UAD still worth it?

[Milos]

$34.71 at https://www.jrrshop.com/ with code "forum"

[bmanic]

Finally the ATR-102 as a native plugin! Wow! Been waiting for this one for years! It's the only plugin from UA that I've missed dearly since departing with my UAD system more than a decade ago.

I'm glad that it sounds exactly as good as I remember it! Yeah, there may be newer and more technically advanced tape simulations out there in 2024 but this one is a very simple way to get any track in any genre to sound "finished". It's got a remarkable way of getting things to sound "like a record". Combine this with PM's P455 or the Silver Bullet plugin and you've got as much "sounds like a finished record" as ever before in the box!

Love it!

EDIT: Oh and don't forget to use it on individual tracks too! It works supremely well on tons of sources!

[Download SOphist]

how did u guys managed to demo it? the "try it free" button isn't working for me...

[Download SOphist]

never mind, must be something I did wrong, as I have a bunch of LUNA stuff saying demo expired (including the ampex). strangely I don't remember ever requesting demos for that stuff. oh well...

[elxsound]

never mind, must be something I did wrong, as I have a bunch of LUNA stuff saying demo expired (including the ampex). strangely I don't remember ever requesting demos for that stuff. oh well...

likely your cloud session is not open, or your ilok is not plugged in.

[elxsound]

Just sent them an email to stop adding Luna to the dock after every Luna update.

Super spammy.

I can understand on the initial install, but not after every update. Spotify is creepy like that, as it opens on launch, as installed by default with some diving to get it changed. Chrome is another creepy one until you remove it from launch on startup (and get used to how it requires holding CMD+Q to quit).

[vitocorleone123]

No UAD plugin is worth more than $29, same as Plugin Alliance and Waves. They’ve devalued everything and anyone paying more is making a personal choice to overpay. In fact, $5 is probably more the target price.

That's not true. The UAD plug ins are excellent, even the older ones.

Yes they are also available on very good bundles and discounts, this just makes them exceptional value.

Didn’t say they were bad, simply that UAD had devalued them to $29 or less. Which means paying more than that for them is a poor choice financially.

Completely ignore their list price as UAD doesn’t think they are worth that - that price is the “sucker price” now.

[vitocorleone123]

Finally the ATR-102 as a native plugin! Wow! Been waiting for this one for years! It's the only plugin from UA that I've missed dearly since departing with my UAD system more than a decade ago.

I'm glad that it sounds exactly as good as I remember it! Yeah, there may be newer and more technically advanced tape simulations out there in 2024 but this one is a very simple way to get any track in any genre to sound "finished". It's got a remarkable way of getting things to sound "like a record". Combine this with PM's P455 or the Silver Bullet plugin and you've got as much "sounds like a finished record" as ever before in the box!

Love it!

EDIT: Oh and don't forget to use it on individual tracks too! It works supremely well on tons of sources!

As I understand it, UAD removed features in the native version.

[jamcat]

Didn’t say they were bad, simply that UAD had devalued them to $29 or less. Which means paying more than that for them is a poor choice financially.

Completely ignore their list price as UAD doesn’t think they are worth that - that price is the “sucker price” now.

Not $29 or less. That's Waves and Plugin Alliance.

Universal Audio had selective plugins on sale at $39 for a while, and now they're holding them firm at $49 as their lowest sale price. Coupons no longer work on plugins under $89. $89 seems to be the standard (non-sale) price now.

[Naillerz78]

I should’ve said “modeling”. I’ve never seen a more detailed or accurate model of hardware in software than The Scream. It was just an example.

To be fair, you said “just about”, not that UAD is the only developer that cares about modeling nuances accurately.

That’s interesting re The Scream.
I’ve seen that name mentioned regularly over the years on forums and just looked at the Cytomic webpage -
it’s a model of a tube screamer pedal yeah?
https://cytomic.com/product/scream/

And I’m thinking - how ‘good’ can it sound.. its just a tube screamer pedal ? Isn’t there like 5,000 software models of an Ibanez TS pedal on the market ? Is it that much discernibly better than all the others?
There is also 1,000 variations of an actual physical Tubescreamer pedal on the market ,one that have been modded/ retro/ boosted/ XYZ improved components , claiming to be different /better than the others .. it’s madness !

[beely]

$89 seems to be the standard (non-sale) price now.

There's a UAD Tuesdays $50 coupon in your UA cart that you can use on any plugin $89 or higher. Which essentially makes all $89 plugins available for $39 right now.

Or you can get it from JRR Shop for about $34 with forum discount...

[bmanic]

Finally the ATR-102 as a native plugin! Wow! Been waiting for this one for years! It's the only plugin from UA that I've missed dearly since departing with my UAD system more than a decade ago.

I'm glad that it sounds exactly as good as I remember it! Yeah, there may be newer and more technically advanced tape simulations out there in 2024 but this one is a very simple way to get any track in any genre to sound "finished". It's got a remarkable way of getting things to sound "like a record". Combine this with PM's P455 or the Silver Bullet plugin and you've got as much "sounds like a finished record" as ever before in the box!

Love it!

EDIT: Oh and don't forget to use it on individual tracks too! It works supremely well on tons of sources!

As I understand it, UAD removed features in the native version.

Yes, they did. They completely removed the tape delay feature, which I don't really miss but I do miss the wow and flutter adjustment knobs and the hiss amount knob.

Still, as it is right now, it sounds absolutely fantastic! I've never had the fortune of operating the real machine but the plugin has a very good "sounds like a finished mix" thing to it that is extremely pleasant to my ears. It's completely unique in it's sound signature and none of my other tape options has that (I have Satin, all IK Multimedia tapes and various free plugins and my own tape experiments.. oh and of course I even have a couple of real tape machines too). I never really thought of it as a tape emulation.. just as a general sweetener that always lives on the mixbus. I'm super happy to have that available again!

It's honeymoon time once again! 12 years later!!

[Funkybot's Evil Twin]

Nice. I always liked the ATR-102 when demoing it previously, but originally, my lowly UAD-2 DUO wasn't going to run many instances so I passed, and then I held off because there was no Spark version. I've long disliked their Studer plugin, but the ATR-102 was like putting syrup across the mixbus. Just picked it up at JRR Shop for $35 and change. Couldn't say no at that price.

Looking forward to playing with this.

[bmanic]

Here is a quick example of just slapping on the ATR-102 on a practice mix I worked on today.

AiA - Original Mix (google drive, mp3)

AiA - ATR102 (456 at 7.5ips) (google drive, mp3)

A rather subtle example but should still be quite easy to hear the difference even on a very modest system. To my ears the plugin just makes the whole thing come alive in a very pleasing way.

EDIT: Sounds like the original mix is a tiny bit louder than the ATR102 mix so you may want to compensate for that.

[plexuss]

The Hype Machine is alive with this one, isnt it!