NEW UA products

[lozion]

There it is folks, the famous 3 new Universal Audio products for AES:

http://www.uaudio.com/news/releases/index.html

[Lindell]

looks hi-tech

[lozion]

With integrated reverb & Eq... from which plug...?

[K-Slash]

Damn, no news about a UAD-2 or a new card...

And for the new plugin : the NEVE 1081 (the page has not yet been added).

[xist]

Originally Posted by K-Slash

Damn, no news about a UAD-2 or a new card...

Big disappointment here, once again. Well after all these UAD-1's life years we can probably confirm that hardware DSP is not their main field so they do not have the strenght to improve things (still the same chip after probably 6 years, aargh!).
At this point I think I will start looking for other brands I've always skipped, like Waves (their new Neve inspired stuff looks interesting and I'm sure it will be WAY less hungry than the recent Uad's plugs) dfegad

[Mind-Over-Midi]

Disappointing news. When I saw this thread I was hoping that at last I might see a firewire solution with more power, but noooooooo. They know what we want but they won't give it to us. I don't know about you but I hate being ignored. tutt fuuck

[Magnus]

Originally Posted by Mind-Over-Midi

Disappointing news. When I saw this thread I was hoping that at last I might see a firewire solution with more power, but noooooooo. They know what we want but they won't give it to us. I don't know about you but I hate being ignored. tutt fuuck

Yeah, I was hoping for a firewire interface/UAD-2 thing too. This pretty much sucks!

[Empty Planet]

Guys, what's the big deal? Every time there's a thread about UA, there's a whole crew that comes on to whine about the card. I've had a UAD card since Christ was knee-high to a centurion, and it's just never been a big deal. How many freaking LA2's do you want in your mix? Make a decision and bounce, down, for crying out loud. This Greek chorus is getting old.

Cheers nonetheless.

[F5D]

I guess every uad1 user was waiting for a more powerful dsp card. I agree that they should introduce uad2 soon and their new neve plugins need lots of dsp to run but one reason why this happened is that some users wanted UA to do such a plugin "no matter how much it uses dsp, just do a perfect emulation" and now we have it (the 33609). Anyway, we're lucky that UA also did SE versions of the 1073 and 33069 which sound almost as good as the high dsp versions (imo very hard to hear the difference in most cases). I use only the SE versions when I'm mixing. If I'm mastering or just rendering simple stuff, I use the high dsp versions. Currently I have only 1 card but will add another soon that I can really use the plugins. I was waiting for AES if UA introduces UAD2 but it seems that they didn't so I will just purchase one of the old cards. Things could be better but I am happy with the old card too because the plugins are good and uad1 plugins are not the only plugins which I use.

[Mind-Over-Midi]

Originally Posted by Empty Planet

Guys, what's the big deal? Every time there's a thread about UA, there's a whole crew that comes on to whine about the card. I've had a UAD card since Christ was knee-high to a centurion, and it's just never been a big deal. How many freaking LA2's do you want in your mix? Make a decision and bounce, down, for crying out loud. This Greek chorus is getting old.

Cheers nonetheless.

Please try to keep up! It's not about how many LA2A's I need to run, not entirely at least, It's about getting that dongle out of my PCI slot and onto the Firewire bus where it belongs. I need that slot.

[Empty Planet]

Ahh, cool. Well, that argument I'll buy.

It's the not-enough-power griping that I find so tedious. But even then, you never know, maybe the incessant racket will be an element in their decision-making. It just makes the signal-to-noise ratio a bit difficult for the rest of us in the meantime.

And....uh...I'll do my best to "keep up."

[Macaroni]

At this point I think I will start looking for other brands I've always skipped, like Waves (their new Neve inspired stuff looks interesting and I'm sure it will be WAY less hungry than the recent Uad's plugs)

You obviously don't know about Waves infamous WUP program. If you're pissed at UA for not introducing a new card, you be even more angry about WUP. But go ahead, buy some Waves plugs and be happy.

[F5D]

Originally Posted by Macaroni

You obviously don't know about Waves infamous WUP program. If you're pissed at UA for not introducing a new card, you be even more angry about WUP. But go ahead, buy some Waves plugs and be happy.

I skipped the waves stuff because of this.

[WindowSills]

Originally Posted by Mind-Over-Midi

Please try to keep up! It's not about how many LA2A's I need to run, not entirely at least, It's about getting that dongle out of my PCI slot and onto the Firewire bus where it belongs. I need that slot.

And then there are the people who don't have ANY slots to begin with - iMacs, laptops (without card slots), etc. I would think that UA would try to come up with some sort of way that these people could become customers of theirs, instead of forcing them to go with other companies who DO offer other options.

I'm more disappointed by the remote mic pre thing. It looks great - but then I see that it's got no AD or DA convertors, the reverb & EQ are for monitoring only, and the mic pres are some new "completely transparent" design. Personally, I don't look to UA pres for transparency - I look to them for some color.

[jjdpro]

Guys, firewire is not as robust as PCI. Firewire is Limited in bandwidth. PCI is for true speed needed to run those big UADplugins..

Originally Posted by Mind-Over-Midi

Please try to keep up! It's not about how many LA2A's I need to run, not entirely at least, It's about getting that dongle out of my PCI slot and onto the Firewire bus where it belongs. I need that slot.

[Macaroni]

Ask the Doctors
by Joe Bryan

This month we discuss PCI Express with UA's VP of Technology, Joe Bryan.

Why did you develop the UAD-1e as a PCIe card instead of an externally connected Firewire box?

We asked several power users what they wanted from us, and they all said, "Firewire, USB, Ethernet!" We then asked them why, and they said, "Because it's external!" So we asked, "Why does it have to be Firewire, USB or Ethernet?" and they all said, "Aren't those the only choices?"

What most people don't realize is that every Mac and Windows computer on the market uses PCI protocols to connect all of its peripheral devices to the CPU. That's what the acronym PCI stands for: Peripheral Component Interconnect. Every Firewire, USB and Ethernet controller is connected to the computer via PCI, just like the hard drive, CD/DVD drive, soundcard, and so on. Even the graphics adapter is connected using PCI as far as the system is concerned. You can confirm this using the Device Manager control panel on Windows (see Figure 1) or using specialized developer tools on Mac OS X (see Figure 2).

“Technology is rarely the limiting factor in any practical product design”
Figure 1: The Windows XP PCI-bus device hierarchy

Figure 2: The Mac OS X PCI-bus device hierarchy (showing a Firewire controller)

Firewire, USB and Ethernet devices essentially connect PCI to a cable using specialized hardware and software. So why deal with all the reliability, complexity, software overhead, and interoperability issues of these devices when you can simply connect the PCI bus directly to your DSP and IO? PCI Express (PCIe) does this directly without any additional controller devices!

What about external DSP that uses Firewire? Can you do that with PCIe?
Not only does PCIe operate both inside your computer and over a cable, but there's no software overhead, there are no interoperability issues, and the bandwidth is much higher than any of the other protocols!

A Firewire S400 connector pokes along at 400 MHz. A single PCIe x1 slot runs at 2.5 GHz and provides more than six times the bandwidth of Firewire S400 and USB 2. Even Firewire 1394b will not deliver anything close to this performance for several years, if ever. (The equivalent port speed for PCIe x1 would be an S3200 port, but the next planned speed step for Firewire is only S1600). Ethernet runs at either 100 MHz or 1 GHz, and USB 2.0 only runs at 420 MHz. The future is already here, and it's PCIe.

The fastest Firewire audio devices provide 32 channels of I/O (64 out, 32 in). That's it. The UAD-1 and UAD-1e can process up to 254 channels of I/O (254 out and 254 in), and you can have up to four cards in a system. That's a lot of data. Even if each card is only processing 64 channels (64 mono plugs or 32 stereo plugs), that would require eight times the bandwidth that can be provided by the current Firewire hardware for the current generation of the UAD-1! Put simply, Firewire just isn't fast enough and isn't reliable enough. PCIe does all this while lowering system loading and latency, and improving reliability and signal integrity (fewer glitches).

So PCIe isn't such a bad idea after all. If it's so great, why didn't you use a x16 slot? Isn't there a law somewhere that says bigger numbers are always better?
Bigger numbers aren't always better. PCIe x1 is much faster than any other existing interconnect, and every PCIe x1 card will work in any PCIe slot. Since we have plenty of bandwidth, we decided to make our card compatible with every PCIe slot. Anything bigger would be like using an 18-wheeler as a golf cart.

Okay, we get the picture. All right, so why didn't you add more DSPs to the UAD-1?
Patience, Grasshopper. Technology is rarely the limiting factor in any practical product design. We sent men to the moon almost 40 years ago, and yet there's still no Disney Moon theme park where you can take mum and the kiddies on holiday.

Adding DSP chips to make a multi-card UAD-1 card might be an option if that were all we had planned for the future of the product line, but we're not stopping quite yet. We're actively developing new products based on new technology, but, sorry, no specific announcements just yet. We can assure you that your current investment in our platform will continue to provide value. We designed the UAD-1 quite a while ago, and although it has been on the market for many years, it continues to sell well and provide value to customers. The real value in our system, however, is the quality of our software-the way our plug-ins make your music sound better-and this will continue to be the case as bigger, faster and louder hardware DSP systems are developed and released.

As for new technology, somebody can always Google a website for some obscure chip with insane performance figures that can never be used in a viable product! There is always some new chip that's right around the corner which the manufacturer claims will completely smoke the current generation of desktop PCs and DSPs, but no one uses them because they are (pick one or more of the following): horribly expensive ($10K for a single chip); not well suited for audio processing; extremely difficult to program; incompatible with everything; destined for speedy obsolescence as the companies come and go. While the UAD-1 may not be the new kid on the block any more, happens to be extremely good at audio processing (unlike graphics GPUs) and continues to have an extremely good performance-per-dollar ratio. In fact, its performance per dollar continues to exceed that of native PCs and all other DSP chips for the quality of processing we provide.

There are many inexpensive DSPs available today, like the BlackFin DSP used in several of our competitors' DSP products. However, these are 16-bit fixed-point DSPs intended for low-cost consumer-grade processors like MP3 players! They are certainly capable of running one or two high-quality plug-ins (using extended precision coding techniques), but not 32 channels of high-quality EQ and compression modeling.

[WindowSills]

Originally Posted by Macaroni

Ask the Doctors
by Joe Bryan

Why did you develop the UAD-1e as a PCIe card instead of an externally connected Firewire box?

We asked several power users what they wanted from us, and they all said, "Firewire, USB, Ethernet!" We then asked them why, and they said, "Because it's external!"

"And then we ignored them..." It's interesting to note that when they asked these power users what they wanted, they didn't say "more power." That they requested something external also implies they wanted something portable. A Magma chassis may be an option for someone with a laptop that has a cardslot, but it's not exactly something you can tuck in your briefcase next to your MacBook Pro is it? I'm sure lots of people would be happy with an external device that had something even close to the power of a single card.

As far as the power thing - they explain very well how much faster, wider and therefore better PCIe is than PCI, FireWire, USB2.0, Ethernet, etc. but then they released a PCIe card that doesn't take advantage of it. It's like saying "you can drive around this track at over 200mph" and then being given a car that has a top speed of 50mph. Elsewhere in the article they basically say "we could put more chips on one card, but we're not going to".

[pan60]

Originally Posted by WindowSills

"And then we ignored them..."

Originally Posted by WindowSills

As far as the power thing - they explain very well how much faster, wider and therefore better PCIe is than PCI, FireWire, USB2.0, Ethernet, etc.

but

Originally Posted by WindowSills

but then they released a PCIe card that doesn't take advantage of it.

repaet

Originally Posted by WindowSills

but then they released a PCIe card that doesn't take advantage of it.

again

Originally Posted by WindowSills

but then they released a PCIe card that doesn't take advantage of it.

Originally Posted by WindowSills

It's like saying "you can drive around this track at over 200mph" and then being given a car that has a top speed of 50mph. Elsewhere in the article they basically say "we could put more chips on one card, but we're not going to".

lets repeat again

Originally Posted by WindowSills

but then they released a PCIe card that doesn't take advantage of it.

[cramseur]

I find it funny that people are so impatient when it comes to serious hardware upgrades...like they just manage to "materialize".

Do you really doubt that UAD is working on a power upgrade? Do you really think they are "ignoring" their customers? Has that been their history?Jeez, what a bunch of "gimme, now" biatches.

Go ahead switch to Waves or PoCo or whatever, I have no problem with that, it's your money. But I think you'll be back when the next gen UAD cards come out. Their software emulations are superior, imo.

Patience, Grasshopper. Technology is rarely the limiting factor in any practical product design. We sent men to the moon almost 40 years ago, and yet there's still no Disney Moon theme park where you can take mum and the kiddies on holiday.

Adding DSP chips to make a multi-card UAD-1 card might be an option if that were all we had planned for the future of the product line, but we're not stopping quite yet. We're actively developing new products based on new technology, but, sorry, no specific announcements just yet. We can assure you that your current investment in our platform will continue to provide value. We designed the UAD-1 quite a while ago, and although it has been on the market for many years, it continues to sell well and provide value to customers. The real value in our system, however, is the quality of our software-the way our plug-ins make your music sound better-and this will continue to be the case as bigger, faster and louder hardware DSP systems are developed and released.

This is not "ignoring", this is planning. If the pace is not to your liking, perhaps you're just impatient.

[max cooper]

Originally Posted by lozion

With integrated reverb & Eq... from which plug...?

It sounds to me like the reverb is for the headphone out only. It kinda makes sense, but I get super picky about what reverb's in the headphones. I think it's kinda unrealistic that some low-endy reverb is actually gonna keep most users happy for more than an hour.

And it looks kinda dinky.

Was that bitchy enough?

[Franco]

I used to be a Waves customer, and dropped them when the WUP issue came up (I had a software upgrade, and realized I had to renew the plugins I had already purchased, an additional $700 and change - for what? For the same plugins, no upgrade, just in order for them to give me an upgrade that would make them work in my new hardware/software configuration).

After that, I looked really hard at other alternatives and found UA, and it's the best move I've ever made with regards to DSP effects. I could care less about a new UAD-2, I have 3 cards and will get a 4th. I would love for them to allow more than 4 cards for a system, for those of us who have a Magma chassis and are not crying like the people who just HAVE TO have the latest-greatest and are buying the new motherboards with only 1 pci slot and the rest are the "latest-greatest" pci-e.

I wouldn't even bother chiming in, but when I was looking around message boards a few years ago, sometimes looking at something like this can weigh in on someone's decision, so for all the UA haters out there, there are some of us who are busy working on projects with these cards every day, and they're awesome.

I will be investing in a 4th card soon, just so that I can "make room" for the next emulations they're cooking up. The 1073 is the nicest plugin EQ I've ever heard, and the 33609 is the best plugin compressor I have, and I've only been messing with that for less than 3 weeks. I seriously see this platform as a combination of hardware/software now, unlike what Waves and all the rest were to me.

I don't know anything about electronics, but I'm willing to bet the card might add to some of the "magic" of these plugs, somehow. As a company, UA is great also, if other companies would operate 1/2 as decent as those people do over there, things would be a lot less complicated for many people.

[Matthew Murray]

Why don't we talk more about things that are valuable -- like what this 1081 is going to sound like?? I hope it comes out soon so I can get the bundle of neve plugs rather than buy them separately...

[bgc]

Originally Posted by Matthew Murray

Why don't we talk more about things that are valuable -- like what this 1081 is going to sound like?? I hope it comes out soon so I can get the bundle of neve plugs rather than buy them separately...

When UA released the Precision plugs they gave users the package price even if they had bought them as they came out (right?) so you can probably pick up what you need and not worry about being screwed on the package.


Eric

[Macaroni]

AES SHOW • SAN FRANCISCO, USA-6TH OCTOBER 2006...

Universal Audio, a manufacturer of high-quality vintage audio hardware and DSP software plug-ins for digital audio workstations, today previewed v4.5 software for the UAD-1 & UAD-1e DSP Card & Powered Plug-Ins(tm) system. Version 4.5 will include a 14-day fully functional demo of the third in the series of Neve(r) licensed plug-ins - the 1081 Classic Console Equalizer. Registered UAD-1 customers will be able to purchase full authorizations of the 1081/1081 SE two plug-in bundle for US$249 from my.uaudio.com at the time of web launch slated for Q4 2006. A Neve(r) plug bundle including all 3 UAD/Neve plug-ins (1073, 33609, 1081 and respective "lite DSP" SE versions) will be available simultaneously at considerable saving and priced at US $599.

[WindowSills]

Originally Posted by cramseur

I find it funny that people are so impatient when it comes to serious hardware upgrades...like they just manage to "materialize".

Do you really doubt that UAD is working on a power upgrade? Do you really think they are "ignoring" their customers? Has that been their history?Jeez, what a bunch of "gimme, now" biatches.

Go ahead switch to Waves or PoCo or whatever, I have no problem with that, it's your money. But I think you'll be back when the next gen UAD cards come out. Their software emulations are superior, imo.

This is not "ignoring", this is planning. If the pace is not to your liking, perhaps you're just impatient.

Okay, the're not ignorning customers, they're disregarding them. The power users they talked to didn't ask for more power, they asked for an external device and UA said, "Nah, you don't want that, you want a PCIe card because PCIe is so much better and faster than PCI and all those external devices."

The "more power" issue is not my concern. My main point was that people without a PCI, PCI card, PCIe, or ExpressCard slot in their computer have no way to use UA plugins. That includes a lot of people who like to use their laptops as mobile studios or people using their iMacs as home studio setups. Not offering an external/portable solution, in my opinion, is a mistake by UA. Yes, their stuff sounds better than most, but if you have no way to use them on your system, it doesn't really matter. Saying "go back to Waves or PoCo" doesn't address that issue.

I never said they weren't working on new stuff - I'm sure they are working on new stuff all the time (it even says so in the article). But I don't understand the logic of this statement: "Adding DSP chips to make a multi-card UAD-1 card might be an option if that were all we had planned for the future of the product line, but we're not stopping quite yet." So adding more DSP chips to a single card isn't an option because they have more stuff planned for the product line? Huh?

[Isle of Weight]

I dont know about you guys... I was really hoping to see an eight channel ad-da version of the 2192.
the two channel is great but I need eight channels!

AA.

[Jorg]

i dont care what everybody else thinks but personally i think its about time they upgrade their UAD-1.

Its ridicilous that you can run only one Neve Comp.
Come on guys, look at TC and Waves APA and then you got the UAD-1 with a tiny little processor that runs one plugin (you know what I mean).

I love the plugs, but if they dont do something about it soon then I might look for alternatives.

Just my opinion!

[texdc]

Originally Posted by Isle of Weight

I dont know about you guys... I was really hoping to see an eight channel ad-da version of the 2192.
the two channel is great but I need eight channels!

AA.

That'd be both really cool, and spendy. What'd that be, ~$12k?

[not_so_new]

Bitch and moan feast here huh?

Okay, let's get this straight. From the article the guy said

We designed the UAD-1 quite a while ago, and although it has been on the market for many years, it continues to sell well and provide value to customers.

Let me translate that.... they are selling cards without spending money on R$D for a new card. If the cards are selling they don't have much reason to change them right? If Ford could sell 100,000 Model T's in 2007 with out any updates to the 100 year old design do ya think they would do it? (by the way, the Model T got better gas mileage then more 50% of the cars and trucks on the road in America today… f*ck that is crazy)

Also, their thinking is if you need more horse power for your plugs then get a 2nd card, that would not make them upset at all.

Oh and let's not forget that they see their focus as the software they develop for the card not the hardware.

Again a quote from the above...

The real value in our system, however, is the quality of our software-the way our plug-ins make your music sound better... *snip*

[Macaroni]

Adding DSP chips to make a multi-card UAD-1 card might be an option if that were all we had planned for the future of the product line, but we're not stopping quite yet. We're actively developing new products based on new technology, but, sorry, no specific announcements just yet. We can assure you that your current investment in our platform will continue to provide value.

You forgot to quote this part Michael, which completely destroys your baseless argument about not spending R&D money. Extracting selective & partial quotes and then bashing someone without revealing the full truth, is what the Democrats do (and no, I'm not a Republican).

Its ridicilous that you can run only one Neve Comp.
Come on guys, look at TC and Waves APA and then you got the UAD-1 with a tiny little processor that runs one plugin (you know what I mean).

Answer...

While the UAD-1 may not be the new kid on the block any more, happens to be extremely good at audio processing (unlike graphics GPUs) and continues to have an extremely good performance-per-dollar ratio. In fact, its performance per dollar continues to exceed that of native PCs and all other DSP chips for the quality of processing we provide.

And Jorg, don't forget that one UAD-1 card costs around $350, and one card will run many instances of UA's other fantastic vintage plugins. I just bought my 3rd card for just under $600, and with all the vouchers I got, I'll be able to buy all 3 Neve plugins and still have money left over. Can you do that with Waves or tc?

Plus, all of the top DAWs have a track freeze function, so that solves any issues with multiple instances.