Do the Powercore or UAD plugins running off pcie cards or firewire hardware sound any better than their Native counterparts? For instance do the native Sonnox plugs sound inferior to the Sonnox powercore versions?? A lot of the experts reckon the DSP plugs are way better.Is it only a matter of taking some of the load off your CPU? I only mix small projects and have never come near to maxing out my CPU but if the DSP sound better I might invest in some hardware. Have any of the members here any experience of comparing Native vs DSP???
all the seasonal best

 

Once again in reply to my own question:- There seems to be no sonic difference. Take a look over at http://www.gearslutz.com/board/music-computers/333127-sonnox-sony-oxford-eq-vst-vs-powercore.html

 

well since I have both and I can say that there are advantages and disadvantages. FOR EXAMPLE I love the spl transient designer in UAD but it delays the track (only an issue if you have protools 8.0 like me) (I have to "shift" the track which is a mess in the long run. AND my computer has only one firewire port.... that means my little protools rig is slaved to the UAD and chained to my computer. Unfortunately when I add the UAD plugins it seems to create more audio h/w buffer size issues (no logical reason but it does) saying it can not get drives fast enough or the bandwidth on the firewire could be causing an issue. SOME times the UAD stuff just goes bonkers and is disabled, and I have to restart my computer to get them back. They are very expensive because there are no cracks for them, and some of their stuff is just so so... like I have the emulation of VOG (voice of god) and it isnt as usable as rbass in native waves mercury. the company is pretty cool. . . and honestly the only plugin I really use out of UAD is the pultec pro... and the spl on kick drums... they make them snap! ... also like the pumping of the dbx160... waves does not have the 160, or the spl (even though spl makes native I believe but havnt seen it posted on audioz)

 

oh and I was reading null tests were done and in some instances in exact programs there was a minus infinity on the tests