Scott Fraser wrote:

It's not so much a quality gain as an alternative set of flavors. Prior
to getting the UAD I relied primarily on Waves, which are great, but
you want some variety in the palette. The UAD plugs aren't necessarily
better than the Waves, they're different. More personality is how I'd
characterize them.

That's what others have said as well, so I get your point, I will just
have to use them for a bit and let my ears decide. Variety and
versatility is key.


What you save by not buying a UAD is not going to get you much closer
to a PT HD system, unfortunately. You'll get more than a couple
instances, but not so many more that you'll never again have to watch
your system performance meter. Peter mentioned the bandwidth limitation
on the G5 PCI-X implementation. I think this means the UAD runs at
around 80-85% of its full potential on my machine.

Stability is unaffected. It's just not a bottomless pit of processing
power. Neither is TDM. Eventually, with enough tracks & plugs, even
the biggest PT system will run out of gas.


I understand that neither the UAD or TDM aren't bottomless processing
power pits. All I was concerned about was that I don't destabilize my
current config (I can run full 48 I/O at 128-sample latency with no
skips or clicks at 60% CPU load when lots of plugs are on). From the
forum Peter linked it seems my current config should be fine, so I guess
I'll give it a go and if it doesn't perform well (worst case scenario),
I will return it.

I think "faster computer" is something you can definitely count on,
rather like the sun rising in the east. And it will be announced the
week after your next computer purchase.

Scott Fraser


True that. I subscribe to the "buy last year's latest and greatest"
policy. I will let the early adopters beta-test the latest gadgets and
then buy them once they've matured through a few
firmware/hardware/driver revisions (I wish I could say that about Cubase!).

I really appreciate your and Peter's replies, and I will report back
once I get the card and have mixed on it for a bit.

Cheers!
Serge