I'm long term user and developer of a concurrent DSP Sharc based system called Scope. Analog Devices made a basic SDK environment that can be customized by the hardware brand and it's 90% based on visual programming. Developing on Sharc based platforms is very easy and I think the main reason to discontinue DSP based products is the evolution of CPU based computers and the lack of interest on DSP based systems that requires a computer to be used. I think that the real time near/zero latency performance of Sharc based systems is still superior to native systems, but we are going into an era where render speed is more important than real time vs latency performance, so UAD is trying to survive by going native. I can't say if UAD will be able to maintain the same "premium" aurea on the native plugins market, definitely not my cup of tea and SHARC based processors sounds different and unique while on the native market there are so many alternatives.

 

OMG I can't

A secret source tells me they sweated they asses off for this for days. At the end they decided "hey, Line 6 is still in business after all, we'll be fine. probably"

Now on a serious note. Without knowing UAD stuff at all, I tend to trust opinions like @sisyphus 's which also don't know. Just because in his posts there's no:
- UAD is shit and X is god
- UAD is god and X is shit
- I know more about UAD than the rest of you

Now back to searching more "slapping Rock Fender bass" memes . Talk you

 

Absolutely. Someone can love one plug in that everyone else hates and vice versa. This stuff is ALL subjective and how one uses it.

I'm with you, all good. I'm just here to shoot the breeze, see some friends, and maybe learn something. .

Have a great one.[/QUOTE]

 

So, as the forums SHARC expert (I want to say SHARC whisperer or some similar pun, but it’s late here ), can you tell me how Line 6 do things with Helix and Helix Native? Is just a code port or something? I am only asking as I have used Helix from the beginning and could never get Native to match, but turns out it the software is particularly sensitive to input levels, and on the hardware it has a certain circuit that sorts it. But when I looked on forums, people said they managed to sort, and then when they compared recordings from hardware and Native, it did null, so I am just interested in your thoughts on that given what you had said previously. I am no expert in the slightest but am just interested to hear your thoughts on how that was achieved.

just so you know, that first part was my attempt at humour and not a dig

 

Haven't gotten there for MacOS, but I get it.... The Helix is pretty cool as a plug in, but I have other alternatives kicking around obviously..

Yeah, I don't think UAD is shit at all. I may not like some of my interactions with them in terms of a business over the last, hmm 16 years (?), and spent some good money chasing bad, and hey, that's how it goes on this stuff, especially when things are changing fast and going from pci to pci-e etc...

and yeah, I have enjoyed some of their products.

I certainly don't feel like I can't live without them, or hell, I even bear some of the same kind of respect in utility to me that I do with Valhalla or Soundtoys etc or whatever in my subjective workflow....

but I get people like UAD plugins, and I'm the last guy to tell them they don't.

I personally just don't think there is going to be a sonic sacrifice with them going "native", and if anything, it seems that those who know more then I suggest quite the opposite, and perhaps to will allow more people access to their products.

We live in a fairly good time with some developments in this, and hey, let's enjoy it.

One mans Altiverb7 is another mans Breverb 2 or whatever you know?

 

Last edited: Mar 30, 2022

more 20 years to crack this but its ok i.m wait

 

Last edited: Mar 31, 2022

Every single one of these companies "models" their plugins after these hardware units. You, me and anyone else here who has never owned or even used the actual hardware is never going to tell the difference, especially in a mix. You might have a preference and you might even believe one plugin or developer is superior over another but at the end of the day its subjective and UAD isn't bringing anything to the table that hasn't been brought already. In fact, they're late... late for Windows support, late for native support, late to the daw game, late to the synth game. Hella late. If UAD was a menstrual cycle, we'd all have a 15 year old kid and 9 months pregnant right now.

Why would anyone pay $20 a month just to use a couple of their old plugins? Slate Digital is half that and you get everything. Spark is just a cash grab and those plugins aren't any better or worse than a thousand other plugins out there. They're just plugins, not fairy dust son.

 

Last edited: Mar 31, 2022

Just tried for a couple of hours on a new session = damned great!!

 

Their Manley is pretty close to the real thing. The price is almost worth it just for that.
The older 2K for the board then add the plugin costs, no. $149 per year for all? For sure.

P.S. I seriously doubt they made a daughter board that only did authentication. All the ROMs, PROMS, EPROMS and EEPROMS have code in them. An educated guess says the code they dumped into the hardware they now put into addressable data files bundled with the plugin and passed the authentication to the servers.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Mar 31, 2022

No, they just use iLok, same as other native plugins.

 

So they are going to just completely ignore all the potential Windows customers because they are worried about r2r?
yeah, I probably would be too

This way people can stick to complaining about how iLok works on a Mac. A mini is around the same price as a Solo and probably has something like 10x the computational power!
That's rough.

 

Last edited: Mar 31, 2022

I bought a UAD Apollo Twin X a year ago, all excited to use the plugins that came with the interface.

I was so disappointed when I found out that the amount of DSP processing power in the Twin X was only enough for 2-3 UAD plugins at a time.
I was disappointed again when I realized that UAD would not allow me to run their plugins at all with my own CPU processing, even though I had already purchased their expensive dongle.

Sometimes I would go to load a project that had a few UAD plugins in it, and upon loading I would get the "no processing left" message, and then UAD's program would randomly pick one of the instances of the plugins to shut down. I was in danger of this whenever I opened a project that had more than 1 UAD plug in instance.

IF I want more DSP, I need to drop another $7-800. That's the cheapest option.

I feel cheated. This made me stop using the UAD plugins at all.

Not even going to mention the hoops you have to go through to hide all the UAD plugins that you don't own, which involves copying/pasting dlls and going into the UAD control program to manually hide the plugins you don't own, one by one. They won't make it automatic. Even Slate Digital and Plugin Alliance allows you to just not install the plugins you don't own. Not UAD. You have to install ALL their plugins, whether you own the license or not.

And then to find out they did open up native compatibility, but only behind a monthly subscription paywall...
Wait, if you own the plugin you get to use it natively now? Great ne....oh...only on Mac. No hate on Mac users here...just sharing the experience of my frustration and disappointment.

I'm looking to sell my Apollo and get out of the UAD game. Sure, I want Capitol Records reverb plugin. It sounds beautiful. But its not worth all this headache. There are lots of beautiful sounding reverbs and FX that I'm already using that didn't involve all this headache.

 

I don't think UAD is scared of R2R, cause they still got their actual business model with the hardware unit. People with a UAD card will keep buying UAD plugin because of the 0 latency, the same way we already buy their version of other plugin company like brainworx or SPL, even though they are available as regular plugin (and they sound exactly the same, the only difference is the UAD console integration).

So opening their "world" to non UAD owner is just enlarging their potential customers list, even if their plugin get cracked. It's not that they need big development investment for those, cause those are the same plugin as the one they sell as UAD version, the big move here is in the marketing, not the coding.

Also, the fact that you can't own the non UAD plugin if you don't own it as a UAD version is a way to attract people into their hardware ecosystem, people who want to own their stuff have to buy their "dongle", if not, then here is your subscription. I would be pissed if I didn't have free access to this version when I already own the UAD version (probably the think I'm most exited about, so I can use my UAD plugin on my portable setup without having to buy their portable dongle - not easy to be mobile with the big Apollo), it's kind of surprising, cause they usually the king of company who look every way to take your money, like paying full price for an v2 version of an emulation you already have (but was renamed as "legacy" so your old session open with the v2 asking you to buy it or run a 14 days demo...)

Soundwise, they're not better than other company, their native plugin are great, but there are tons of other alternative (Acustica Audio being my favorite). I mostly buy their stuff because I own an Apollo (which is a great soundcard in itself, but not the ultimate best etheir), otherwise I would go for other brands. Not that I regret buying their stuff, but it's just commitment to a system, and their new business move is probably just a way to recruit new customers by letting them having a sip of that "UAD juice" everyone is talking about, hoping that the last 2 decades of the "out of the ellite" feeling propaganda will trigger that psychoacoustic effect in their new customers brain

 

If that is true then we will be seeing releases probably every month

 

tfw you sold your shitty apollo weeks before they launched this
you always lose when you choose uad
ima try the trial anyways

AKG BX Spring reverb is pretty much irreplacable
You can get Massenburg EQ with a subscription now which is good for some people

But you are right for the most part:
Comps are okay, but not better than the DMG stuff for example
Helios EQ is really good, but has now a competitor with PA's AMEK etc.
Tape Sims are good, but then again we native users already have u-he Satin

I recall people complaining how trash the SHARC chips were, so it shouldn't be that big of a deal

 

Last edited: Mar 31, 2022

Also if you do not own it currently, but have a subscription only? Can you than also choose to run it from the DSP or not? I searched for the website but I cannot find it.

 

Nope, the subscription only grants access to the UADx plugins, you'd have to buy the UAD2 version to run off the DSP

 

I agree with what you said here, but i couldn't find anything related to my post which you quoted! it's like I'm talking about steak and you replay me about pasta!
I tried to terminate this nonsense conversation hours ago but it seems you want to continue, I would leave you alone with that,
Good luck son

 

Well that's gonna be a pain in the ass for a lot of people then.

The one thing UAD really has going for it is in a tracking situation where you can use their hardware dongled plugins pre-daw, which is nice for low ass latency for vocals, guitars etc.... I will say I have enjoyed that in the past.

But for people who actually have the hardware, and the subscription service, it seems like that reads as if there is gonna be a lot of plug-in swapping maintenance work in either those situations or rather when one goes "dongle-less" and another from their Apollo's or whatnot and want to work on their laptops or another studio or setup.

Don't have the hardware, but have the UADx version? It reads like you are screwed if you didn't move the UAD2 plugs to UADx, (unless they are intelligent about that and figure it out) because you end up in a situation where like when you have a Kontakt 4 instance that say if you don't have K4, and have Kontakt 5 or 6 etc... you are screwed, or got some work to do.

(this kinda thing happens to me a lot with loads and loads of old sessions, and having used Kontakt from V1 to the present, it's ridiculous the amount of different versions of Kontakt (say v1,v2,v3,v4,v5 etc) I have had to keep on different boot drives in order to access legacy work, which unfortunately happens more then I would like...)