timboe
Up until ~ 4 / 5 years ago, I could sort of understand why UAD plugs were so reveered / gushed over.
In the last few years however there has been an absolute avalanche of awesome sounding native plugins that do everything the UAD stuff does [ and more ] and all without a dongle [ ie: UAD card ].
It staggers me (i) how much their plugs / cards cost (ii) how utterly unuseable they are in a very-low-latency environment and (iii) how resource hungry they are with their own dedicated DSP / how few instances you can run of some of them.
Its exaclty like the old Pro Tools argument ....remember the Pro Tools " myth " ..... " pro's use Pro Tools because it sounds better because it is tied to its own hardware and DSP cards " ...... then wham ...... it goes Native and everyone realizes that the hardware and DSP cards were nothing more than dongles.
UAD are still selling their " myth " - I just cant believe in this day and age that people are still " buying " it.
Tim
I do agree with some of your points. I have a few DSP powered options, I've tried many demos native and powered and so far most of the DSP powered ones are the ones I choose to stay with. I don't know if they sound better to me because I already have a workflow going or because of the software engineering or the hardware. For the most part the DSP powered plugs and demos sound better to me. JMO . Not all UAD though.
For channel compressors, I much prefer the Focusrite Liquidmix but that is the one device that is not working well on my new build. Its importance to me is diminishing a bit now with the Pro channel.
For reverb, I've never heard anything that sounds more to my liking than
VSS3 It will be in my main reverb buss for some time to come.
The UAD plugs I love most are Dimension D, Harrison EQ . There are more I love that I don't have yet... C'mon black Friday sale....
Point 1) cost of hardware and software.
Depends where you get it I guess. I picked up my first 2 UAD-1's from e-bay bundled with LA2A and 1176LN for about $100 each used. Register them, took a survey and got a $50 coupon.....Never paid full price for a plug here yet. When my old P4 died a few months back ,I had no PCI slot available for my UAD's luckily for me they had that trade in saving me half on my new UAD-2. UAD has been very good to me.
utterly unusable latency
I certainly have less latency issues with powered plugs. That was pretty much the whole idea when I had a P4. I could record in a project that already had plugs loaded. I was able to track with all 3 liquid mix, powercore and UAD plugs already loaded in the template with no latency. I wasn't able at the time to do that with native plugs.
Resource hungry
They have improved. I had a project loaded down on my old system, couldn't squeeze one more plug in it. When I opened it with my new system, I had 36% of my solo card free.
As far as PT10, to the best of my knowledge, PT10 is not PT HD. I think that native PT is a le version like my PT8 M-powered. I've seen PT HD native sold, but it still comes with one card. I think it's their interface.
With all that said I wouldn't trade my DSP's for all the tea in China, but it is a dying and superfluous technology with SSL Duende, Focusrite LM and TC Powercore no longer selling their hardware. Looks like the writing is on the wall for DSP powered plugs. I certainly wouldn't recommend for anyone paying full price for any DSP card right now. At least wait until they come out with a 64bit driver to be a bit future proof.In fact I can't recommend anyone paying full price for any of it.
I went with that 1176 collection and Helios thanks for the input all, I guess that's all folks for UAD until black Friday.