UAD digital plugins vs KVR developers brightest minds!

[Silent Mind 2005]

Also, it's a bit absurd to be hearing about how a h/w unit sounds different because of the transformers used, when we are talking about digital gear...

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Angus_FX, but a 3 GHz Athlon core seemingly does outperform a couple of UAD chips. Of course, that's only an estimation and depends on the FX quality. So, is UAD planning to adopt that Cell chip like game platform developers did?

[AndrewSimon]

I might get a UAD down the road and most everyone is raving about them but I just can't help thinking - they don't need that board to do that - like someone else mentioned somewhere it's just a big printed circuit dongle that goes in the pci slot - I believe those same plugs could run on my P4 if they were ported. .

Not quite, some plugs like the Plate 140 uses quite a huge DSP power (25% of 1 UAD card) and that would be equvalent to something quite high in CPU power.
Running 4 instances on the UAD will not tax your CPU but running them native will bring the CPU to a near crawl.

I also heard coding a Motorola DSP chip is much more efficient then coding DSP on Windows.
While you can port anything to Windows, it's easier to work with a DSP chip that was designed specifically for sound processing.

Other reason for UA's huge success is their experience in the analog world, any sound engineer was familiar with their analog products before they even came out with the DSP card, that is a huge marketing advantage and the fact that they simply do not have to worry about copy protection gives them a clear advantage.

Comming out with this whole concept of DSP hardware and software is a huge investment.
UA took a huge gamble here, I am happy to see their gamble is finally seems to pay off.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Andrew, you are right with your vision. At the same time we should not forget about evolution. If UAD adopts something like Cell (though, they may not have a budget to do so) then it can safely extend the life of their products (on the other hand they may not release a card which is MUCH more powerful due to commercial reasons). If they do not release anything the competition in the DSP FX realm will get eventually stronger. It will do so because independent developers like myself do gain experience over time and do not need any considerable budget to start new projects. Also hardware tends to age because that's one of the driving forces for the market.

[Angus_FX]

Angus_FX, but a 3 GHz Athlon core seemingly does outperform a couple of UAD chips. Of course, that's only an estimation and depends on the FX quality. So, is UAD planning to adopt that Cell chip like game platform developers did?

I have no idea.. I'm simply saying, the Cell chip provides -much- more number crunching horsepower than current desktop CPUs, and as such could form the basis of a very high performance accelerator card.

>> speculation hat on << -- the Cell is known to be produced by Sony, IBM and Toshiba, and consists of a PowerPC core and eight vector "SPU" cores. Sony's involvement is obviously PS3-related; IBM are one of the major PowerPC backers. The missing pieces of the puzzle are Toshiba and the SPUs. What's interesting here is that Toshiba owns, or owned, the vector DSP technology developed by Chromatic Research -- the MPACT core.. which is the very same chip used by the UAD-1.

So, I can't help wondering if the SPUs are an evolution of the same core.. it already offered good power consumption and performance in 2000 or so, seems reasonable to me that by now they could squeeze eight of them on to a single chip, at a higher clock rate. Eight UAD-1 cores at 2-3x the clock rate of the original? >>slashdot<< imagine a beowulf cluster of those!

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Angus, those 'eight UAD-1' cores ouf of the box will cost $3000 to a customer as an estimation. Commercial reasoning should be also taken into account. Developing a new modern DSP platform may cost millions of dollars in USA.

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[Angus_FX]

Angus, those 'eight UAD-1' cores ouf of the box will cost $3000 to a customer as an estimation. Commercial reasoning should be also taken into account. Developing a new modern DSP platform may cost millions of dollars in USA.

Perhaps... when the UAD-1 came out, it was comparable with the fastest PCs at the time, and cost only $800 to the customer. The Cell chip will cost less than $100 in quantity -- admittedly though, board design and driver development cost big $$, not to mention developing or porting the plug-ins themselves.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Angus, do not forget UAD manufactures several thousands of these boards while Sony manufactures millions of game boxes. So this Cell chip can't cost $100 if comes from UAD.

[Aleksey Vaneev]

Ah... I've forgot to mention yet another thing. Can anybody say they need 4 UAD-1's for their projects right now? That's already pretty much for most audio production tasks. So, by this reasoning it is possible to move all DSP processing needs to additional sub-cores of a 4 or 8 core CPU (currently available 2 is not enough to show the equivalence).

[Angus_FX]

Angus, do not forget UAD manufactures several thousands of these boards while Sony manufactures millions of game boxes. So this Cell chip can't cost $100 if comes from UAD.

I wasn't suggesting for a moment that they develop or manufacture the chip themselves. Sony/IBM/Toshiba are eager to sell Cell to third parties.. nothing to stop UA, TC or indeed anyone else from buying chips from IBM and putting them on their own or a third party PCI or PCI-E board design.

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[Silent Mind 2005]

That's interesting isn't it.
Anyone have the interest and resources to start CellAudio(tm)?
I'd be willing to join in..

[JeffSanders]

However its (UAD) overpriced for what it is, and your probably better to put money into a good CPU set-up or slave PC with good plugs from the best of them hear (vox, PSP, fx, kja etc)

It's all relative. A hardware 1176 alone will set you back $1200 if you're lucky. The Fairchild goes for what, $20,000-$30,000? If you're serious about music, the investment is well-worth-it. Another great thing about UAD plugs is beautiful sound is a no-brainer. The controls are simple, and you almost can't get a bad sound from them. Nothing fattens up digital audio like this stuff.

It's nice to see developers like Aleksey reaching toward the future instead of that nostalgia. Hopefully the future brings some killer stuff. But even tube pres and tube mics are still huge for a reason.

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