Native vs. UAD, comparisions....

[bmanic]

Watch out for that question people round these part see UAD's DSP as an expensive dongle with lots of hostility

The old UAD-1 card is an expensive dongle. The new more powerful UAD-2 could actually be useful because you can run a fair amount of plugins on them.

The plugins themselves are excellent.

Cheers!
bManic

[ozmoz2008]

UA just release an SSL 4k channel strip and 4k compressor! AND a Cooper Time Cube MKII for the UAD platform!

Cool! I didn't saw any release on newsletter yet?...

[Nokenoku]

Watch out for that question people round these part see UAD's DSP as an expensive dongle with lots of hostility

With right!
The concept of UAD is just outdated. The processing power is rediculous low (counts for the UAD2 as well). Today it's really not much more than a very well working copy protection and way to earn some additional money by selling those cards.

I'm not saying the UAD plugins are not great or anything. Actually I don't really know it, since I've never tried them by myself, but I don't expect them to be better than good native stuff, since it makes not much sense to think so just because it uses an extra DSP-chip.
Since the UAD EQs doesn't model anything special (was measured by some peepz), I would not buy a card for them, but the compressors are known to be certainly very nice, so it might be worth the hassle and money.
Anyways, without the possibility to demo the plugins I won't even think about buying any of them.

By the way, UAD-2 Duo is the same as having 5 UAD-1s! I'm only running a few UAD-1s and I'm more than happy with them.

You can't exactly say it like that. Some plugins benefit more from the UAD2, some are obviously better optimized for the UAD1-card.
I think there are some comparison charts on the UA-Site about that.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

[quote="Nokenoku"][The processing power is rediculous low (counts for the UAD2 as well)....

I'm not saying the UAD plugins are not great or anything. Actually I don't really know it, since I've never tried them by myself...quote]

Look I'm not a UAD fanboy by any stretch of the imagination, but you have no clue what you're talking about. I've never maxed out my UAD-2 Duo in a real-world project, so what you're saying about plugin counts isn't based in any sort of reality.

Also, the plugins aren't magical, but they're very good across the board. They haven't put out a plugin in the last several years that isn't at least very good in terms of quality.

[Sound Mechanics]

I have one major problem with these DSP cards which means that I will probably buy native or external hardware in the future......

I have just sold my UAD-1 (PCI) card, which by the way had good plugins, because it doesn't fit in my new (PCIe)computer. So sooner or later as technology moves on these cards will become incompatable with newer computers. It frustrated me no end when I realised that all standard slots are moving to PCI express, and I don't want to build a computer just because of this issue.

I'm having to sell my Edirol DA2496 interface and PCI card also!

I may get hold of a second hand Lexicon MPX-1 or similar for reverb and use the plugs that come with my sequencer or buy native from now on and not rely on a computer quite in the same way.

[Nokenoku]

Look I'm not a UAD fanboy by any stretch of the imagination, but you have no clue what you're talking about. I've never maxed out my UAD-2 Duo in a real-world project, so what you're saying about plugin counts isn't based in any sort of reality.

Reality:

UAD2 Quad - 6,4 Gigaflops - ~1500€
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-co ... ost3239925

Intel Core2Duo E8400 - 24 Gigaflops - ~140€
http://www.intel.com/support/processors ... 023143.htm

GForce 8800GT - 504 Gigaflops - ~100€
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_ ... al_summary

The performance for the money you pay is absolutely ridiculous!
And don't come me with "it's better suited for audio-processing". Even if this might be true to some degree, it still can't compensate the pure lack of processing power compared to a CPU/GPU. And the old UAD1 (which actually used a GPU) proved, that those kind of chips seem to be at least not to bad.

[SWAN808]

the performance of the chips is not a useful argument IMO:

do they sound great: YES

can you run lots and increase power as you can afford: with UAD2 - YES

Who cares about Gigaflops - we're making music arent we at the end of the day?

[pandashake]

Who cares about Gigaflops - we're making music arent we at the end of the day?

Exactly. The point of the UA cards, as well as Creamware, E-mu, etc. is to reduce the strain on your CPU so you can use more plug-ins when your CPU can't. And yeah, if you can max out a QUAD, then you're doing it wrong.

[chilln]

You can't exactly say it like that. Some plugins benefit more from the UAD2, some are obviously better optimized for the UAD1-card.
I think there are some comparison charts on the UA-Site about that.

I did, though.

Actually, fair enough, I'll say it like UA marketing does, "each UAD-2 is equal to 2.5 UAD-1s 'ON AVERAGE'. Or something like that.

Have a nice day.

[minx]

The cips on the UAD2 are ideal for audio as they have built in upsampling
and other features.Giga Flops is just part of the equation and the UAD2
Quad can run a boat load of very high quality plugs.

[chilln]

Look I'm not a UAD fanboy by any stretch of the imagination, but you have no clue what you're talking about. I've never maxed out my UAD-2 Duo in a real-world project, so what you're saying about plugin counts isn't based in any sort of reality.

Reality:

UAD2 Quad - 6,4 Gigaflops - ~1500€
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-co ... ost3239925

Intel Core2Duo E8400 - 24 Gigaflops - ~140€
http://www.intel.com/support/processors ... 023143.htm

GForce 8800GT - 504 Gigaflops - ~100€
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_8_ ... al_summary

The performance for the money you pay is absolutely ridiculous!
And don't come me with "it's better suited for audio-processing". Even if this might be true to some degree, it still can't compensate the pure lack of processing power compared to a CPU/GPU. And the old UAD1 (which actually used a GPU) proved, that those kind of chips seem to be at least not to bad.

whoooooo cares.

You can use your GPU or native CPU plugins - that's okay, you know.

I like the UADs, regardless of plugin count or dsp power of the cards. If I could only use a few UA plugins at a time, I would just bounce tracks. I like the sound of their tools, as a lot of people do. They're first class.

My cellphone isn't very powerful compared to who knows what else (my CPU or GPU?); but it makes a damn good phone call.

[SWAN808]

I run native and UAD plugins - I use a UAD1 card and use a few UAD plugs per mix. Doing that is very cheap nowdays - and you get UAD flava.

You dont HAVE to run a UA2D quad...there are cheap ways to do it. Pick up a UAD1 card secondhand bundled with some plugs...

[dirty oscillators]

Pick up a UAD1 card secondhand bundled with some plugs...

so how many plugins, on average, can you run with a UAD1?

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

UAD2 Quad - 6,4 Gigaflops - ~1500€
http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-co ... ost3239925

...

As several others have already pointed out, we're talking about real-world use. Can you do a large mix without maxing out a UAD-2 Quad? I certainly could. Therefore, there's nothing wrong with the instance count like you originally claimed.

[SWAN808]

Pick up a UAD1 card secondhand bundled with some plugs...

so how many plugins, on average, can you run with a UAD1?

depends which plugs really - the LA2A and VCA VU are very efficient and I use those a lot - but I also use the 1176LN and that is quite heavy. Maybe on average 6-8 plugins. But I also use Nebula a lot for EQ and colour so I use Ableton Freeze/flatten - its quick and easy. I may pick up a second UAD1 or 2 down the line...but its not essential.

It may not be the easy workflow you can get with native plugs - but the results are worth it IMO. I am happy to print my decisions and move on. Helps me commit.