Analogue Ears, Digital Minds: Universal Audio UAD-2
For those of us producing large music sessions using
software like Apple’s Logic Pro Studio or Motu’s Digital Performer - in which your
creativity is limited by the power of your digital audio workstation (DAW) - hitting
the CPU limit can be an all too familiar occurrence. You know the scenario:
your drums are mixed, your guitars sound great, you’ve resurrected some truly
astounding low-end on the bass and everything is sitting nicely in the mix; you
even used buses for your effects like the conscientious music producer you are in
order to spare your Mac Pro the effort of processing half a million instances
of the same plug-in. All that’s left to do is add that special convolution
reverb to the vocals and a top-10 spot in the iTunes store is surely yours for
the taking.
Then it happens: you eagerly select the perfect reverb, hit
play and… get a CPU overload warning. At this stage you really only have a few
options: remove a few plug-ins from other instruments to make some CPU headroom
for your reverb, send your vocals to the reverb bus you set up for your
Metallica-inspired snare sound, or bounce down the mix as a backing track and
hope to God it won’t need changing once you import it and get vocals on it. At one
point or another - whether producing material at home or even as a session
engineer in some, shall we say, less professionally-equipped studios - I’ve
resorted to all of these methods.
Back in the early days of DAW-based recording and
production, it wasn’t long before professional engineers were demanding more
processing power for their exclusive plug-ins, and so the idea of card-based
processing was developed. The problem was that the initial card-based solutions
were accessible only to those with professional workstations and professional
budgets – off-loading some signal processing to a secondary DSP card was
something that general consumers could only dream about.
Fortunately, a few companies decided to pioneer this
development in audio hardware to a point where it was available to consumers
and, just after the turn of the millennium, Universal Audio unveiled the UAD-1 to an eagerly-awaiting public.
The idea was simply to install the DSP card into your Mac (or PC if you’re that
way inclined) and then use the high-end plug-ins to your heart’s content – all
of the processing is taken away from the CPU and handled exclusively by the DSP
card, so there are no more overload
warnings to hinder your creativity. Over the years, the concept was adapted
and improved to include support for up to four cards in one system on both OS X
and Windows, as well as support for third-party plug-ins from numerous
manufacturers, until Universal Audio eventually arrived at the latest incarnation
of its pioneering DSP card, the UAD-2.
The UAD-2 Powered Plug-Ins and PCIe Accelerator Cards hit
the audio world late in August 2008 and further expand on the strong
foundations of the UAD-1. The UAD-2 system now offers scalable DSP power through its 3 Solo, Duo or Quad cards – containing one, two and four processing
chips respectively), which can be mixed and matched in any combination of up to four cards. Each of the cards boasts a vast improvement in processing power
over their predecessor – 2.5x more processing power that the UAD-1 for the
Solo, 5x for the Duo and 10x for the Quad – giving the discerning producer more
power to record, mix and master. As if that weren’t enough, Universal Audio also
allows you to install four UAD-1 cards
alongside four UAD-2s for maximum processing power (this number of cards is
solely for the PC market – a Mac Pro will only hold 3 PCIe cards without an
expansion chassis regardless of how hard you push them in).
In addition to the vast increase in processing power, Version
5 of the UAD software allows plug-ins to run in a low latency/monitor mode
using LiveTrack technology. This new
development allows the plug-ins to be assigned to a live microphone input so
that a performer can monitor through the
plug-ins, whereas previously they could only be applied to pre-recorded
material due to the significant amounts of latency that were introduced using
the UAD-1 system. As well as this, the UAD Version 5 software also includes the
Live Optimizing DSP Engine
(L.O.D.E.), which calculates the amount of processing power that the plug-ins
are using and automatically provides
load balancing across the cores of the card(s).
Of course, more experienced producers and even keen amateurs
are rarely happy to just sit back and know that everything works without taking
a peek under the hood, so-to-speak. In light of this, a revised version of the UAD’s
Control Panel is present in the Version 5 software that gives the user an
overview of the processing power that the plug-ins are using, the processing
resources available, the number of plug-ins in use, and an option to override
the automatic L.O.D.E. system and assign specific plug-ins to any processing
core.
In case you were thinking that there just aren’t enough
options, Universal Audio has released the UAD-2 in nine unique bundles. Each of these includes support for VST and Audio Unit plug-ins as well as the Mix Essentials II bundle, which in
itself is enough to create professional mixes in your native DAW. Mix
Essentials II includes the 1176SE Limiting Amplifier Emulation, RealVerb Pro,
the CS-1 Channel Strip (comprising the EX-1 EQ/Compressor, the DM-1 Delay
Modulator and the RS-1 Reflection Engine) and the Pultec EQP-1A EQ Emulation.
At the most economical end of the product range, the UAD-2
Solo, Duo and Quad cards are available individually in packages that include
the Mix Essentials II bundle and a $50 voucher to spend on plug-ins of your
choice at Universal Audio’s online shop.
For producers who require more flexibility with regard to
bundled plug-ins, the Solo, Duo and Quad cards come in aptly-named ‘Flexi’ packages that include the card,
Mix Essentials II and a massive $500 voucher for use in the UA plug-in
shop.
At the top of the range, there are 3 Nevana packages: UAD-2
Nevana 32 (Solo), Nevana 64 (Duo) and Nevana 128 (Quad). Each of these
packages comes with the Mix Essentials
II bundle and $100 to spend in the
UA plug-in shop, as well as a digital emulation of the coveted Neve 88RS channel strip. The Nevana 32
offers 32 channels of the Neve 88RS console at 44.1kHz and 24-bit depth with
full EQ, cut filters and either the Gate/Expander or Compressor/Limiter
enabled. The Nevana 64 and Nevana 128 packages offer 64 and 128 channels of the
Neve 88RS respectively, and also include
all 7 of the Neve plug-ins available for the UAD-2 cards (88RS, 1073/1073SE,
1081/1081SE, 33609/33609SE).
In short, the UA
Powered Plug-Ins Collection brings the most sonically revered audio processors
from the last 50 years to your workstation, whilst the UAD-2 DSP cards offer
dramatic increases in processing power compared to an off-the-shelf workstation.
For Logic and Digital Performer users who need their systems to be as powerful
as the omnipotent ProTools|HD platform, the UAD-2 cards offer an extremely tempting
solution. When combined with even the best audio interface, the UAD-2 cards
offer processing capabilities comparable to ProTools|HD at a fraction of the
cost. Not only this, but if a £170,000 Neve 88R console isn’t quite within
budget, the Neve emulation included with the Nevana bundles is a faithful
reproduction, endorsed by Neve themselves. In fact, Neve aren’t the only
endorsers of the UAD-2 – plug-in partners already include Roland, SPL, Valley People and Empirical Labs, who are soon to be
joined by Harrison, Moog and Little Labs.
As Mike Barnes, Vice President of Marketing for Universal
Audio has already proclaimed, “The UAD-2 is set to shake up the audio industry
even more radically that the UAD-1 did.” He may be right – not only are the
plug-ins faithful digital reproductions of their hardware forefathers, but
they’re priced to offer a radical solution in processing power and sonic
fidelity to all types of studio from project studios to full professional
facilities.
Page created on 29 October 2008 by Craig Finney.