KVR Audio

noiseboyuk · Post by **noiseboyuk** » Wed Mar 30, 2022 9:42 pm

vad.martyn wrote: Wed Mar 30, 2022 9:37 pm Spark also proves that all UAD accelerator cards are mostly dongles

That's a really bizarre conclusion which would only be the case if the Native versions used zero CPU. They don't use zero CPU.

zvenx · Post by **zvenx** » Wed Mar 30, 2022 11:34 pm

Well, I have seen some argue that uad plugins can only be done on their dsp due to oversampling etc., and argue vehemently so too. Which was nonsense at least for the past ten years or so.
I think that is the point he was making.

Rsp

Virgil · Post by **Virgil** » Thu Mar 31, 2022 2:40 am

beely wrote: Wed Mar 30, 2022 5:36 pm
No, they will deposit iLok licenses for owned plugins, so you can use them for free, natively, without a subscription. (For the ones that are available as UADx).

How long does it take for them to deposit said iLok licenses?
I installed UA Connect, linked my iLok Id, but nothing appears so far (not in iLok nor in UA Connect).

zvenx · Post by **zvenx** » Thu Mar 31, 2022 2:45 am

They said give them a few days.
rsp

ghettosynth · Post by **ghettosynth** » Thu Mar 31, 2022 2:45 am

YaY! Another subscription option!

Virgil · Post by **Virgil** » Thu Mar 31, 2022 2:46 am

zvenx wrote: Thu Mar 31, 2022 2:45 am They sais give them a few days.
Rsp

I love you, thanks

beely · Post by **beely** » Thu Mar 31, 2022 3:16 am

Virgil wrote: Thu Mar 31, 2022 2:40 am
beely wrote: Wed Mar 30, 2022 5:36 pm
No, they will deposit iLok licenses for owned plugins, so you can use them for free, natively, without a subscription. (For the ones that are available as UADx).

How long does it take for them to deposit said iLok licenses?
I installed UA Connect, linked my iLok Id, but nothing appears so far (not in iLok nor in UA Connect).

Explained in the FAQ. They are working through depositing licenses for everybody, but it could take up for four days to complete. You’ll need to be patient, but they will show up…

jules99 · Post by **jules99** » Thu Mar 31, 2022 6:09 am

ghettosynth wrote: Thu Mar 31, 2022 2:45 am YaY! Another subscription option!

I wonder, since you can buy the DSP versions of single plugins and you get the UADx version with it, if that's a workaround to actually buy the native versions.

Synth Master Jedi · Post by **Synth Master Jedi** » Thu Mar 31, 2022 7:42 am

I do not own or use any UAD hardware, but I have always wondered about their plugins.

17 seems a bit on the low side for a sub service. I'll check back later on and see how many there are in 6 months time or a year from now.

I don't have any issues with subs, I rotate between a few different ones. I also don't have any issues with iLok.

If I can have access to ALL of their plugins, then that would make the sub more tempting imo.

rasmusklump · Post by **rasmusklump** » Thu Mar 31, 2022 7:46 am

greententacle wrote: Wed Mar 30, 2022 8:07 pm iam just interested in the space echo.
haven't found a good native one yet, or is there?

The AudioThing is better than the UAD

trackbout · Post by **trackbout** » Thu Mar 31, 2022 7:50 am

I just got booted and had all posts deleted from this thread https://gearspace.com/board/new-product ... rvice.html for discussing the likelihood that Spark is an emulation layer rather than ported native plugins. Pretty crazy, I had noticed that the thread was being extremely aggressively moderated prior my comments being wiped, but it's a little sad to realize that certain companies are given extreme control over their own threads at GS.

Anyway, this Reddit post was the source of my speculation about Spark being an emulation layer, and based on GS & UA's aggressive response to it, it's probably true!

https://www.reddit.com/r/audioengineeri ... ative_dsp/

Posted by
u/Snoop-Da-Woop
4 months ago

PSA: Universal Audio has had excellent, native, DSP emulation working in house for over 3 years now, and they're simply not releasing it because it'll hurt hardware sales. We're in the middle of a historic chip shortage, which means for some, UA products are literally no longer an option.

Some time ago, I had a chance to speak to some employees at a sort of trade show and we talked about the required "DSP accelerators" that UA has been known for essentially since their founding, and the conversation turned to recent consumer technological advancements. (This was right after the big "Ryzen boom" where ThreadRipper was starting to make waves for both AMD and Intel, and a lot of computationally expensive things were becoming a financial possibility for home users.)

Long story short, they talked about how they (much like every company other than UA that sells analog emulations) have technology that makes it so the DSP accelerators are no longer absolutely required for their plugins to work. Although the work offload is still a big plus, it was possible for everything in their library to run well natively on a high end CPU (presently at that time). Meaning, the emulation is absolutely 100% identical, and it had simply become a matter of what hardware was assigned the "work".

I never forgot this conversation and I assumed they'd eventually drop the requirement for a piece of UAD hardware to run their plugins, but it never happened. Ironically, consumer available CPUs have advanced at an even faster rate since then, as have the states of many notable competing products.

I've contacted them again (several times), and it sounds like the general consensus is that they're going to drag their feet until enough customers demand the option of using the hardware they already own to run the plugins they buy. I figured now is a better time than ever because of the state of the hardware market, chip costs, and chip availability.

Maybe I've misunderstood, or maybe the people I spoke to weren't completely in the loop, but it sounds like we're being taken advantage of a little bit and I want to know that Universal Audio would have a good reason for doing what they've been doing.

greententacle · Post by **greententacle** » Thu Mar 31, 2022 8:02 am

that would mean it's a emulator running, not a native software. Like the motorola virus project.
maybe the last korg releases are the same.

noiseboyuk · Post by **noiseboyuk** » Thu Mar 31, 2022 8:07 am

It’s a little like Avid’s DSP plugins. Time was that it was essential to get that level of quality, but that era has been and gone. Of course the hardware still works (until in the case of Pro Tools they stop supporting it), but in an era of M1 chipsets it’s likely pretty sluggish in comparison today.

Other companies such as Waves have options to go the other way for live use, so hardware isn’t dead exactly. I suspect UAD will end up in a similar sort of space.

trackbout · Post by **trackbout** » Thu Mar 31, 2022 8:22 am

Ya, it also means that any plugin that runs on a SHARC chip can already run on the emulation layer, so the limited set of Spark plugins is purely a business decision, not a question of certain plugins being ported and others not.

The funny thing is, using an emulation layer is not necessarily a bad thing, there may be some performance overhead, but it makes a ton of sense not to have to port and maintain additional native Mac versions and eventually native Windows versions of each plugin, but UA sure doesn't want anyone to know about it!

greententacle · Post by **greententacle** » Thu Mar 31, 2022 8:34 am

don't wanna know how many companies already do this.

UAD Spark Subscription model opinions?