UAD PolyMAX - This thing is Sick

[Robmobius]

PolyMax is native instrument. No hardware is needed.

This has been addressed several times now. We know...

But you need to sub and there are quite a few of us who don't like that option. Therefore making the synth 'not a viable option'.

Or having to buy an overpriced dongle that sits beside your other audio interface.

[revvy]

If you use UA plugs with Apollo on a Mac then, it's two dongles before you even get going, AMIRITE?

[_leras]

Repro is 149€ and PolyMAX is 199€ and you need a UAD hardware, it is not the same price at all

PolyMax is £149 - ok so €170

Same ballpark though.

[Scotty]

Anyway... When you ask someone to provide a sample of "better" to hear how UA synth is exactly better to 5-10 years old native releases and ask for a screenshot of a patch, MIDI sequence and patch file itself then you hear crickets. Same old story.

And we are back to "sounds better to me when I listen it on youtube" - even though on youtube it can be post-processed in DAW numerous times or altered in numerous ways.

Silly crowd.

When you ask someone to inform what real analogue polys they have for reference and they don’t answer you know that I have no more questions..

Real analog poly synths aren't rare. There are tons of DeepMinds12s, MinilogueXDs, PolyBrutes and others out in the wild. Not to mention Junos and other classics that are proudly racked in studios. I am pretty sure enough people either own them or have played with them to have a sense of what they should expect. This isn't wine tasting although with the gear snobbery that is prevalent out there you might think holding an educated opinion requires some specific training and deep pockets. It doesn't.

[Modular Manfred]

Anyway... When you ask someone to provide a sample of "better" to hear how UA synth is exactly better to 5-10 years old native releases and ask for a screenshot of a patch, MIDI sequence and patch file itself then you hear crickets. Same old story.

And we are back to "sounds better to me when I listen it on youtube" - even though on youtube it can be post-processed in DAW numerous times or altered in numerous ways.

Silly crowd.

When you ask someone to inform what real analogue polys they have for reference and they don’t answer you know that I have no more questions..

Real analog poly synths aren't rare. There are tons of DeepMinds12s, MinilogueXDs, PolyBrutes and others out in the wild. Not to mention Junos and other classics that are proudly racked in studios. I am pretty sure enough people either own them or have played with them to have a sense of what they should expect. This isn't wine tasting although with the gear snobbery that is prevalent out there you might think holding an educated opinion requires some specific training and deep pockets. It doesn't.

There is no such thing as gear snobbery if you are a professional musician. And deepmind and monologue vs a jupiter.. i am not sure

[vurt]

you brought up people not being able to afford things, that's the definition of snobbery. imo

and before you ask, no, i own 0 polyphonic analogue synths.
not because i can't afford them, but because i have no need for them.
same reason i have no microwave oven.

[Modular Manfred]

you brought up people not being able to afford things, that's the definition of snobbery. imo

and before you ask, no, i own 0 polyphonic analogue synths.
not because i can't afford them, but because i have no need for them.
same reason i have no microwave oven.

No, I didn’t in first place. I brought up people calling an audio interface a dongle and called them ignorant for that. And when they asked me to suck their dongle in response, then I thought maybe the problem is not that they are not intelligent enough to understand this, but perhaps they approach it from finance point of view, wrongly. This is not snobbery, but common sense.

[BuddySpencer]

If you only need the hardware to be allowed to use the product without a subscription, but not as an actual technical requirement (because it also runs natively with the sub-model), it is still a dongle (for this product). This is different to UAD Plugins running on the internal chip or a keyboard to use a PC which both fulfill a requirement for the function of the product.

[Modular Manfred]

I just wonder.. Should this thread be about defining the terms of reference for the definition of a dongle, or perhaps people who are only able to post irrelevant comments like ‘it needs a dongle so it’s sh*t’ or ‘my plugin synth only cost me 60 quid and has 1 more LFO so it’s defo better’ should they start a separate thread called ‘Dongle moan zone’ and express their negativity over there. And should space be left in this thread for relevant and constructive comments about UAD PolyMax for people who have access to it one way or another and can share their own experiences with this plugin not based upon a youtube video and have a discussion around real life comparisons. I have not had the time to do my own research yet but I am eager to know:

- What filter they modelled in this exactly?
- How much it oversamples internally?
- Who UAD collaborated with or was it an in-house development?

[Nipogadzauba]

If you only need the hardware to be allowed to use the product without a subscription, but not as an actual technical requirement (because it also runs natively with the sub-model), it is still a dongle (for this product). This is different to UAD Plugins running on the internal chip or a keyboard to use a PC which both fulfill a requirement for the function of the product.

You need the hardware to be in the uad club. This plugins used to be exclusive, now everyone can also try it with subscription. I am mastering engineer and almost every professional that i know has uad cards anyway, apollo or some, in mastering particular, satellites just for the plugins and everyone loves the plugins and I never ever heard discussions like here or on gearslutz that this is just dongle, dsp is outdated, there is better alternatives in native. UAD is great and I use it every day, alongside with many other developers.
I am tired of this too, people who just don’t know what they are talking about, just hating on UAD, every topic filled with this useless posts.
And yes, to have objective opinion on this topics you have to be educated, sound engineers train their ears and spend years to learn how to listen. Many musicians in the industry do not have the “ears” to make professional judgments, I don’t even mention amateurs, thats why we have our jobs.
BTW Polymax sounds great and I think for 100$ on sale it is good value for such instrument.

[Robmobius]

up people calling an audio interface a dongle and called them ignorant for that. And when they asked me to suck their dongle in response, then I thought maybe the problem is not that they are not intelligent enough to understand this, but perhaps they approach it from finance point of view, wrongly. This is not snobbery, but common sense.

Well seeing that this emotionally fragile and utter 'no mark' is talking about me again, I feel the need to respond. I had just been ignoring the little oxygen thief.

First point about the HW dongle. It was a joke and a bit of ball-busting at UADs expense. I'm hardly the first person to say it, but poor Modular Winifred got all bent out of shape and butt hurt. I was deeply amused.
And I'm going to go on calling it a dongle so FU.

The second point and this was a doozie showed him up, not only to be a complete egotistical cretin but an absolute ignoramus. He probably goes around laughing at people who work at Mcdonald's. What a decent chap!

Unfortuntely for him... I'm an audio professional and have been for over 11 years. So if I wanted an Apollo Dongle I'd have one. I didn't even bother to respond to such a childish ad-hominem attack. Although, I see a few people called him out on it already - Fair play!

But by the sounds of it Modular Winifred must be as big as Elton John, and obviously likes the same sort of plugins . Of course, the dope won't get that reference as he's a KVR noob.

Considering he likes to imply how rich he is as an eminent musician I wonder how many people have bought his multi-platinum-selling records.

[rod_zero]

All this low effort emulation from big names as UAD and softube are really boring, they are like 10 years late to the game and emulate the same shit that has been done to death with even fewer features. At least arturia tries stuff that wasn't done before.

As for the sound, Roland plugouts sound way more fat, warm, punchy and all that gibberish people love to say.

UAD, by boomers for boomers

I doubt very much they are really low effort synths. I'm sure they have circuit modelled and applied their usual high standards, as all their synths sound fantastic so far.

They've been the highest quality FX company for some time. I'm happy to see them make synths too.

What would a boomer be in this situation? Anyone who bought a UAD card or interface?

I get that the subscription is a barrier, but if the price stays the same it will be a bargain as more plug ins get added. For someone starting out to get a full high quality studio worth of FX for a year for £149, it's amazing really. That's the cost of one plug in.

[vurt]

you brought up people not being able to afford things, that's the definition of snobbery. imo

and before you ask, no, i own 0 polyphonic analogue synths.
not because i can't afford them, but because i have no need for them.
same reason i have no microwave oven.

No, I didn’t in first place. I brought up people calling an audio interface a dongle and called them ignorant for that. And when they asked me to suck their dongle in response, then I thought maybe the problem is not that they are not intelligent enough to understand this, but perhaps they approach it from finance point of view, wrongly. This is not snobbery, but common sense.

asking someone if the grape is sour because they cannot afford something, aside from being a baseless assumption, is considered somewhat crass in polite circles.
whatever the reason it was brought up doesn't matter

[zvenx]

Please forgive me if this has been posted already..

Some background by UA..

https://uadforum.com/community/index.ph ... ost-432973

The link also contains an image.

Hey everyone, I'll start with the way in which PolyMAX was derived from classic Prophets, Oberheims, and Jupiters. Warning: there will be some serious nerding-out in this post .

A lot of the classic polysynths used the same chips for the cores of their modules: Either the Dave Rossum designed SSM chips or the Doug Curtis designed CEM chips. Wikipedia has a great reference as to which synth used what: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CEM_and_SSM_chips

For the filter I wanted a vintage SSM 2040. However the original chips were nearly impossible to find. Luckily the chip has been resurrected by SSI is the form of the 2140. I built a prototype filter on breadboard using that chip.
IMG_3821 (1).jpg


I only diverged slightly from the datasheet. There was a secondary schematic that featured gain compensation when you turn up the resonance, but the resultant resonance characteristics were too different from the old polysynths. I then messed with resistor values until I found the most musical result.

For the oscillator, I referenced a Rossum Electromusic Trident, which uses SSI 2164s. Its waveforms are very clean and nearly identical to Opal's, so that part was straightforward.

Unlike Opal, PolyMAX features a VCA model. This is based on a vintage SSM 2164 using the straight-up datasheet circuit.

For the envelopes, I chose the CEM, which is the most commonly used polysynth envelope. Even the Memorymoog, which has a ladder filter, still uses the CEM envelope. It has a very musical pseudo-exponential curve.

So the target was extremely Rossum-centric. FYI: Rossum Electromusic and UA are very tightly affiliated, as Dave moonlights as an engineer at UA. UA is also invested in Rossum Electromusic. It is such a pleasure to converse with Dave, and I miss the pre-covid days when I could just walk down the stairs and chat with him at HQ.

With all that in mind, during the final dialing-in, I asked myself "what if the most musical result and the most authentic result were two different things". I switched from "shooting out" to "taste tests". I included CEM and Ladder filters along with PolyMAX in its existing state. People really liked the sound of my analog prototype, but there were some aspects of ladders, and some aspects of the unfinished PolyMAX that people liked better. The final filter is more of a cross between an SSM and a Moog, and the top-end of the VCA was opened up a little.

More divergence Opal "chassis" is voice-to-voice variation and the oscillators are a little more drifty. It's vintage and modern at the same time.

One area where PolyMAX completely diverges from analog is the FM. The FM is different from Opal in that it's not DX-style phase modulation, but linear FM, which is the basic paradigm of the FM in most analog synthesizers. However, there are some serious shortcomings to analog FM that were deliberately not modeled. Analog oscillators have a tendency to have very unstable pitch when modulated. I could go deeper into this subject on request. The bottom line is applying "perfect" linear FM to well-modeled analog oscillators is an awesome, very musical sound.

So what we ended up with is an instrument that's "voiced" the way a piano or other acoustic instrument is finished off.

rsp

[Robmobius]

asking someone if the grape is sour because they cannot afford something, aside from being a baseless assumption, is considered somewhat crass in polite circles.
whatever the reason it was brought up doesn't matter

Indeed... Only a complete P.O.S. would bring something like that up...

Personally, I respect anyone who's got a job and works hard for themselves and their family. Whether that's behind a counter serving fast food or cleaning windows.