My UAD-1 dilemma: not a happy customer

  • Thread starter Thread starter Mo Facta
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Mo Facta

Mo Facta

Farts of Nature
Hi guys,

I have a dilemma with my UAD-1 system and I thought I would share it on here to find out if anyone else has had the same issue.

Now, before you jump on me and tell me to upgrade, I am fully aware that the UAD-1 is old and unsupported. Regardless, I have a few UAD plugins that I use and I'm quite happy with them. I am not a plugin junky and use a few selected plugins to get the job done. While I'm a 21st Century digital boy I still have that silly old school mentality of focusing on the INPUT instead of the mix.

The back story is that I bought a UAD-1 and a UAD-1e second hand from my studio partner when he exited our partnership a couple years back. The UAD-1 card is the original "Mackie" rev. 1.0 card. It's vintage digital! Nevertheless, it works fine and does what I need. It came pre-loaded with the 1176LN and the LA-2A, which happen to be two of my go-to plugins for lots of sources. To me, they are the most versatile of the plugins I have as far as UAD goes. The UAD-1e does not have these plugins authorized.

The problem I'm facing here is that I can't get the aforementioned plugins to run on BOTH cards because, as I have been told by UA Customer Support, I don't technically own the 1176LN and the LA-2A because they were hard-encoded to the Mackie UAD-1 card and the licenses weren't transfered when the cards changed ownership.

I don't understand this. If I am amble to legitimately use the 1176LN and the LA-2A on the UAD-1 card, how can I not own them? That is what we bought when we originally bought the cards. Furthermore, how could these licenses not have been transfered along with the cards? All the other plugin licenses did. I find this ridiculous. UA has basically told me that they can't help me and are trying to coax me into buying the two plugins again if I want to use them on both cards. That works out to about $600 that I just don't have lying around. I feel a little like this is extortion.

My logic is thus:

- The LA-2A and 1176LN are hard encoded to the UAD-1 card
- I bought the card
- I transfered the ownership to my own account
- I own the cards and plugins that come with it

Am I being unreasonable? I feel this is a technicality that they should be a bit more sympathetic to. I realise I am not a high profile customer and don't spend thousands of dollars each year on their plugins, but that's because I am not a plugin junky and get the job done my own way. I live in South Africa and the ZAR/USD rate is not very good so $299 may seem like a little bit of cash to you guys, but it's a huge chunk of my salary here.

Anyway. If anyone else has had this experience, please can you offer me some input on the matter? Is UA not gong to budge on this matter?

Cheers
 
Unfortunately, that is the price you pay for not keeping current. As time goes by, there are always little loopholes and technicalities that will jump out of the bushes and take your lunch money.

I wouldn't bother buying the plugins for the other card because when this computer dies, the mackie card will be useless because you will be hard pressed to find a new computer with a pci slot to put it in.

With any computer related hardware, you are forced to upgrade simply because the equipment becomes incompatible after a few years.
 
But that's the point. The other card is PCI-e. I want the plugins authorized on that card as well.

It's a matter of principle. I bought a UAD-1 card with the plugins authorized on it. I should be able to use them with both cards because they are in the same hardware group.

Cheers :)
 
It sounds like the card was shipped to work with the Mackie and it is "burned in", meaning, hard coded. Once again, just speculating here, the code is in the EPROM (or if it is a PROM). That would require the EPROM to be reprogrammed. That would be done at the factory. If you have an EPROM device, you may be able to get it to work, but that is usually Assembler and is for real computer engineers and super geeks.

It could just be, they can't fix it. (They may not even have the hardware to reprogram the EPROM.)
 
I'm a UAD-1 and UAD-2 owner and I'm shocked they won't let you run the plugs on both cards. My guess is if the second card was PCI instead of PCIe they would've let you run the plugs.

It's definitely not $600, because that's the price of the updated plug ins which won't run on UAD-1, only the legacy versions will.
 
It doesn't matter, they're in the same hardware group. Whether one is PCI or PCI-e should be irrelevant.

Well, I didn't see the legacy plugins on their website. They only had the new 1176 and LA-2A versions up on there.

Cheers :)
 
The same thing happened when they dropped Nigel from the list of available plugins. Past a certain date, you just coolant get it any more. Once you upgraded to uad -2, it was gone forever. It's just the nature of software. You can't expect everything to last a decade in the form that it was originally in. Especially when one thing was made by one company and the other was made by the company that bought the first company out. Ten years later, after they have dropped support for both, you are just going to be stuck.

The reason they did the buy-back was to rid the world of all the UAD-1 cards. That tells you how much they didn't want to support them into the future. All the cards that were turned in were destroyed. It just isn't going to work the way you would like it to.
 
I had to dump my UAD-1s just because I wanted to upgrade to a newer version.
 
The policy sounds dumb, but the pricing is even dumber. A brand new solo card costs $299 USD and includes both those plugins plus a bunch of others, and has way more DSP power than the original UAD-1.
 
The policy isn't dumb. How long can a company afford to support people who do not support them? From what I gathered from the initial post, he invested in this companies product a very long time ago and is going out of his way to not buy another thing from the company. Then he is unhappy that the company doesn't bend over backwards to make unsupported, outdated equipment work the way he thinks it should work, instead of the way it has always worked.
I would completely agree with him if he was having this same problem five years ago. But it is a little late now.
 
UADs are always controversial in online forums due to UA's business practices and the need to use a card, but the majority of people would agree that their plugins are good.

The main thing is that they always have specials and give lots of credits so you should never pay face value for any of their plugs.
 
jimmys69 said:
I have two UAD-1 cards for sale. :)
Click to expand...

Moving up to UAD-2??? :) Hope you turn a profit, that's beer money!!

Jimmys69 replied: Naw man, they never worked right. Cubase 7 does not support them and I gave up. They are still installed. Maybe with the last Cubase update they will work. IDK, been to busy to try.

Plus, like inferred by Seafroggys, I don't need the extra processing power. I was just hoping to get a new toy to play with. It just didn't work out. No biggie.

Ok, this is strange. I replied with quote but it seems that I just edited your post. ???
 
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I'd upgrade to a UAD-2 if they were actually worth the price. You can buy a computer that completely obliterates a UAD-2 Quad in processing power for 1/4 the cost of a Quad. It makes no sense. It reminds me when I was working in Electronics at Target a couple of years ago, at about that time (2009) you could buy a 2 gig SD card for less than $20, which the Playstation 3 used, but the 64 meg Playstation 2 memory card, which was a proprietary, outdated format, cost about the same amount.

I'm fine with my UAD-1 plugs, I own two cards and have never exceeded my limit.
 
Chili said:
Moving up to UAD-2??? :) Hope you turn a profit, that's beer money!!

Jimmys69 replied: Naw man, they never worked right. Cubase 7 does not support them and I gave up. They are still installed. Maybe with the last Cubase update they will work. IDK, been to busy to try.

Plus, like inferred by Seafroggys, I don't need the extra processing power. I was just hoping to get a new toy to play with. It just didn't work out. No biggie.

Ok, this is strange. I replied with quote but it seems that I just edited your post. ???
Click to expand...

Funny I have to reply to myself to reply to you. You hit edit instead of quote. I do it sometimes. lol.

Yeah, too bad they didn't work out for ya. Still, you got to try them for cheap and you can probably recoup your costs. I just picked a 2nd UAD-2 card off of eBay for around $300. me likey!!! :D
 
Chili said:
Funny I have to reply to myself to reply to you. You hit edit instead of quote. I do it sometimes. lol.

Yeah, too bad they didn't work out for ya. Still, you got to try them for cheap and you can probably recoup your costs. I just picked a 2nd UAD-2 card off of eBay for around $300. me likey!!! :D
Click to expand...

That is what happened I am sure. I was in a hurry. lol

No hard feelings with the purchase man. Still have not found time to see if they work now....
 
What else do I have on this card other than the 1176SE? It says I haven't registered even though I have. Still works tho.

Every plug demo is there I just don't have time to pull up each one to see what is included.

I know we had this conversation before, but that was long ago.

And sorry for jacking your thread MO! :/
 
Yeah, no worries on the purchase. I was hoping you'd come into the UAD light, but it's taking you longer to repent. Ha ha.
 
Chili said:
Yeah, no worries on the purchase. I was hoping you'd come into the UAD light, but it's taking you longer to repent. Ha ha.
Click to expand...

So no answer to the question? lol!

When you gonna come by and let me grill you up a steak?
 
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