Do you think the UAD versions are identical? Do you think several thousand dollar plugins will be the same for 19.99 a month? This video answers the question!
link with English subtitles :

 

I say f**k this 'plugin doctor' and other mathematical reviews. I own both and they SOUND identical to me. And SPARK is VST3.

Now for those who don't own UAD DSP interfaces and accelerators this is good as they can use UAD plugins natively without throwing $$$ into Sharc DSP's.

 

Yes, UA have confirmed it's the same exact DSP in both plugin types.

 

@thomas78 I wonder what's funny about this thread ''??
It's interesting, specially if we can have the opinion of people who have truly experienced both plugins, like @playtime.

 

It's not a bug..it's just how native plugins work. try any other native compressor or anything else with a level meter. it's just how the Dirac spike is triggering the algorithm. however the DSP handles buffers obviously isn't the same as natively coded plugins. that doesn't mean they sound different though

That video was painful to watch as you literally don't have a single idea of what you are looking at or how PD gets the data it does. this seems to be a bit of a trend with people showing PD on Youtube videos

 

what is the cpu consumption for native version ? (By the way what is your mac config?)

 

Native versions are pretty ok on CPU. I've loaded about 70 1176 and no issues at all.
BTW, my Mac is M1 mini 8GB/512 RAM.

It's not my main production machine... I'm generally a PC guy so waiting for SPARK for Windows this fall.

 

Indeed this pretty good, I hope they will be cool with PC cpu

 

I own both versions. They're the same.

 

I can't believe that it will be the same for 19.99. If so, then why was I buying all these plugins for so much money?

 

This solely my own experience. Natively, UAD plugins sound the same as, for example, Vertigo VSM-3 from Brainworx. I own both. However, when using Unison preamps from UA, there's a noticeable difference in preamp plugins. I've tested running amp sims as an insert in Pro Tools vs. an insert in the preamp stage of my UA Apollo Twin. The plugins on the preamp sound noticeably better than regular plugin inserts.

My cent a half.

 

Unison preamps have impedance modelling that matches the input, of whatever ya feed it, so that is why they sound different. they are load dependent. i dunno the extents of that modelling, but i know what you mean

 

You're not understanding that its not for simply $19.99. Its $19.99 x the number of people who couldn't afford or were unwilling to pay full price but will sign up for $19.99/mth. Plus it x however many months/yrs they stay signed up because once they are in the ecosystem and have tons of UAD plugs in tons of project files they'll be willing to keep paying because A) they want/need their existing projects to function when they open them later and B) they've become accustomed to using them and you don't want to switch. So its kind of a lot more than $19.99

 

Believe whatever you want; I use them literally every day. They're the same.

The main benefit of using the UAD version of a plugin over the Spark version for me is being able to use it in realtime, on a hardware input channel, with near-zero latency when tracking. You can't do that with Spark.

But on the flipside, Spark comes in really handy when mixing on the go, or when you're running low on DSP in a big mix.


Also, if you've been "buying all these plugins for so much money" then try the Spark versions for yourself? Any Spark plugins you own the UAD version of, you get for free.

 

Last edited: Aug 25, 2022

Look up what Unison does. That's the difference.

 

What caught my attention the most is the amount of aliasing

 

No, it doesn't!
Firstly, you'll need way more measurements to prove this, like attack and release times and compression ratios.
Secondly, even if they would be identical, you'd need a sonic comparison (same measurements do not necessarily result in the same sound).
Thirdly, the differences do not sum up, this is a wide spread misconception (because that would need the similarities to not sum up).
Fourthly, please learn to look at PD properly. The 'differences' are below -150dB! No existing DA converter is able to transmit this.

FWIW, I don't use any of these pluggies.

 

in my experience on a PC, in pro tools, the CPU usage is low