the channel strip is awful especially the compressor and gate, EQ is ok no issues there, and the bus comp is not a patch on the latest UAD one.Īs for whether UAD is still worth it these days. I have actually done tests against hardware, WITH one of the most respected plugin devs out there who's name of course i won't reveal as they asked me not to two years ago when we did it., and we discovered the waves wasn't even close. I really loved the precision mastering compressor and would love to check out the Studer A800 plug, but my question is it worth it to do so when I already have the Waves versions? I already have Studio Classics from Waves, but I was an early adopter of the UAD-1 and still have a couple licenses from when Mackie owned the company (I logged into my account and they're still there). Right now UA is running a special where you can get API, SSL and Neve plugins free with purchase. I use a lot of Brainworks and Waves stuff, but mostly I just have a great room of recording and mixing which is key. I do think there stuff is really good though. I feel like there might be a shift to some better options for people like us. I am pretty happy with what I am running now, but will wait and see how the UAD stuff in the future all shakes out. Great Advice, since I have been thinking of doing this for a while now. As great as the plugins are, I can mix just fine with other brands
I run a UA Quad card in my HDN rig, and find myself not getting my money's worth, and if I had it to do all over again, I would have either gone with Apollo interfaces(at the time, Thunderbolt on PC wasn't possible), or I would have skipped UA completely. If however, you wish to track with the plugins, but don't want to use Apollo, you're SOL because every single UA plugin reports over 1100 samples of latency, which makes it impossible to track with, on any other interface. Or, if you don't do tracking(and don't care about latency), then use UA plugins all you like(because they do sound great). The plugins sound great, and in some cases, are probably the best sounding, BUT(this is where it goes a bit off the rails) what are your needs? If you want to track with UA plugins, then get an Apollo interface and go for it.
Okay, my 2 cents(and please take it that way). the dongle? What dongle? The UAD hardware is the dongle I have a slightly different view, but to Stephen's #3.