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Dear Friends,
I purchased UAD-1 card about 2 weeks ago. Tnx to Opus I made it work with almost no latency. Let me tell you this - this thing sounds amazing. LA-2A is absolutely fabulous. I don't want to sound blasphemous but I like LA-2A more as a compressor than I like Avalon 737's compressor. Am I crazy? I must be...but it sounds better to my ears. I never thought that I'll see software plugin sounding so good. Same words about Pultec EQ. There is only one problem...but that's not related to UAD-1. I am recording in 24/96...that sucks the power out of UAD-1 ( I guess it doubles it) so the amount of simultaneous plugins is minimal...but I would pay the whole amount just to get one LA-2A ...it is worth it !

Just my opinion.

tnx

chris

Comments

anonymous Tue, 05/27/2003 - 00:06

I agree, the UAD-1 Pultec EQ and the 1176/LA2A compressors are really good, I hardly use any other software EQ/comp any longer.
The only problem I've encuntered is intermittent drop-outs while rendering in Vegas-4. Sometimes audio will drop out (usually only once)on one track. This is with 8-10 UAD-plugins. I hope the new drivers supposedly available in June will fix this.

anonymous Wed, 05/28/2003 - 03:40

Originally posted by 3dchris:
I use Logic Audio 5.5 and did not notice anything wrong yet. Do you use it in 96/24?

tnx,

chris

I track/render/master in 44.1/24 before dithering down to 44.1/16 while burning CDs in CD Architect.
Others have commented as well, but this may be connected to Vegas. Maybe the automatic delay compensations have something to do with it, AFAIK you have to use the special plugin in Logic (?).
It happens with about 10% of my renders.

3dchris Wed, 05/28/2003 - 04:44

Since I'm running in 24/96 my latency is lower than if I run in 44.1. I do not need to use delay compensation. What I have to use though is a logic's plugin called I/O. For some reason there are pops and clicks sometimes when I don't use it. UAD people say they work with logic people to resolve the problem but since logic is not going to be supported on PC anymore I think I'm screwed:). Well...I guess it's time to move to Nuendo 2.0 after I finish this project I'm working on at the moment.

tnx,

chris

MisterBlue Thu, 05/29/2003 - 10:02

The one issue with the UAD-1 card is that it doesn't exactly offer oodles of CPU power (although the advertising is kind of geared at suggesting that). A couple Nigels and compressors will make the thing barf even at 44.1/24, not necessarily by popping a clean little message box telling you that it's all pooped out but rather by behaving irratically.
You might want to check the "load gauge" and make sure you are not at the ceiling yet.

Just an idea.

MisterBlue.

anonymous Mon, 06/02/2003 - 11:08

Originally posted by MisterBlue:
The one issue with the UAD-1 card is that it doesn't exactly offer oodles of CPU power (although the advertising is kind of geared at suggesting that). A couple Nigels and compressors will make the thing barf even at 44.1/24, not necessarily by popping a clean little message box telling you that it's all pooped out but rather by behaving irratically.
You might want to check the "load gauge" and make sure you are not at the ceiling yet.

One question - what kind of computer are you running it on? Is it possible that your performance is being throttled by the PCI bus choking as opposed to the compute power of the UAD itself? Or, maybe Nigel is just a cpu hog ;)

-lee-

MisterBlue Mon, 06/02/2003 - 12:18

LTP,
I am running the card on a 2100+ Athlon system with DDR PC2100 RAM. Fast hard disks and all. The system is rockin' and IMO very powerful - I don't think that it is the bottleneck.

Nigel is admittedly a powerhog (although the different modules Nigel is made of can be used individually).

I believe the UAD only has about 1/4 of the raw horse power of the TC Powercore (the resources of which I e.g. have not been able to maxx out).

Still, the UAD is a card worthwhile having, if only for the compressor algorithms. At $599 it is a good deal despite the drawbacks.

MisterBlue.

3dchris Tue, 06/03/2003 - 11:19

DmDreams,
UAD-1 adds power to your pc but it all depends what resolution your run it in (24/96, 24/44.1 etc.) The lower the resolution of your files the more plugins will this card handle.

Laptop...yes, Nigel is a cpu killer! I cannot even run 3 of them at 96/24. But hey....what's the problem? Just bounce it to the new wave with the plugin and turn it off. Nigel is a nice plugin to have. I use it more for vocals/drums than for guitar sounds though hehe.

tnx,

chris

anonymous Wed, 06/04/2003 - 13:31

OK, I tried a couple copies of Nigel and a couple of compressors last night -- sure enough, thats the limit of the card. The UAD cpu meter was at 95%.

One cool thing - my PC wasn't flaky at all, it stayed rock solid. On the other hand, its a new absolute killer computer. (P4, 800mHz fsb, 1gig dual channel ddr ram, 3 gHz speed processor, etc.)

It was sweet though - I ran a couple of nigels and still had enough to run 3 copies of ozone (a host cpu killer).

-lee-

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