HYPE?

A cheerful recommendation? Hardly Slate territory lol!....

"Why are UAD Plugins sounding that much better? A serious question"

first of all, it's ironic to call this a serious question.

second, UAD plugins don't sound better than other plugins (some UAD do sound better then some native plugins, but there are native plugins that sound just as good and better than UAD )

third, UAD plugins dont sound exact like hardware, some plugins are closer some are very noticeably different

True -- if there was a Huckster Contest on GS, PT Barnum would place no higher than third. But I'd still characterize this as a cheerfully-full-of-sh!t recommendation.

Based on my understanding of the word "irony" it is actually not ironic at all.

Clearly not a UAD user

Yeah, that post was dripping in Eau De Sour Grape.

So, er, guys, I see many of you claim so many native plugs sound better. What I do find extremely odd is that you fail to mention their names or provide examples...I would hate to think people were just making stuff up.

Hahaha ?, I wonder how many people will be claiming the native UAD plug-ins don’t sound as good as those running on the DSP.

Really?

I don't know of anyone who seriously suggested that the UAD plugins sounded different because they were on DSP.

Softube made some plugins for Native Instruments. The LA2A is called VC2A in the Vintage Compressors bundle.

They don't to me.

They don't. It's just good old confirmation bias.

Those who spent thousands on the uad hw cards…

I could understand DSP card in the early 2000’s as CPUs could just about cope with VSTis and VSTs. However in 2022 it’s just madness.

And it’s not just UAD users I remember a discussion on here where people flat out said you could not run the Bricatsi algorithms on a AMD/Intel cpu.

I wonder when the impact of the chip shortages brings us the official Bricatsi reverb, that’s gonna be a great thread ?

I’m a card carrying UAD supporter, from day 1 pretty much, very satisfied with the product, whatever we might say about if they are the best or not. UAD plugins ALWAYs feature heavily in mixes and recordings I’m involved with. The Townsend Sphere with the Apollo interface has been immensely gratifying, an education and a swiss army knife all in one.
For my money the LA2A, Pultec EQs and SSL Comp are worth it alone.

I’m pleased they’ve gone native, so I can use my laptop for mixing and get to these without taking half the studio home.

As for why they are ‘better’ I’d suggest that if you have customers heavily invested you are well financed and morally obliged to be a leader in the technology, especially when you become custodians of various industry brand names.

The elephant in the room is that they UAD - were impenetrable when it came to cracked software, no doubt it will soon be possible to down load every single plugin they made ever, and that might signify an end to their mystique.

You missed the news about UAD Spark? UADx native plugins without the need for hardware...

Most of today´s guitar multi-effects run at 96k for the lowest playable latencies. Many of them rely on Sharcs too. Once UAD 3 goes ARM the real madness is going to start I think. Whether a Bricasti on ARM would make sense is an interesting question.

You mean the native plugins where you need the hardware in order to buy them?

You do not need the hardware, if you use the subscription model. You get a perpetual license for the native ones if you buy the UAD2 version.

You need the hardware to buy a plugin from them
I am not that stupid to use anything from them in my work that they can take away again when they think they need to do so...

I think you missed the irony in my post, which I wrote after reading about spark.

They are not.
I think people think that way because of UAD's clever marketing. I can understand that once they invest that money buying UAD stuff it's hard for them to admit that this isn't that good or they aren't knowledgeable enough to give a solid opinion. After all those plugin are just effects and music is essentially instruments.

Yes, indeed. All the pro's are wrong and it's just marketing.

https://youtu.be/P1usfeUCfIM

I think you're missing the point. Can you show me a plug that emulates the Capital Chambers reverb? It doesn't exist except UAD. The same applies to other tools such as Ocean Way. To me, that means they sound "that much better."

UAD for the most part has been about hardware emulations, and IMO they are very good. If I want an emt140, the closest tool I know of is UAD EMT140. Sure, there are other substitutes such as the Soundtoys version, and in lots of cases the choice may not even matter, but that's not the point. UAD makes great hardware emulations.

I doubt "clever marketing" is the reason many engineers use tools from UAD. I understand the concept of investing the money then you want to believe. But the opposite is also true which is users on the outside looking in, always wanting to know why its so expensive and never-ending comparisons like there is some desire to justify not using UAD. Just use the tool that works best for your completed track or satisfied client.

Now, for some UAD tools, you can decide without any hardware.

It's curious how people running native plugs think they aren't using hardware to run them on.

The Point is they did not buy UAD hardware to run these native plug-ins. They simply rely on the processing power of their computer. That is the difference. So you can get into the UAD plug-in environment without having to buy an expensive thunderbolt satellite, for instance.

Question: how many Intel chip designers does it take to change a lightbulb?

Answer: 1.333820449136241002

IT joke from 1994, when Intel introduced the FDIV bug into the Pentium’s floating-point executive, to make it go faster than the 486DX. "The severity of the bug is debated." TM

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_FDIV_bug

The moral of the story is that for all that the world is awash with people who believe in alternative facts, there is only one math. Whatever the inner secrets of CPUs and DSP processors, one thing is certain, they must run exactly the same math, or get roasted alive in the Register, 2600 and The Linux Journal.

The real difference between SHARC processors used in UAD installs and standard CPUs, is that the DSP chips provide dedicated hardware engines to run complex signal calculations the native plug developers must write long and wonglesome code for (or buy in prebuilt from a library such as JUCE). A good example is the Fast Fourier Transform. Apart from that, the numbers must be exactly the same, however you do it. There are infinitesimal marginal and rounding differences when approaching Nyquist and mathematically below the noise floor of electrons in metals. If you claim to be able to hear this, you’re probably deluded.

So, there is no intrinsic technical reason why UA plugs should be any better than native. But software development is often ruled by law of nines. What this means is the first 90% of performance will cost as much and take as long as the next 9%, which will cost the same and take as long as next 0.9%, and so on. This process is often called squeezing nines. And we all want the 99.999%, don’t we, not the 90%?

What gives UA such an advantage over native developers is that they are certain of a return on investment in squeezing the last nines, because in nearly two decades their plugs have never been cracked. They are certain to get sales, and they can predict those sales with a very good degree of accuracy. Native plug developers have however long it takes the pirates to rip a new one in their financial models.

If you want better native plugs than UA, better start paying for them.

Uad plugins are great, I’ve never understood the hate they get here. Capitol chambers sounds and feels like real air.

I have better plugins then UA and I paid a lot less.

Some people do not like that sound. It's a subjective choice.

But the fact remains, if you want that sound, then you pay the price and purchase Capital Chambers. Other than scattered mostly static presets from other 3rd party developers, there really is no substitute. The same can be said about Ocean Way.

I don't know if it's hate. But I have read a lot of what appears as envy. If a user is happy with what they have, why discredit other tools they don't even use? And if they used those tools and are still unhappy, why? Could it be inexperience? Could it be unrealistic assumptions? Paid too much for an accelerator, satellite, or converter? Then sell it. Looking at April Ebay completed listings, and all the Quads are still selling for over $300 which to me considering Spark is surprising.

Anyway the gates have partially opened up. I doubt UAD will add Capital or Ocean any time soon or if they do, they will be subscription tiers with Spark.