UAD-1: An Emotional Review Not Well Thought Out But Heartfelt

S

Sonic Idiot

New member
Okay, I'll keep it short. If you don't have one of these things in your computer, stop what you're doing and go get one. If you don't have the money, go down by the pier and turn a few tricks or something. If you're up late at night trying to get your shitty mixes to sound better and you can't because the freeware crappy ass plugs you use make everything sound like dookie, your troubles will soon be over.

In particular, the mastering suite (multi band, limiter, precision EQ) is the closest thing to an audio magic wand I've come across. Seriously. You'd have to be really, really stupid to not make things sound much much better with these plugs. The limiter makes beef out of chicken. I can't lie to you about this.

I've been using the Waves L1, mulit-band, and Q10 for years. No doubt, these tools are great. I will look back fondly on the days spent farting around with them, but I will not use them in the future because the UAD plugs are simply better. We get into hairspliting territory when discussing the differences, but to me they are noticable and sonically measureable. The UAD limiter and precision eq is a big step towards making digital a worthy replacement of analog.
 
So...how do you really feel? :D

Yeah, I too am looking at the UAD packages...gotta save some $$$

For me, it's not a question of 'if', but a question of 'when'.
 
Man, I'm telling you - I'm really cooked up about this. These tools are brilliant. Don't have money? Sell your kids to Mexican drug trafficers or something. You need $800 bucks for the Flexi-pack. This is America! $800 might fall out of your butt. That's not a lot of dough. Quit your job at Taco Bell and go work at Walmart - I don't care. You really need these plug ins.
 
I love my UAD-1. I hardly have any of the plugs, though.

Also I refuse to buy any more until they make a stronger card. I really want the Neve plugs but I'm not spending money until I can use more than 1 or 2 instances of them on the same card.
 
I don't understand why the card is needed at all. What can it do that my CPU cannot?
Also I hear there is a bit of a lag with the card.

But I am intrigued.
 
I've warned y'all again and again . . . it's audio crack cocaine, man :eek:

As for the card's power, yeah it would be nice to have more. But let's not be silly, would you walk out of a pro studio if they didn't have a 33609 on every channel?

Why the card is needed, well it's a bit anachronistic, but there is no easy way out for UA. When the card was released, CPUs simply couldn't have handled the plugs. Now they have a large library of plugs coded to run on the card's chip.

Even so, from what I understand about the card's processing power, a plug like the 33609 would hit your CPU pretty hard, too, such that you couldn't run more than a couple of instances.

But again, if you have two cards, which is entirely reasonable (You can score the Flexi Pak for $650 if you lean on the dealers a bit, and UAD runs frequent sales on the plugs, so that should get you over $1000 of plugs), you can run lots of Channel Strip EQ/Compressors, a few Pultecs and LA2As, a couple of 1176s and still have enough for a Plate 140. Then render your mixdown, and save the 33609 and Precision tools for your mastering pass. Or render a drum submix, etc.
 
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