying a cheap run-of-the-mill 2nd hand PC that does have the standard board etc that will work with the UAD and TC cards. Consider...you've got the DSP cards' own power to run the plugins - alot of the plugins are designed for more mixing/mastering anyway, so you don't need a flashy PC to run them. Any old cheap PC - then fit it with FX teleport, or network it or some other thing to simply swap over your audio recordings to the cheapo one with the UAD etc. Even if you use something like Cubase, where you'd have to dick around with swapping dongles or buy a 2nd copy....don't need that. Buy Tracktion or something cheap - even use the free CM host - I don't see why that shouldn't work with UAD and TC cards. The only power on your 2nd PC you need is to run the host (which isn't much).

That way, you can keep your PC setup (which you seem to want...not unreasonable really). And I can't see buying a cheap 2nd hand bog-standard PC as being any more expensive than buying up some more native plugins. Yes, you've been using some Reaktor plugins and there are some decent freebies...but really, do any of them actually replace properly a UAD Pultec Eq, a Fairchild, an LA2A? I really doubt it. Look at the price of the better native plugins - to get a decent set of comps/limiters/Eqs etc, you're going to have to spend quite a few hundred $$$s. I doubt you'll have any change left over from selling the UAD etc, because to replace those plugins, you really do need to buy the best of the best of native, and likely several of them.


It's a thought, anyway. A cheap way of having a properly running main DAW and still being able to use your DSP card plugins.

[Jason Brian Merrill]

I wouldnt bother with the out of date DSP cards available.

I am going to wait until they finally have something available that uses modern horsepower....