UAD Studer A800

I am demoing it on a mix now.  I put it on a acoustic drum bus with some light compression and threw in the EMT250 for a touch of "air".  It is quite possibly one of the best sounding drum mixes I've ever heard.  Outstanding.  

I've still got 2 whole weeks and now I'm anxious to see how it affects the other sounds.  I'm sold.  Think I'll wait until March to see what kind of specials they'll have though.

Cheers.

I know.  It took a while for UAD to back off the FATSO.  The 2 week demo will take me into March though, and then we'll see.

Thanks for the Nomad tip.  Gonna check it out now.

Every plugin has different CPU needs.  Most, in fact, can have scads of instances.  There are really only a couple (Manley, Fatso, etc...) that can only have one or two instances per processor.  I've got a UAD2 Duo, UAD2 Solo and one UAD1 in my box (just shy of the processing power of a Quad) and I never...ever hit my plug limit.  Although I do tend to "save room" for the Manley across my mix buss.  It's a wonder!  Check out the usage charts at UAD's site.

Yeah, I am really digging this plug-in! But, to get the best out of the UAD Studer A800, UA designed it to be used on each track (or at the very least the foundation tracks...drums, bass, vocals, guitars, keys etc.) and placed on the first FX insert before you start to mix anything. Then you mix into the plug-ins (similar to how you use the Slate Virtual Console plug-ins.....place an instance on each track and on the mix bus). Simply slapping it on the mix bus will not bring out the best of what this plug-in has to offer (that is why UA refers to it as Multichannel Tape Recorder Plug-in). That is why the Gang feature is such an important aspect of the plug-in. It is the cumulative affect that gives you a far more cohesive mix. The tape saturation can be as subtle or aggressive as you want it to be. You add in the modeled Studer A800MKIII tape machine characteristics (tape speed/eq/bias/noise/hum etc.)which can be set to factory specs or tweaked to your satisfaction. In fact, I find that I don't need to use as many other effects (eq's/compressors) when I have an instance of the A800 on a track. It has become my favorite plug-in and I don't start a mix now without it on most track inserts. Fortunately, I have a QUAD & a SOLO so I can get up to (50) mono instances going in realtime, if I wanted to. To reclaim DSP, you can always freeze your A800 tracks once you get the tape compression and the Studer set the way you want to free up the DSP for other UAD effects.

IMO, the UAD Studer A800 is the crowning culmination of UA's past decade of programming efforts. It is by far the most authentically detailed tape emulation plug-in around. I dare say it is the best plug-in UA has ever released. That is saying a lot because UA has released some monster plug-ins over the years (Massive Passive, FATSO, 33609, etc.).

In the screen capture below, I am working on a current 24/44 project @ 128 samples. Using (20) UAD-2 plugins (about 85% DSP load on my QUAD) with a 48 bar loop region enabled (2nd verse & chorus) and tweaking the mix for about 15 minutes as it continues to loop through with narry a hiccup:

(5) Mono UAD Studer A800's
(4) Stereo UAD Studer A800's
(2) Stereo UAD Massive Passives
(1) Mono UAD Massive Passive
(2) Stereo UAD Neve 33069
(1) Stereo UAD EMT 140
(1) Stereo UAD Precision Limiter
(1) Mono dbx 160
(1) Mono UAD LA2A
(1) Stereo UAD Pultec
(1) UAD Stereo Cambridge

Cheers,

Billy Buck

Well, I picked up Magnetic as well, and WOW, it really does make a difference.  In a couple of months I still hope to get a UAD2 quad and see what the fuss is about, but this will surely do in the meantime.

I'm tempted to go back and remix all my tracks with this thing, lol.