Serge -

I use (and love) the UAD plugs on my Mac G5 - especially the compressor
plugs and the mastering plugs (eq, limiter and new multiband limiter).
I also use Waves plug ins, PSP plug-ins etc.

The UAD plugs are the ones I'll try first when mixing or mastering
becuase they usally sound the best and it allows me to off-load the CPU
cycles to the UAD board.

Scott mentioned the limited plug-in count. This points out the fact
that the performance of the card varies according to the host computer.

For example, many of the newer G5 Mac's have a PCI-X bus implementation
that constrains the throughput to and from the UAD card (a
compatibility issue). You can't load very many plugs before you hit
the choke point of the PCI bus . . .

On my non-PCI-x-bus Mac, I can load many plug-ins . . . with two cards,
I've never run out of horsepower for the plugs.

Since you are on a PC (or actually, no matter what computer you use) I
suggest you check out this forum:
http://www.chrismilne.com/uadforums/index.php

You can see about compatibility and throughput etc. There's lots of
folks contributing there and UAD keeps their eye on the discussions and
jumps in when they can be helpful.

My experience with UAD customer support and technical service has been
great.

I agree with others . . . it's not whether they sound "just like" the
real thing, it's how good they sound.

They sound really, really good . . . I until UAD had everything ready
for OSX (on the Mac) before upgrading my studio because I won't mix
without them.

Good luck with your decision!

Peter in St. Louis

Serge wrote:
Scott Fraser wrote:
I would like to ask the opinion of the group members on the UAD-1
card
and the plugs. Is it efficient enough to offer realtime
processing?

That's the whole point with DAW plugins. The UAD does the processing
onboard the card, lightening, but not eliminating the load on the CPU.
You will still run into track count vs # of plugin issues. I notice I
can get WAY more native Waves instantiations than UAD instantiations,
using a fast dual G5. The best sounding UAD plugs seem to be the most
CPU intensive. Recently I had 4 Pultecs, 1 Dreamverb, & 1 Cambridge EQ
running on the UAD. Adding a 2nd Cambridge EQ choked the whole system &
brought it to its knees. That's not a lot of plugins for a dedicated
card, IMO. So, you have to balance the UAD plugs with your others to
keep the system running.


Hi Scott,

Thanks for your reply. What you're describing is exactly what's been
holding me back from buying the UAD card. I have a VERY stable system
and the entire Waves suite and this setup is serving me very well. I am
thinking whether adding a UAD card would thus be beneficial to me at
all, or if the quality gain would not be *that* jaw-dropping. I am
thinking in terms of convenience/performance-to-benefit ratio. If, as
you say, this card will only let me run a couple of instances of the UAD
plugs, then I'd rather stick with running my Waves plugs natively and
save up for a real TDM system instead in the future (PT HD).

I've worked on TDM systems (both PT5 and 6) and absolutely love the
stability of TDM, so I was hoping the UAD card would give me something
approaching that, but from what I've been reading online it seems an
UAD-1 is similar to buying a multi-purpose outboard unit. I think I will
stick with my Waves for now, as I only have one PCI slot left anyway, so
buying more than one UAD card to get more processing power for the plugs
is out of the question. I really wish there was a DSP card that
accelerated all plugins, not just ones made for that specific card - but
then again, that's just called a "faster computer."

Cheers,
Serge