Many of you got this email today:

Planned obsolescence?

There will be no option to run UAD on new macs at PCIe speeds, expect for shelling out major dough for an OCTO card and a PCIe chassis.

I feel UAD needs to do one or more of the following to make this right:

1. Release a thunderbolt Satellite series that is true PCIe speed. Offer good trade in value for now obsolete UAD Solo/Duo/Quad cards.

2. Release an Apollo Rev3 that is actual PCIe speed. Offer trade in value for obsolete cards.

3. This is a stretch.... but release a native version of their plugs with iLok protection. I feel so trapped to hardware to keep these plugs running, and this problem has come to a terrible realization now that the platform is 100% dead on new Macs due to hardware conflicts. We no longer need the DSP benefits. Can we enter the year 2014 please?

I find this all especially ironic because their userbase is almost entirely mac. Their thunderbolt support is exclusively mac.

Where does it say anything about being incompatible with Macbook Pro's? Your quote from UAD and the chart both only look to apply to the Mac Pro.

Just caught that, updated title.

Not to belittle your problem but it seems to me that your problem should be with Apple not with UA.

No company can future-proof a product. Apple chose to move away from their design, how can that be UA's problem.

I do, however, agree that UA should be working on a Thunderbolt satellite system. That would be nice.

Whether or not its their 'fault,' as a customer who's invested thousands into UAD cards and software, I'm burdened with a significant new expense. I expected I'd need to fork over a grand for a pCIe chassis. But I have 2 UAD-2 Quads... So I'm SOL, right?

As a company, I'm guessing they won't want their customers to be punished like that, but I'm not sure how much they'll be willing to do.

Either way, I guess I won't be updated to the new Mac Pro until this gets figured out!

First, the UAD "platform" isn't incompatible with the new Mac Pros, just the PCIE cards without a chassis. Totally misleading title.

Second, how in the world would UAD foresee that years into the future, Apple would choose to ditch PCIE?

JRR Shop offers upgrade pricing from the Single/DUO/Quad to the Octo.

http://www.jrrshop.com/universal-aud...-core-trade-in

I think even the Octo owners are SOL, ´cause buying a 1000$ PCI-E chassis would be just stupid.

Bring on the Thunderbolt UAD-3 and this time bring enough power so I can run all the UAD plugins not just few selected or just call it a day and go native.

UAD-2 is underpowered and now even obsolete.

Jesus I'd be pissed off! Whether it's apple or ua people have invested thousands and thousands and thousands on firstly the hw simply to run the plugins which also cost hundreds each and this is a current platform not uad 1 or some legacy thing.
Another screw plugins coffin (as the current ilok2, no support for 64 bit for some plugins, ect,ect) - some other system is required all round. Sorry went way OT - truely my heart goes out to all the uad owners. This blows hard

Well 80-90% incompatible, since the Octos need a chassis, which is just stupid.

They wouldn´t, but they should have brought UAD-3 Thunderbolt Satellites already into the market (or just go native). Thunderbolt is 2 years old! You don´t need crystal ball to know that. Firewire Satellites still? Jezus they are slow!

Apple doesn't care much about its pro customers, those who made them survive the time before the iphone and all. Their erratic behaviour will fall back on the numbers of the new macPro they will be able to sell. So if somebody is planning a system, he/she/it can choose between a macPro, a hackintosh (which you can configure to your needs and it has internal storage, pci and whatever you need and if will still run circles around a macPro) or set up a windows machine (as long as you have somebody who is fluent on the finer points of the microsoft OS).
The days when apple hardware was faster are long over... the OS isn't that far from anything else anymore. When it all ends up in the machine room or in an iso cab or even under the table... who cares for companies if they don't care for us?

That said, for MY workflow the UAD stuff would be more crucial than what machine or OS I'm running it on.

And THATS why i would never spend a dime on uad cards ever. They are purposfully staying on obsolete technology which limits the track count and is nothing but a big dongle. Heck ilok is more useful than uad

Dat AppleMac Paperbin

I have a sneaking suspicion that the 80-90% is made up and that it's much harder to change your product lines around than you think.

soooooo glad i sold my card

Thunderbolt came two years ago, they should have started on working TB products immediately, but instead they are just waking up now.

Same thing happened with 64-bit. UA was one of the last bringing it. They really are slow thinkers!

I totally agree with this and how many of us are jumping on the mac pro . I am still on a 5 year old computer running windows XP , and I run my session at 96k which i make work . UAD and other companies cant be responsible for every single update all the time for each new gen computer . It takes time to evolve .

Very misleading thread. Most products will work in 2014 with a software update.

Any pro knows that with apple's new "thunderbolt only" and abandoning PCIe cards things were gonna get lost by the wayside, requiring people to buy all new hard drive enclosures PCIe boxes, etc.

If you like UAD stuff, get a FW satellite with the new system and wait for new drivers, or the octo and a PCIe expansion. I'm annoyed with apple not UAD.

Somebody, please try to explain technical reasons why Octo card will be compatible with a Thunderbolt chassis, while Solo/Duo/Quad cards won't be. They are the same PCIe cards, difference is just the number of SHARC chips, right?

Yes, I wondered about that myself. I'm hoping UAD, which has been heavily soliciting me to buy more software for my UAD-2 recently, will offer discounts/upgrade path for the Octo and boxes.... The MacPro has not been significantly updated in a while, but I have a feeling that the architecture of the new Mac Pro has been known for quite some time.

Blame Apple first..is it a companies fault if computers one day no longer have firewire and your stuck with a useless firewire interface? Seems like Apple can do no wrong!

(Quote shortened) Nice post. Time for something entirely new? But if I'm looking at the recording industry as a whole at the moment, not sure I'd cater my products for them either. When Apple first started and the pro audio guys were their biggest supporters, the rec industry was HUGE. I'm not prepared to think Apple is that stupid… Many of the pros are working from home and there's less demand for pro systems, or they'd be making them.

To the OP… Not a UAD user myself, but I expected to click on that chart and see mostly X's across the board. Only 3 out of 54 items are X'd out! Excellent title... Made me click.

Edited: Don't want to seem heartless to the incompatible group. From everything I've read, this Mac Pro is more geared toward the video crowd, than audio. Definitely not something I'm considering buying for my audio needs personally.

Re the new Mac Pro: Having a new chassis that cannot accommodate any PCIe cards is one thing, and has been known for quite some time. And there have been external PCIe chassis options for quite some time as well. I was reconciled to buying an external chassis when/if I bought the new Mac Pro. But I was honestly surprised that my UAD-2 card would be rendered obsolete. It's not about blame (as far as I am concerned). I am interested in solutions and workarounds.

EXACTLY. WHY?
Satellites will be compatible so, why not the rest of the family PCIe cards with a similar to satellite chassis?

... he said please..


i can try

there could be - and likely is - many reasons.

perhaps there is a "bus speed" controller ...
... thinking through. the new octo card will have a converter to upsample data

or
/.... likely a speed "thing"



oh - yeah - 100% apple up the .....


uad were so FORWARD THINKING that they included the thunder... code
into the octo... because they are like totally a dope biness

This is what surprised me as well. I thought that the Satellite Duo was essentially the UAD-2 Duo in an external box.

Timing, drivers, etc. That's why.

The Octo was designed after the Mac Pro was specced so probably has different hardware that allows sync in an external chassis, the older cards not.

No conspiracy, just limitations of design.

I never assumed a conspiracy. But an explanation of the design limitations would be helpful. And the issue I raised was not the Octo vs. the UAD-2 card; it's the Satellite Duo vs. the internal Duo.

I just priced up a Mac Pro with the features I wanted, and it came to over $8k. Kind of makes me think that compatibility of a UAD card that costs a couple hundred dollars is a non-issue. If you're penny pinching, you ain't buyin' a Mac Pro in the first place.

If anyone thinks they're going to get one of these things for $3k, let me ask, what is the point of spending that kind of money on a quad core box with 12GB ram and a 256GB flash drive? Honestly, the minimum price for a Mac Pro that starts to justify buying one is closer to $6k.

2014 is a few days away. All of the ua pcie cards r currently working in magma and sonnet thunderbolt chassis. So it shouldn't be long. Also, if u really are a person buying a new mac pro u already know there r no pcie slots n u have to buy a tb chassis.