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.