Uad2 SOLO power in real world..

[msm07]

Has anyone got the SOLO pack? I've just got one on its way for a great price. I would of personally got the DUO or QUAD but the price on the duo was too good to resist...basically half price from a mate of mine. My Motherboard only has 1 pci-e slot so this will be the only UAD2 I can have...(along with my original UAD1)

How does it compare to the UAD1? Is it really 2.5x the power? Its the nervana pack that I got, so I can run a 32 channel neve mix with it but I hate knowing I'm limited.

Anyone who has some info on the lot, and/or real world experience please chime in here....re-assure me please lol

[JPeters86]

Congratulations, you won't be disappointed with the plugins. The Neve plugs are awesome. You can always freeze tracks when running out of DSP power. Don't worry too much about it. Good luck!

[Beechwood]

I have a uad-2 Duo and a uad-1. I use the 88RS a lot, and i'm staying below 50% most of the time.

For some plugs you can get more than a 2.5x improvement. The Neve ones are especially good. Some, like LA2A and the plate 140 dont give you much improvement, and the cambridge is actually worse on the uad2, so if you have those it might be worth assigning them to your uad1 so you dont waste uad2 power!

Here's a chart comparing plug in counts... Universal Audio | UAD Charts

[morpheuzrecords]

simply get a quad. the price isn't that difference and you won't regret it in the long run. don't forget the 250$ crossgrade voucher for the quad.
I had 2 UAD-1 pcie and now I have a quad - sold all the old cards. The power increase is huge. I had to regullary freeze tracks with the 2 old cards, while on the last mixing session the DSP load was around 33 % and I was using quite a lot of plugs. The performance of the quad with logic is highly improved to - just really occasional core overloads (which happened quite often whilt the uad-1 and uad-2 where both in the computer). worth every penny.

[msm07]

It's a MASSIVE price difference when you think... I got the Nevana 32 pack for £200 from a good friend, Un-registered....hasn't done more than put it in his system and take it out, as he decided to get the quad himself. The store wouldn't take it back (software cannot be returned apparantly).

The Quad here is £1018 or something.

[morpheuzrecords]

Originally Posted by msm07

It's a MASSIVE price difference when you think... I got the Nevana 32 pack for £200 from a good friend, Un-registered....hasn't done more than put it in his system and take it out, as he decided to get the quad himself. The store wouldn't take it back (software cannot be returned apparantly).

The Quad here is £1018 or something.

I was thinking of the cards itself - not the flexi/nevana packs. In my case as an old die hard uad user (had 2x PCI, upgraded to 2xPCIe and now upgraded to a quad) I bought almost all of the plugins from the crossgrade vouchers.

Power wise - I think i could live with the duo, the solo would be a nogo for me - I am almost positive I would have to freeze tracks. With the quad I can simply insert the required processors without even thinking of "well if I use a 1073 then I've got 3 left to do this and this ..."

as everything it depends on the complexity and track counts of your projects.

[msm07]

At the moment I use a UAD1, SSL4000 bundle, Focusrite LM, a few sonalksis things (gate and eq always forget names lol..sv something) and waves ren bundle running on a 2.13ghz dual core, 4 gb ram running sx3.

Most of my projects involve vocalists bringing an already finished instrumental round and laying vocals on top. Then I mix the vocals with the already mixed instrumental. This is how 60% of my work is done, and I tend to have about 15 (roughly) tracks running in one project.

The other 40% of my work is full tracks, individual parts. Varying from like 10-30 tracks. I do a lot of grouping, and bussing to save power. So far i've made do with the above plugins.

I'm HOPING the solo will be ok. It just sucks that i'll have to sell it in order to get a Quad if I decide to as my Motherboard "asus p5b deluxe" only has 1 slot for the new cards. I would love to be able to load whatever UAD I wanted when I wanted. At the moment I usually just max out my UAD and THEN start hitting the liquid mix or natives.

It was just too good of a deal for me, I got all happy and just went for it. It will be here on friday so i'll post back with thoughts.

[astronmr20]

Originally Posted by msm07

At the moment I use a UAD1, SSL4000 bundle, Focusrite LM, a few sonalksis things (gate and eq always forget names lol..sv something) and waves ren bundle running on a 2.13ghz dual core, 4 gb ram running sx3.

Most of my projects involve vocalists bringing an already finished instrumental round and laying vocals on top. Then I mix the vocals with the already mixed instrumental. This is how 60% of my work is done, and I tend to have about 15 (roughly) tracks running in one project.

The other 40% of my work is full tracks, individual parts. Varying from like 10-30 tracks. I do a lot of grouping, and bussing to save power. So far i've made do with the above plugins.

I'm HOPING the solo will be ok. It just sucks that i'll have to sell it in order to get a Quad if I decide to as my Motherboard "asus p5b deluxe" only has 1 slot for the new cards. I would love to be able to load whatever UAD I wanted when I wanted. At the moment I usually just max out my UAD and THEN start hitting the liquid mix or natives.

It was just too good of a deal for me, I got all happy and just went for it. It will be here on friday so i'll post back with thoughts.

I think considering the price break you got, and the increase in plugs with the Nevana license, you made a smart move (:

Not speaking from experience on a UAD-2. I have a UAD -1 and there are times I do wish it had just a bit more power.

I mix very similar to how you do, and use grouping with high quality plugs to save power, with about the same amount of tracks. Most of my "audio" tracking these days is vocals, mixed in with software drums/ instruments.

Very much looking forward to hearing how this works out for you.

[indravayu]

It's smart to buy a SOLO now if you can't afford the DUO or QUAD, because after the new year, UA is going to charge for the plugin upgrade from UAD1 to UAD2 ($25 per plugin, up to $250).

- Chris

[msm07]

Very good point, although UA have proved to be more than generous with coupons and vouchers. I wouldn't be suprised if it became free forever to transfer plugs to the new card.

[fooman]

I own a UAD-1 and a UAD-2 solo.
I'm often really surprised how much crap I can run on both these cards.

I will have LA2A's, LA3A's, multiple Cambridge plugs, 1176LN's, etc all on busses... and then I'll be working on the tracks themselves with 1073's and Pultec's and whatnot.

I like being able to pull out a plug and not having to worry about hitting the limit. It seems that I have to really have a lot of plugs open to hit the limit of both cards... when I do it seems that I'm almost trying to do too much.

[MickeySmid]

Sorry to hijack this thread...

Question: using UAD-1 while exporting a bounce in Cubase takes a long time, without the UAD-1 plugs (only NATIVE PLUGS) the bounce goes really quick. If you have a deadline etc, it's a nice thing to be able to do this quick.

If I swap the UAD-1 for a UAD-2, will the exporting of a bounce using uad2 plugs go quicker? Or will it be the same as UAD-2?

If it does go quiker... 2nd question. What about a UAD1 card + UAD2 card... will cubase/logic use the uad2 first (quick) and then when running out of power on that one go to the uad1?

thanks,
M.

[fooman]

Actually what UAD does in terms of assigning plugs is.. well, just that. If you have two cards, a 1 and 2, you have to tell the cards which plugs they get. For example, my UAD-2 gets the 1176LN and my UAD-1 gets the LA2A. So no matter what, those cards run those specific plugs.

So I could have a session where one card isn't even used, depending on which plugs get used.

[MickeySmid]

I found an answers to my own question:

UAD2 does seem to bounce at least a bit quicker:

UAD Forums • View topic - export/bounce speed