Yeah, I was one of those people who bought into the UAD ecosystem early (what was it, around2004-2006-7? I forget)... but they were so shitty in allowing me to transfer my licenses from my pci card to pci-e or whatnot, and their customer service was so bad and insulting that I swore off them for pretty much 20 years until recently. I do like some of their products, but they basically left me swinging in the wind and I was turned off for a long time....

 

I actually suspect it is probably AMS Neve clinging to this one. It does not help UAD move hardware at all by including stuff into their native Spark subscription. Quite the opposite. So you can buy the old copy which was already licensed by UA in perpetuity, but you cannot "own or buy" any new ones.

I think you may need to ask a vocalist or other musician who records acoustic sound source stuff with microphones and external DSP effects applied while recording before writing off Sharc processors entirely. The effects processing being applied at the interface before streaming as 1s and 0s to the computer, DAW application, plugin has got to not add some additional latency between their plugin and their monitors; or at least I would assume so. Especially something with some significant CPU use. That arrangement is really popular with vocalists, and not just based on convertor quality in all comparisons. There are other ways to get top end "Sparkle" with air band eq and so on.

The above announcement from AlexB and his comment about "Delicate and confidential" sounds a little like " So, I got this email telling me to drop any and all reference to the hardware sampled in the making of this emulation".... whatever, that is his business and not ours.

This is what it sounds like when " Mr. Neve" or grandpa Marvin (Gaye) will no longer be working on anything, and you have to furiously scour the internet and lock down whatever is to be found. Maybe sue some people for "grooves" and send some cease and desist letters to ensure things stay "legacy versions" because nothing new from the original magician is going to happen again.

 

Last edited: Jun 5, 2025

yeah, I guess at this point in all of it I've just kind of acquiesced to the fact or idea that basically I just have a license (temporally) that may or may not exist past an os change or whatever... That is not how UAD sold their products (of this nature at least), when I first bought into their ecosystem.

I guess to get their 1073 (and whatever... I'm fine with hw or the VoostEQ or whatnot), requires UAD interfaces or Spark subs (both of which I don't see myself purchasing anytime soon...)... and hell, I did buy those early licenses, but their database does not recognize that, and hence part of my problems with them, although again admittedly, I am using their products now again despite my annoyance and feeling ripped off with their practices back when... so it goes...

(sorry, for some reason I missed this or it was added before I hit the reply button....)

I am a musician who records acoustic sound sources with microphones and vocals etc... and I do value what they bring to the table in that regard... absolutely. I'm not writing that off in terms of efficacy and worth for some with lower latency etc, and I'm honestly kinda surprised that other manufacturers or devs have not brought that to the table or worked it out with certain arrangements outside of the token verbs and eq's and whatnot on input etc on interfaces ranging from motu, Focusrite, apogee, to roland to whoever....

And I've used it. And I've worked with many others who have it.. and sometimes unfortunately used it 'wrong'... and it's impedance matching and whatnot does a fairly good job... so whatever, I'm certainly not bashing that...

I'm just saying that those chips are 20+ years old and are having real problems running 'current' as of now from what I know or imagine..., and I am agreeing with you I guess in that fact, and kinda surprised that no one else has made some kinda agreement to appropriate the same or similar to any quality worth mentioning with interfaces and how these things are implemented on the receiving end to any accepted value.

Sharc chips have their place, and work in this case (albeit rapidly diminishing in uad's own acknowledgment), that, and I've more than once been on the wrong end of how UAD does business with transitions, whether it be pci-pcie or fw to tb or whatever with simple license transfers.. and they have ghosted my ass....

so sure. I was predisposed to never use their products again, or spend more money chasing bad... (mirrors of digidesign etc).. but I can recognize they have some good stuff. and yeah, I've given them more money yet again as it was worth it to me even after biting the multi thousand dollar losses I have I guess written off to them as in the past.

But I don't think their convertors are better than anything even motu has, or certainly rme or whatever and climbing up that ladder of stuff I don't possess the golden ears to recognize but can respect...

but that aspect of lower latency higher quality plugins on input is of value, recognized.

And their prices are finally starting to mirror reality.

To your greater point regarding sir Martin Gaye and analogy... yeah.. I'm sure they are dealing with another scenario than they were in 2005 or whatever or whenever they made licensing deals... I'm over it, but I still find it funny when last I mentioned to them my sn#'s and whatnot on whatever hardware and software I bought back then, and it just didn't exist to them nor did they have any desire to make things right... and so it goes... I've still got the cards somewhere, and they are landfill bound at some point...

But I am certainly not spending money on UAD hw at this point given my experience, even respecting and understanding the value of lower latency and plugs on input. and thanks to apple silicon and other decent interfaces and workflow, for the most part, I'm good.

as other than using their stuff on input (which most probably here do not), they aren't anything special in today's world, and probably below the median...

 

Last edited: Jun 5, 2025

My guess is that it was something to do with Acustica and the licensing of Nebula. I know there has been some bickering between the third party dev's and Acustica.

 

I see that many here have not tried Tim Petherick Blue 1102 v2 from Nebula (it is on the sister site just in case) at the plugin level the closest thing is gold, but this one is a beast if you know what you are doing, the only complicated thing in nebula is that to emulate the hardware you have to use several instances of the plugin, for example to recreate the snow you have to use the bass band, then the transformed, then the air/high mids and then the distortion. Written like that it seems difficult but it is not, in addition to the skins they are written in what order to use the plugins to recreate it.

 

EQ the harshest mid range as you can.
Sweep until your ears start to bleed. Add a wide bell there.

Add muddy low mid disto ( any kind 'transformer' saturation plugin )

Available for free in any daw.

 

I've not used the service that lets you run through the hardware remotely but do own a Neve 1073 DPA with which now 90% of my microphone captures run through. I paid 1400 bucks for a used unit and am super happy with it. I've no idea how much it costs, but I'll will bet dollars to donuts that if I wished to continually use a service it would soon add up to greater than the cost of my hardware in time. Additionally, my workflow would be incredibly compromised and instead of being in the moment I would be cut off from my muse. Experimentation by patching into the different hardware compressors I have wouldn't be achievable. Maybe it would be better for some, but it wouldn't fit my flow at all.

 

You got a very fair price for both you and the seller. You can find one relatively easily in the $1700 range used. In that ballpark anyway.

 

So, can someone summarize 7 pages - what was the best emulation ?

 

For people without traditions always the newest untransparent eq with a reference to it.
For people with tradition any clean digital parametric eq.

 

I ended up with Acustica Audio GOLD 5 as it was the closest emulation to the real deal. The Combination of it's Preamp, EQ & Comp is really good.

I tried few of the recommendations that I liked the demo videos of on their respective websites.
NOTE: In order to get the NEVE 1073 Sound, You must use the combination of EQ, COMP & PREAMP because the 1073 never only do only 1 thing, it's a sum of these 3 effects that combine to give the sound. Most importantly the EQ + PREAMP.

Closest Emulation in Order imo:

1. Acustica Audio GOLD 5 (WINNER) [Feels like the real deal imo)
2. Voosteq Model N (Close & sounds like Neve but not really Neve "1073" model)
3. UAD Neve 1073 Plugin (Best in terms of plugin doctor analysis & sound, also a trustable brand)
4. BBN73 (This one has a lot of potential, saturation in this is really good, lil expensive)
5. BritPre
6. Scheps73 (If you just need 1073 EQ, this is good the neve eq curves are there but preamp saturation stage has somewhat audible aliasing going on, so turn that off in this)


Disliked & Uninstalled:
Lindell N Console (Not really a Neve 1073 Sound)
NoiseAsh Need73 (Don't like the saturation in this, Saturation sounds muddy in the mids)

 

Again, Many of the other emulations sounded really different from the Neve 1073.

I skipped many Nebula Libraries like TimP & AlexB as it was PITA to install them. Maybe I'll try them someday

 

Azzimov will probably do AlexB Neev 73 Legacy next, it's most voted on the current poll, so yeah, give it a whirl once it's done.