Says the person that joined Gearslutz only in September to people that joined 10/15 years ago, Claiming something that only a beginner (understandable) or someone trying to start an argument would claim, what you claimed is 100% untrue, You have admitted that the The topic is provocative so what do you expect from a post that is both provocative and 100% untrue? blind agreement? this very forum would be pointless without all the native plugin makers that you claim are inferior, you know the ones that we all including some of the biggest named mixing engineers use every day, we are all wrong and have been fooled and we should throw them all away and just go and buy UAD because they are the best at everything, because you say so, Your wrong and IMO disrespect-full.

OK I know who you are...THE DUDE, with the mark of the beast......couldn't fool me!........

When do people giving their opinions constitute fact? GS does a lot of that thinking, and leads to pointless arguments.......(but given the above, I'd tend to believe him)......

the topic of a company's products sounding good is not "provocative" in and of itself. It is the implication that somehow there is an objective backing for someone's subjective opinion... that is always going to be provocative.

"Science says my taste is correct" is a statement that will always create blowback. Asking "what is the science behind my taste?" is not really any better. And unless and until someone can demonstrate a factual difference, the blowback is deserved.

IMO, the same question could have been asked minus the assumptions of Universal Taste.

Well we can dance around it, but it was posted as a definitive fact with a preamble that asked people not to disagree with him.

I guess words are just words these days......
But if it were me I would have rephrased it:

I am in love with UAD. I haven't found any other plug-ins that sound better to me than UAD plug-ins. Is there a technical reason behind this, or alternatively could you point me toward some products that I might like as much as I like UAD.

It is not very cool just to look how to find any wrong formulation in a post.
It seems to be always the same thing in threads here.

Somebody asks a thing and instead of writing anything useful to the questions a lot of people are just picking out the phrases that they don´t like.

As no one would be able to get the full context out of a post.

I just wrote down my impressions while testing those other plugins.

And then some guys show up and tell things about claiming facts that are not fact as I would have changed to whole industry with my thread here.

You give me here advice how it would have been better to write the things.

Really? Is this really needed here at GS?
Why are people answering to threads that they do not like? I do not understand this. If I read a thread and then think this is BS - then I skip the thread and read another one.

I do not understand the big drama here, sorry.

And now I bet that the same people show up again and tell me that I am wrong again. Cause of this and that, and maybe then I get again advice how it would have been better written down.

Definitely check them out. To me they bring something very unique to the table and they’re very intuitive to use.

I think that the premise of your question is poorly framed.
I would bet money that you are not coming from very experienced
point of view, which is fine, but may be part of the issue here.
It is if you go to the pro car engineer's forum and ask
"why bmw cars are better than all other brands?".
Well, they are great cars but they are not the best, certainly not all the time
or even most of the time you compare specific bmw models to specific
competitor models on specific attributes.

It is not only wrong as a premise, but also almost guaranteed way to
get out of the thread in tar and feathers. Good luck in surviving
what may be coming your way

Having said the above, here are a few possible
explanations of what is going on:

1. You are just being intentionally provocative (aka the "T" word).

2. You have not carefully tested the plugins
(same purpose, same hw modeled, same settings,
across many materials/contexts of use, in a
controlled environment, many times, in a blind manner).
Your claim that the same plugins native sounds different
than the uad version, makes this certain.

3. In the absence of proper testing protocols a number of cognitive biases
may be at play. E.g.,:
a. halo effect of the very expensive and very professionally
presented product like uad is
b. placebo effect of a very expensive purchase
c. you tested the best uad plugins against weak competition
and you generalised too much (anchor bias)
d. familiarity bias: you are better at using the more familiar product

4. You have a personal preference for the sound of uad plugins
(although others may not share this subjective taste of yours).

5. lack of experience in using a such tools to accomplish specific
musical engineering goals. It is one thing to randomly flip switches
until something nice happens and another to deliberately
use a device toward a well-designed audio outcome. Particular GUI designs
may guide inexperienced users to better results easier and faster
in the absence of a strategy.

One could come up with more explanations, but no, uad plugins, as good as
they are, they are not always better than the alternatives. The real question is what have led you to believe that and how you can move on to
a wider appreciation of all the great products out there.

Man i know not where all this ideas come from.

Read my first post and you will see that i clearly say that i surely not mean a native vs a dsp same plugin thing.

I used plugins from other developers more or less the first time in the last week. My whole time in this business i either used the stock Plugins in Pro tools or the UA stuff. The time before this I was mixing on analog consoles.

And i just wrote that i think that they sound a little more hifi and that the reverbs don´t sound as good. All this plugins have more or less the same parameters - do really think i would not know how to set up a reverb or a compressor?

It is not very cool to say such things just because someone is not that deep in the whole plugin thing. I know a lot of engineers and they spend more time with recording or mixing or mastering and not with testing plugins. I had never the impression that this is the new thing that makes a good engineer - if you know a lot of plugins you are a good mixer - i do not think so.

For my own little Studio i invested from the beginning in the UA stuff. And I had no problems to mix any songs with this plugins.

I even use their converter cause i like the sound of this converter. I like it more than the Avid I/O.

Maybe i see this all from a different point of view cause i do this for a living. It was not a big problem for me to invest in a lot of sharc chip cards and the satellites. I use them to earn money. They are like tools that a carpenter needs for his work.

Was it really so much kind of a troll to ask if there is something going on under the hood of this chips?
The attack is very quick here. I do not understand this.

I will stop writing in this part of the forum.

The difference between the Slates ssl and the Uad SSL mkII is ridiculous. The Uad sounds so much better it hurts. I would love to prefer the slate, because the dsp load of the uad (you can only open 4-5 berore you max the dsp) but if you a/b the difference is huge.

Well, your intentions might have been good
and I apologize if I offended you in any way.
We are not here to fight and I would certainly not
want you to retreat away from this part of the forum because
of feeling attacked.

Do understand however that your post read literally like a bait for an all out uad vs the universe war coming from either ignorance or
intent to agitate.
That was the impression, not necessarily the reality.

At any rate, back to your question, I still stand by the assessment
that the uad plugins are not in general
superior in sound across the board
and that lack of proper testing protocol and unfamiliarity
with the best offerings from other developers has led you to such an
extreme conclusion.

Think its related to the taste of UA´s engineers. There is no reason why a native version should be identical to the UAD counterpart. The attack is quick because we have a myth on GS that each native version is identical to the UAD version.

Yeah, that always works at Gearslutz! There's nothing like telling people what kinds of answers are 'acceptable' to get them on your side!

You know they do sound similar and there is also a good youtube video comparing them. What I noticed after about 6 months of using the uad version and then having to go to the waves was the waves didn't have the smoothness the uad did. It was very apparent to me. It also seemed like the uad had more resolution to it.

I took the premise of this thread as a subject for debate. Attacking people's experience is kinda stupid. I know more than a couple of top guys here about new plug ins, because they don't need them to get great sound, and don't have time to explore because they are booked on jobs. I know of another top guy in NYC who has a template of stuff he uses, and 90% of the time it works. People book him for his "sound" and he has a waiting list. Even though I'm not a pro, I have a group of tools I'm comfortable with, and am not about to jump into UAD or Acustica to experiment.

These guys don't go down rabbit holes of the next shiny plug in, they use what has worked for them. They know every inch of their equipment, and what they want from it.

I think it is down to algorithms, and where UAD really shine is in emulating a particular piece of hardware. They seem to have that down to a science.

I don't think their more generic plugins (Oxide tape for example) are particularly special though.

Audio engineering - despite the amazing advances in DSP - is still hung up on old analog designs.

Everybody wants the sound of those top class units - even if the music they make is complete garbage. Plug ins cater to this demand, 'if you cant have the racks, have the next best thing - the sound and a cartoon of some knobs'.

Every manufacturer wants to claim that they offer the 'as good as real deal'.

Now if it were the case that one manufacturer really made the best plug ins, everybody would use those. Why would I have anything else on my computer if I knew for a fact that the guy or gal with the UAD set up was getting a better sound than me? Latency, hardware dongle - who gives a cr@p - if those are the best - that's a fact - I want those. Everybody does. Especially when we are talking about bits of code.


Same applies to the Acustica and impulse evangelist's. If those are the best, hands down, no contest - then why would anybody use anything else knowing Joe next door has a better sounding machine for a similar investment?


The truth is all of the serious plug in companies make spectacular plug ins that are more than good enough to make hit records. Which ones you use comes down to taste and nothing else. Claiming otherwise is literally laughing at everyone else for being cloth eared and stupid.

I just packed up all my UAD to sell after 15 years of Stockholm Syndrome finally got to me. They do sound better today than ever, but i'm getting even for those initial years

Hello,

I am in a similar situation.

I have been using them for years. Not much else. Every time I work in another studio where they do not have many UAD plugins, I feel like I'm cheating in my own studio when I use them.

What are you using now?

Kind greetings

Mat

UAD plugins indeed sound quite impressive. From my experience, I would say Waves PIE comp, API 2500, DBX 160 are at the same quality level as UAD ones. Pluginalliance stuff are also quite good.

Hi Mat -- I guess my post was vague. I literally bailed on the UAD platform just yesterday after 15 years of using them. I use guitar pedals and spring reverbs now and i don't have a need to be mobile. But I may dip my toes back in someday because i really like some of their latest plugins, which i don't own. They're getting better all the time, but that's also part of the problem for me

I have never owned UAD. However I do have a theory to offer that I believe.

Anytime code is written for specific hardware vs. on a CPU, the software designer has an easier time dialing in the sound for consistent result. They don't have to content with variations.

With a static set of hardware, the timing, sample rate, and flow the electrics are a constant. Within that context, the designer of whatever, can dial in the sound of the EQ, dynamics, Pitch, & foldback, or whatever blend of those the plug is.

Within any context, there are good and bad. But I think each of the following is a step up:
1. CPU plug
2. Non-CPU plug (Dedicated Card inside the box)
3. Digital hardware outside the box
4. Analog hardware

As you work up from 1 to 4. The control & recall options are lost, but the sound quality is gained. more true with basics like EQ and basic compression than things like pitch shifting.

What makes this not fair is that the cost is not the same. A 100$ plug will sound better than 100$ hardware. But plugs can touch most $5000 hardware.

Ultimate quality costs cash, lack of recall, larger electric bill, space, etc. For most of us for most functions, it's not worth it.

I must admit, over time, the lines between them are getting smaller. CPU plugs can create new blends of stuff not possible with hardware, this blurs the line much more.

Hi goldi,

I found your ad. Now I understand.

I think UA can be very good if one goes more or less all in. Not just using the Plugins for mixing.

Don´t know if that makes much sense. I try to explain.

I for example use an Apollo 16 mkII as my converter / interface. And to be able to do some work using headphones (editing) at home and on sunny days in the garden I bought an Apollo Twin.

With their promo stuff I got an octo satellite for free with the Apollo 16.

And one year later I spent around 600 bucks for another octo on the used market. There are a lot of satellites in the used market, most likely because of this promos.

And if I connect everything together I can run a healthy amount of 22 sharc chips in my studio. (4x Apollo 16, 2x Twin, 16 x with two satellites).

And all I extra spend was 600 bucks for one satellite to run not out of dsp (no freezing). Cause I needed a converter and a mobile interface anyway.

One can get every UA Plugin for 77 bucks. Two times the year they offer their 10 + 3 plugins for 999 bucks.

77 bucks for a UA Plugin is not that much pricey in my opinion.

And if one can not mix or record with the UA converters then it is the engineers fault. Those are not bad sounding.

This is what I mean with going more or less all in. If you just buy the plugins and dsp without interfaces the whole thing gets a lot more less attractive.

Someone can set up a very nice studio with the UA stuff. But it is not really possible just to buy a plugin if you feel like it. The agony is that you have to think and plan well in advance. It takes a lot of patience and resistance. You just have to be able to resist the desire to buy and wait until you have the money back for such a 13 plugins bundle for 999 and the offer is there too.

For a proper gearslut such a consistent plan is probably not very attractive.

kind greetings

Mat

You might also be able to argue that you can sell a UA bundle and actually get some money back, since it is tied to hardware. I really find it depressing looking at years of impulse buys that are worthless...... I don't own UAD so don't have a dog in the hunt.....

I apologize for being blunt here, but your 'theory' is complete rubbish. Whether you write code for a SHARC chip or an Intel chip makes no difference with respect to any of the aspects you mention. Also, if you have a digital hardware box and can port its code 1:1 into a native plugin, then the plugin will sound exactly the same as the DSP box.

OP makes a post with logical fallacies and then gets all worked up when people pick up apart his arguments.

Learn logic folks, it doesn't hurt and will help you navigate the world better and stop falling for the hype train in this industry:

Thou shalt not commit logical fallacies

If I recall it correctly Softube was not able to nail the Weiss boxes to 100 percent, which are also digital hardware. They got the algorithm but the Weiss hardware works internally at 40 bit and converts the signal then back to I think 24 bit at the digital output (I believe AES) stage. Please, everybody feel free to correct me about the numbers here.

But as far as I remember this part of the processing was not modeled. And so both sound a little bit different.

I believe it is not always very easy to do an exact copy - the modeled stuff has to work in modern DAW environments.

I'm a big time UAD plugin user and I have to say I agree with the "Topic Starter". They just sounds better, also offloading your CPU load via DSP sounds old school but I genuinely think it makes your sessions run smoother.

The only thing I'm NOT a big fan of is that UAD cuts off pretty much everything about 20K with a kinda resolute slope... People say you can't hear it, but I think it's a feel thing that high up the frequency range. Maybe fairy dust as a lot of engineers call it.

I read a SOS articles about this. It stated that UAD plugins begin to roll off at about 23-28kHz with a low order low pass filter before the plugin processing when there is harmonic content in the analog modeling. This is done to reduce aliasing in the audible range. And since almost all of their plugins oversample to 192kHz for processing, there is going to be very little aliasing in the audible range.

Here’s the article with a response from Bill Putnam. Q. Why do Universal Audio restrict the processing bandwith of their UAD plug-ins? |

If you're modelling an 1176 wouldn't it also cut off highs somewhere above 20K? I don't see where that'd be an issue, but no engineer here!

I do not think that this is a problem for normal studio work.

I never had a recall where a customer wanted more above 20k