So I think you're free to pick your poison if you have a computer that's beefy enough to handle all the plugins you want to run. From what I've researched so far it seems like some of the plugin alliance plugins are exactly the same or pretty darn close. I don't like the cult-ish attitude on their forums and other places. It's way too early to go all in and blow $1000 on extensions)īottom line: UAD has cool stuff! Great sounding stuff! Not sure I like how the company does business. (thankfully I did my homework for once, and I've steered clear of all that.but I wouldn't buy into the hype you see on youtube imho.

and I've seen lots of people feeling like they got burned by going all in on that when it's really in beta and is a few years out from being really usable. I think the way they've handled Luna and the extensions is a little. I steer clear of that place, because it leaves a bad taste in my mouth for the company itself. (but i have a pretty beefy machine so it's probably not necessary for me) If you have a not so great computer then having the DSP unloaded onto another device is handy. The dudes on here did steered me straight (as always), and plugins sound great! I did end up picking up an octo satellite and now I'm pretty good on DSP for what I do. The dudes on this forum recommended going the UAD route when I was looking for a new interface and I got the quad core version. Using RTAS plugins however can cost extra voices and change how your configuration works.Īlthough DSP based effects can take load off your CPU they can still induce latency - UAD used to be strictly a tool for mixdowns only because of large latency, but now they have a 'tracking' mode which kind of reduces the plugin to 'eco' mode which is latency free in some cases or very low additional latency.There are other people here more qualified than me to speak on this. UAD provide a chart as do Digidesign for Protools HD with it's TDM based effects. However, you know what those limitations are ahead of the game, so that's your advantage (and note that doing things such as choosing 96 Khz samplerates effectively halves the amount of tracks or plugins in a DSP based system). Limitation - only so many instances of a UAD plugin can be run under the DSP, or only so many tracks and effects can be run on a DSP based DAW such as Protools HD, Pyramix (Mykerinos or Masscore versions) or SADiE.

This is both a limitation and a good thing. Don't forget that DSP resources are limited.

Tracking with uad plugins