UAD Spark Subscription model opinions?

[_leras]

But let me play devil's advocate. If it was an emulation why would that be bad? and UAD want to hide it?

rsp

It would imply less than optimal performance.

re: your other comments. I think UA just made the best emulations they could, first on UAD1, and then tried to improve them on UAD2. I can't see much is shady. Their plug ins sound great. Some other companies have caught up in some way - but UAD always sound great.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Gotta say, big kudos to Universal Audio for this. I'm really looking forward to native versions of these and appreciate them giving owners of the plugins the licenses as freebies. Class act.

1. I'd be very let down if they didn't
2. It's kind of irrelevant as a PC user...

Is this any Mac or just the new ARM based ones? ARM I think are used in their recent pedals and I thought might have worked in new cards.

Native will be great though if it reduces the latency.

PC support is coming in the fall.

It's actually NOT M1 native at the moment. Which is a little funny because the UAD plugins ARE Apple Silicon Native.

So for those trying to keep this all straight:

UAD2 plugins:
Requires DSP hardware
No subscription required
Apple Silicon Native
VST2 only
Mac and PC


UADX (native) plugins:
No DSP hardware required for subscription
DSP hardware IS required to acquire perpetual iLok licenses for UAD plugins
Does NOT natively support Apple Silicon yet (coming soon)
VST3 only
Mac only (PC support coming in the fall)

[dionenoid]

Don't forget : The 2 formats are not interchangeable, but settings can be copied. Weird.

I'm sorry to say, i've been an UAD user for ages, but i think they lost it. Either make everything available as native, or further develop the dsp versions (vst3, resizing, sidechaining and so on). But not this half-baked solution to sell a sub.

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Don't forget : The 2 formats are not interchangeable, but settings can be copied. Weird.

What's weird about that? The DSP plugins have to be separate to run on the DSP and VST2 to VST3 are seldom interchangeable unfortunately. I think a few vendors found ways to do that but UA is dealing with the added complexity of DSP to native and shouldn't assume users want to switch either.

If you've got the hardware and your host hasn't dropped VST2 support (looking at you Cubase ARM version), then there's not a whole lot of benefit to rush to switch over from DSP to native. Just keep the DSP version in those projects where you can. And if you need to, swap them over on as needed basis.

[4damind]

I still have licences for several UAD1 plug-ins, some could probably be used as a native version for free (if available). But my interest is rather low and actually, I have no need for the UAD plugins.
This comes a bit late for me, IMO UA missed the boat years ago.

I think they said in the GS thread that UAD1 plugins licenses are not eligible for the free native version anyway. So even if you cared, you wouldn’t get them

Ok
Apparently there is only the subscription model, so you can't buy native plugins individually?

[fese]

I still have licences for several UAD1 plug-ins, some could probably be used as a native version for free (if available). But my interest is rather low and actually, I have no need for the UAD plugins.
This comes a bit late for me, IMO UA missed the boat years ago.

I think they said in the GS thread that UAD1 plugins licenses are not eligible for the free native version anyway. So even if you cared, you wouldn’t get them

Ok
Apparently there is only the subscription model, so you can't buy native plugins individually?

Nope, it’s all subscribe or die!

[zvenx]

But let me play devil's advocate. If it was an emulation why would that be bad? and UAD want to hide it?

rsp

It would imply less than optimal performance.

re: your other comments. I think UA just made the best emulations they could, first on UAD1, and then tried to improve them on UAD2. I can't see much is shady. Their plug ins sound great. Some other companies have caught up in some way - but UAD always sound great.

Which would hide some of the even greater disparity in performance between the DSP chips and current available chips for PC and Mac.. Hmmmm....

not sure if I follow your second comment re: my other comments.. I wasn't talking about the quality of the emulations per se.. my issue was their emulations of the hardware were called into question and they could have easily addressed those publicly, put it all the rest.. shut down the rumours,.. they didn't....they did with me privately in email..but afaik never addressed them publicly.. I ask myself why.. (hope this makes sense)

rsp

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

I still have licences for several UAD1 plug-ins, some could probably be used as a native version for free (if available). But my interest is rather low and actually, I have no need for the UAD plugins.
This comes a bit late for me, IMO UA missed the boat years ago.

I think they said in the GS thread that UAD1 plugins licenses are not eligible for the free native version anyway. So even if you cared, you wouldn’t get them

Ok
Apparently there is only the subscription model, so you can't buy native plugins individually?

Nope, it’s all subscribe or die!

Not the complete story.

If you own UAD-2/Apollo/etc hardware, you can buy the plugins for said hardware. That "unlocks" those plugins you own that are also part of UADx without subscription. So you could buy a second-hand UAD2 DUO, add it to your UA account, and buy the 1176 collection, then get the native plugins forever.

[zvenx]

Yes but it was a response to UAD-1 hardware owner not UAD-2.

His question was as a UAD-1 licensee, and for such a user he either would have to buy UAD-2 hardware or subscribe (or die).

rsp

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Yes but it was a response to UAD-1 hardware owner not UAD-2.

His question was as a UAD-1 licensee, and for such a user he either would have to buy UAD-2 hardware or subscribe (or die).

rsp

Yes, it's "subscribe or die, or buy a cheap UAD-2 card and problem solved."

UAD-2 solo PCI cards seem to go for $200 or less. Wouldn't be surprised if that's a little inflated right now as demand may have increased a bit since yesterday. Plus, I'm pretty sure you'll get whatever plugins the card is registered to so it's not buying the card and getting nothing.

[Biome_Digital]

Oh, they are dropping the dongles? I sold my UAD years ago. I always found the plugins narrowed and flattened the sound too much.

[zvenx]

Yes but it was a response to UAD-1 hardware owner not UAD-2.

His question was as a UAD-1 licensee, and for such a user he either would have to buy UAD-2 hardware or subscribe (or die).

rsp

Yes, it's "subscribe or die, or buy a cheap UAD-2 card and problem solved."

UAD-2 solo PCI cards seem to go for $200 or less. Wouldn't be surprised if that's a little inflated right now as demand may have increased a bit since yesterday. Plus, I'm pretty sure you'll get whatever plugins the card is registered to so it's not buying the card and getting nothing.

yes indeed you can still transfer your uad-1 plugins to your uad-2 card.

https://help.uaudio.com/hc/en-us/articl ... 8%E2%80%9D

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Yes but it was a response to UAD-1 hardware owner not UAD-2.

His question was as a UAD-1 licensee, and for such a user he either would have to buy UAD-2 hardware or subscribe (or die).

rsp

Yes, it's "subscribe or die, or buy a cheap UAD-2 card and problem solved."

UAD-2 solo PCI cards seem to go for $200 or less. Wouldn't be surprised if that's a little inflated right now as demand may have increased a bit since yesterday. Plus, I'm pretty sure you'll get whatever plugins the card is registered to so it's not buying the card and getting nothing.

yes indeed you can still transfer your uad-1 plugins to your uad-2 card.

https://help.uaudio.com/hc/en-us/articl ... 8%E2%80%9D

Yes, exactly! That's what I did all those years ago. When I bought the Plate 140 it was still been on the UAD-1. But be warned: the other old UAD-1 plugins I have are either not part of Spark yet or have been replaced with newer versions (1176/LA2A collections) and the legacy versions of those plugins do not get you the free native versions.

[noiseboyuk]

I'm pretty sure you'll get whatever plugins the card is registered to so it's not buying the card and getting nothing.

When you sell hardware, there's a choice to include the plugins or not. The catch is - it's all or nothing. So if you have a 2nd bit of UAD hardware and wanted to offload just the stuff you don't use, you can't. And there's no way to just sell plugins not tied to any hardware.

One other thing - if you sell the hardware without plugins, you do get a legacy analog classics collection with the new owner. But you don't get UADx versions of the these plugins.

[PsychicVST]

After connecting my ilok account only one plugin, the a800, and Luna have been deposited. I purchased the new Visionstrip a few months on sale and got the LA2A and 1176 collections free via the refer a friend thing. Shouldn’t I have ilok licenses for these too?

Do you think they’ll deny me the LA2A/1176 because I got them free?

Edit:
Never mind. I just got them.