First things first: if you think I'm a desperate naïve noob trying to grasp my hands on UAD-2 plug-ins for free, feel welcome to roast me, I don't care much. Disclaimer: this is not a request, and if you're new to the forum and stumbled upon this thread, avoid requesting things as well. This is an ancient discussion and when someone asks about the possibility of a “UAD-2 crack” this person is often mocked (and I can relate to the reason why…), but I'm talking technical; is it really impossible to bridge the architecture using RE and other tools? On every thread I read about this subject, people tend to contradict themselves. Some say it's possible, but really hard to do; some say it's impossible, and some believe in the conspiracy theory that UA is paying teams so they won't crack it, or won't turn a crack public, at least. I'm not a RE person myself (kinda obvious at this point), but I presume that the PCIe cards' architectures couldn't differ too much from a regular CPU, it wouldn't be practical for UA. If they were to build a CPU-similar, yet safe architecture, it would be easier to code and run plug-ins there, their coders wouldn't have to specialize themselves and study a much different architecture from what they're familiar with. The plug-ins' codes are probably written in a well-known programming language, and probably use common functions for this kind of thing, the only difference is that they get processing power through the PCIe cards and not the CPU. Couldn't this be spotted in RE by analyzing the disassembled code's calls? Anyway, here are some thoughts. I appreciate if anyone can contribute to this discussion and help demystify their copy protection scheme. Last edited: Jan 10, 2019
Following your lengthy conversations regarding AA cracking, I'd be inclined to steer you away from this and onto more productive discussions.
If you had really followed my lengthy conversations regarding AA, you would know that it wasn't about cracking anything at all, so based on your capability of interpreting what was trying to say there, I sincerely doubt you would really have anything to contribute here. Thanks for your reply anyway
Actually, i don't have enough technical knowledge in this subject but personally I dont believe that the teams are constantly tries and puts hours and weeks maybe months and years and yet they couldn't crack it. It is not just about UAD2, it is about pretty much all the software uncracked. But I really appricate the technical information of this subject from you guys.
I think the same way. If I was one of the guys from R2R, I absolutely wouldn't put all my time, money and heart into this, for several reasons. One of them is that people that are gifted with their releases are so f****** ungrateful most of the times. I'd do it just as a hobby
And from a newbies perspective; I think not all the users in this forum are just here for music and song creation. Some of us really interests how cracks work and what happens behind the curtain. Yes maybe the forum itself is not fully suitable with this but I think there is no better place to talk ''piracy'' about audio production on internet. (besides sister site which there is no forum like integration) Last edited: Jan 10, 2019
But these people are everywhere, not just in audio production. They are the constants of the equation. You can see them every aspect of our lives. So i don't think they effect that much though.
I just couldn't agree more with you, I feel the exact same way. It gets on my nerves when I see people trying to learn about something and they're mocked for not knowing much, it doesn't happen very often here, as some users told me, but still… In other forums, you see people telling you: “Hey, we won't spoonfeed you, go and learn x, y and z” I feel like the general attitude on AudioSEX is something in these lines: “Hey dude, relax, you'll never be smart enough to crack anything, so just lay around and wait for the teams to crack everything for you”. I don't like this. I think we should help ourselves to build knowledge, so one day we can be a community of people always contributing to each other, and not a bunch of leechers waiting for the next R2R release I would “study cracking audio plug-ins” by my own if I could, but there's no literature online, there's no one teaching this stuff because it's so godamn specific, and here's the closest we got to a place like that Last edited: Jan 10, 2019
most that come here don't know the 'how' or 'why' certain stuff gets 'liberated' from protection to be released into the wild. the ones that DO know aren't tellin'...and i can't blame them. meanwhile, from R2R: and from the ones here that know what's up:
You can see and hear the phylosophy behind UAD DSP concept and why it's so complex in this video. I assume this is one of the reasons why it's *impossible* to crack
I do not care much about it being released, actually. Their plug-ins look and sound good on demos, but I already have what I need. What I'm actually interested is if this DSP thing is really unbreakable, and if it isn't, what would it take to break it
You'd be the next big thing if you spent as much time perfecting music production as you do thinking about plugins lol. There are a lot of people out there that use stock plugins and have some of the best stuff I've ever heard. If you need analog flavor all you need to do is send it to a mastering engineer with good analog equipment.
I've already discussed a bit of what you're saying in my last thread. Here's the thing: This thread it's not about music, this thread it's about technology, reverse engineering and cracking. I do make music, but in this context, I do not care. Making music it's a whole different conversation. What you're saying to me sounds like: I begin a conversation about cars; You join the conversation and say: “Hey buddy, if you keep talking this much about cars you'll never become a professional Formula 1 driver!” While I don't care about being a Formula 1 driver
My point is that I do not manifested any interest in making music or making music with UAD-2 plug-ins, and if you read the thread you'll see the main concern is how UA protects their software. On every discussion about anything related to audio technology, someone has to step in and throw the classic argument of: “Hey, just invest in your skills, plug-ins won't make you better”, where most of the time the discussion is not about skills, it's about the godamn technology Last edited: Jan 10, 2019
i feel there's at least two (i'm sure there's more) people in this forum (regulars) who have direct links to the team(s) that do the work. they may even be part of the team(s) themselves. i'm also sure they will NEVER discuss the methods of those teams here at audiosex as there are professionals here also (musicians, engineers, etc), as well as plugin developers (who may also have moles on here to keep a leg up on what's being 'relieved' of protection & what schemes are being defeated or asked about). point blank, of all the things u could ask & get answers for on this forum, i don't think this is gonna be one of them, chief! good luck on trying to learn though. Last edited: Jan 10, 2019
Unfortunately I have to agree with you, and we can't blame them. Actually I'd never expect then to do so in the first place, given that what they're doing is illegal (in the whole world? I think?), but I hope someone besides the teams and people close to the teams have some RE knowledge and could discuss if bridging UAD-2 is even possible, that was the intention of this thread, initially. Still hoping
What i want to know is why can't they crack the plugins for people with UAD cards. I have a UAD2QUAD. It's awesome. I really like the plugins I have and I'd like more but they're a bit too exxy and given I have a PC that's not connected to the Internet, it's a bit hard to get new ones.
