The Las Vegas Under/Over is now at page 124. The smart money backs the over!

 

My actural environment with Nebula and those digital monsters is the best i could get for my taste. But i use Analog Emus from other brands for a zero latency for my insert channels, because Nebula will f*k things up on that task. I don't miss analog. Imagine missing UAD lol

 

I remember using four second-hand CRT monitors for 10 years, pushing them to their limits until they were practically gasping for their last breath.

 

I still had the XVX McDSP everything bundle in use until I finally felt comfortable getting rid of the Access plugin and using VirusHC editor instead to update to a MacOS that is not having the 32bit plugins anymore. They were like one of those eye chart tests, but what sealed the deal getting rid of McDSP anyway; I was using the Revolver plugin and it started making some loud wailing sound that was singing indeed. Like a fire truck siren singing at about 120dB. Like Fabfilter Pro-L2 at 2AM.

(insert 2nd person writing warning here).

The whole thing about UAD is like an exercise in abnormal psychology sometimes on here; once the iLok discussion is out of the way. It's certainly odd to me, that many people who concern themselves with system performance so much get so bogged down by iLok. Personally, I think it is more like a digital c*blocker to despise separating you from the things you want to run. But that layer of materialism is nothing specific to UAD. Next we have the problem with those who have all the money they need to buy any plugins they want, but they still end up using tons of UAD. And Waves. They probably just don't know any better and don't make music "as good as me". Uh-huh.

Next we have the Acustica comparison. Other than the fact that UA has never relied almost entirely on gigantic Impulse Responses xcept for Ocean Way Studios, Capitol Chambers, AKG BX 20 Spring Reverb, Friedman Buxom Betty, Ampeg SVT Suite, Marshall Plexi....and everyone knows that is what they are using. Has UA ever hijacked the name of something you do not understand like say, "Volterra Kernels" to explain why their plugins were over $100+ each and only used up 4gb for a single channel strip plugin? The only true parts to this comparison are 1) price, 2) emulation plugin overall sound. R2R's own release proved that approach was effectively BS, and also gave an out to create new plugins to sell to the elitists who now won't use any of the old plugins because other people have access to them now.

We also have my favorite approach to the UA materialism puzzle. If I don't have them, it's because there is something wrong with them and that problem isn't related to me not having them. Maybe saying how "they aren't good enough for me will pressure a release team into cracking them and giving them to me for free". When that doesn't pan out, we switch to " I already know they aren't good enough for me, so I never wanted them anyway". Upon their release, it is confirmed "they aren't good enough for what I need anyway"; because they do not ship with experience, dedication to learning what I am doing, talent, good hearing and monitoring environment. Whatever it was you expected to be included with the plugin that didn't show up with it. All these high hopes, but the mixes still suck.

It's a joke. If someone told you they would replace every stock plugin in your DAW with something of higher quality without using up a lot more resources; you would tell them no, right? This is why I don't believe you about any of it. If you believe the marketing about any magic plugins, it's the same thing as thinking Plugin Doctor somehow adds some additional parameters to all your plugins to fix what you find. Neither of those options exist.

My bet on why they never give them to you is because you would figure out you are just chasing perfection. Instead of downloading every plugin you can get your hands on hoping for the "magic plugins", you'll download way less stuff and well, it's pretty obvious whose interests that is not in.

 

You have OBVIOUSLY never used a real 1178 or LA2A or a real EMT plate, etc... Pulsar? Better than UAD? pfft... get real. And arturia makes nothing IMO that is worthy of even grabbing for free...(except for maybe the pigments synth).

Sure there are "workable" solutions other than UAD stuff. However since those "workable" solutions are most always assuredly NOT like the hardware counter parts they are supposed to be emulating it requires, for those of us who have used the real hardware, interpolation. You cannot count on turning a threshold knob on a Pulsar 1178, for example, and expect it to even half-ass act like a real 1178, so there is interpolating that needs to be done on the part of the user. FFS, UA (back when they were a stand up company) BUILT the hardware that most of the dev's of these "alternative" solutions fail miserably to emulate. Stands to reason UA would be the ones who emulate their own hardware the best in the digital realm.

 

When you see someone in a plugin marketing picture, if the plugin they are schilling is so "identical"; why do they always still have the hardware version around to compare it with? Electricity is like water in an analog signal chain. Emulating it is like emulating the plumbing and the water. These people believe the marketing and are using plugins that are basically physics miracles. The actual miracle happened when someone at Steinberg figured out instead of selling hardware, they could sell us expensive computer files. It's like selling air, or pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Comparing plugins to hardware is just a waste of time. In that scenario, everyone has an agenda.