I just found this on Reddit and thought maybe it’s interesting for some people here:

i personally would love to try these plugins and test them intensively


PSA: Universal Audio has had excellent, native, DSP emulation working in house for over 3 years now, and they're simply not releasing it because it'll hurt hardware sales. We're in the middle of a historic chip shortage, which means for some, UA products are literally no longer an option.

Some time ago, I had a chance to speak to some employees at a sort of trade show and we talked about the required "DSP accelerators" that UA has been known for essentially since their founding, and the conversation turned to recent consumer technological advancements. (This was right after the big "Ryzen boom" where ThreadRipper was starting to make waves for both AMD and Intel, and a lot of computationally expensive things were becoming a financial possibility for home users.)
Long story short, they talked about how they (much like every company other than UA that sells analog emulations) have technology that makes it so the DSP accelerators are no longer absolutely required for their plugins to work. Although the work offload is still a big plus, it was possible for everything in their library to run well natively on a high end CPU (presently at that time). Meaning, the emulation is absolutely 100% identical, and it had simply become a matter of what hardware was assigned the "work".
I never forgot this conversation and I assumed they'd eventually drop the requirement for a piece of UAD hardware to run their plugins, but it never happened. Ironically, consumer available CPUs have advanced at an even faster rate since then, as have the states of many notable competing products.
I've contacted them again (several times), and it sounds like the general consensus is that they're going to drag their feet until enough customers demand the option of using the hardware they already own to run the plugins they buy. I figured now is a better time than ever because of the state of the hardware market, chip costs, and chip availability.
Maybe I've misunderstood, or maybe the people I spoke to weren't completely in the loop, but it sounds like we're being taken advantage of a little bit and I want to know that Universal Audio would have a good night reason for doing what they've been doing.

 

R2R wants to know your location

 

It was obvious forever that they're only doing it to sell more overpriced hardware. I doubt they care about a temporary chip shortage.

 

of course this shit is what happened. You dont need dsp for this BS with modern systems these days, it can be a nice "optional" feature for offloading, but "requiring dsp" is as archaic and money hungry as avid's "track count" bs where you have to buy track amounts you wabt, and instead of having unlimited tracks based on how powerful.your system is, its just artificially pay walled. Not gonna happen anytime soon, people still buy this shit

 

I don't know. the desktop unit I tried couldn't seem to supply enough DSP for their plugins either.

 

Oh I am definitely getting my popcorn out for this one...

 

After LUNA was released, there were very few plugins running in Native.
Such as Summing and Tape.
In addition, it seems that API VISION for LUNA EXTENSION is also based on Native.
In fact, paying brand taxes is one of Universal Audio’s biggest expenses. The more sales they lose, the worse their financial status will be. Lexicon/NEVE/API and other brands will not take pity.

UA has no plans to launch UAD-3, perhaps it is they are considering LUNA's exclusive UAD native product.
Once LUNA is truly complete and open to the interface, it will easily replace Pro Tools because it has a much more user-friendly interface and draws on the many advantages of Pro Tools. It is also easy to switch to for artists who have used PT for many years.

All in all, UA’s business plan is greater and more insightful. Although essentially repeating everything other companies have done, they will work.
Avid is no longer a technology-focused company, they expect to be profitable (this is a characteristic of a listed company)

The above is my guess, it should not affect other people's perception of UA..

 

It's quite obvious that UAD could develop their plugins in a way that would make them run natively on any generic computer CPU. There are also quite a few (third-party) plugins that are available simultaneously for UAD and as native versions. Funny enough the UAD versions usually cost 2 - 3 times of what the native plugins sell for.

The hardware acceleration might offer some advantage if you run an older computer setup, but than it might be wiser to invest in a computer setup.

I'm 100% certain that I get the same and better sound quality that UAD offers from native plugins often for a fraction of the price, heck I bought Tokyo Dawn Labs Slick EQ M and Kotelnikov GE for 10 bucks each recently and they are way more powerful than any UAD compressor and equalizer I have seen so far. UAD even sells mediocre Plugin Alliance / Brainworx processors for 200 bucks, the same Brainworx stuff that can natively be bought for 20 bucks at least four times a year. In fact the free, currently revamped Variety Of Sound plugin collection (PC-only unfortunately for our Mac and Linux friends) is superior to most of the UAD stuff. Check the recently released Tessla SE mkII. Show me one UAD processor that can do what this freebie can do!

Fair enough: UAD has some platform exclusive plugins which seem attractive to me, but nothing that would drive me so insane to invest in this totally overpriced platform.

So the UAD unique selling points: hardware acceleration (which has become meaningless in the era of Threadripper, M1 and other highly performant CPU platforms) and platform exclusive emulations of big name branded processors (which look cool, but don't really offer any sonice advantage over other natively available plugins like the Fabfilter bundle, Tokyo Dawn Labs etcetera).

 

Last edited: Dec 8, 2021

GTA at beggining was only PS exclusive. I guess same goes with UAD.

All PS games developing at PC, so yes, ofc UAD have emulation or Native version

 

In my opinion guys, UAD will make its plugins native in the next few years. At the end, those who decide to buy UAD do so for the hardware, therefore UAD is not enjoying the huge audience that can receive from the world of native users, who are the overwhelming majority. So I don't know how long they will be able to use this hardware + plugins strategy from 2022 onwards

 

My lack of interest in UAD plugins remains untouched.

 

This has nothing to do with audio and GTA was never a PS exclusive either lol, the only exclusive is GTA Advance but back to audio, UA at this point is just dragging their hardware to combat piracy more than anything (DSP's were necessary back when PC's were garbage but now we have all the power we need)

 

Ive been a UAD user since they were distributed by Mackie back in the early 2k's. But as a pc user it hasnt come without issues. There was a gap of several years where I couldnt even use my plugins because their hardware was no longer supported on pc platforms. By that time I had already invested several thousand dollars in their closed system and as you can imagine, a lot of pc users were left disenchanted. Today, pc users still don't have access to things like LUNA because UAD concentrates their effort on Mac users and treats pc users as an afterthought.

I have an Apollo Twin that Ive had for a little less than 4 years which is one of the buggiest audio interfaces Ive ever owned, to the point I have to run a factory reset on it in order to get it to stabilize before I record anything through it. It got so bad that I eventually replaced it with a MOTU 828ES and now I use the Twin as the world's most expensive dongle just so I can run my plugins.

UAD aren't making any kind of advancements or breakthroughs and their customer support, as far as I'm concerned, is laughable at best. Regardless, I still think UAD is a good company. Their plugins aren't any better or worse than a myriad of other native options. Maybe back in the day, but not now. Still, I support good developers and I purchase what I use, so if it's good and useful I'll buy it. What I wont be doing is buying anymore UAD hardware or any hardware with a closed system.

 

Last edited: Dec 8, 2021

I had the exact same experience with both desktop models. sent back and got an 828es also. I recently added a m2, which is nice though, it coexists with the 828 without any issues.

 

When we wait for UAD to make plugin that can run on your CPU without their hardware, they release hardware that can't run their plugin

For now their focus seems to be on LUNA (when it's not on cheaper hardware), which is great, because it seems really promising, but as a Windows user, not a good news for me.
Indeed their lack of support for PC doesn't make it really atractive when you don't want to switch to Apple. I have my Apollo since 2012, but wasn't able to use it on my PC until 2014, only after discovering (by accident) that it can't work properly with a wifi card (with the firewire version, don't know about the thunderbolt)

 

if their supposed focus on apple means anything... Last year when I first installed the software for it on Mojave, it failed. After digging around on support pages, I found this program they made for Mac, to clean up a failed install. You run that, reboot about 3 times, and then start over. This is another dice roll. Just because you have now run this program, it does not change the 50% chance of the install failing again. Sometimes running it two or three times in a row before trying can improve your chances.

for 700 or 800$? no way.

 

Think of the UAD Cards as dongles and you will get it.

 

I had similar issues after one of the updates (PC also). No idea why I updated the software, but it kept causing all kinds of issues. Somehow I managed a factory reset and went back to whatever is installed now and it seems to have stayed stable.

I really wanted to at least try the API Pre-Amp but I just daren't touch it now. Its not worth the risk. So I can't see me buying anything else.

As you said, they did nothing to fix whatever the issue was.

 

My work around at the time was buying a PCMCIA to Thunderbolt adapter for my a UAD2-Solo Card. This is the one I bought and still works with a UAD2 Solo card on pc's with a Thunderbolt port : Sonnet Echo ExpressCard Pro

 

Same here. But oh boy are UAD threads thrilling...