Sell everything and buy more UAD plugins?

[digitaldrummer]

...at least it seems like I'm headed down that path. Not complaining. I like what they do. But sometimes it feels like an addiction.

[mangoose]

slow down there cowboy you dont need all of them

only buy during the yearly sales w/ coupons

[roscoenyc]

I like them a whole lot.
They really sound great and they work like the gear that they emulate.
but,
and this is a really big but.....
most of them cut off at 48k.
they pass signal at hi-res but they cut off at 48k.

It's the dirty little secret of UA and their plugins.

I can't find it right now but Bill Putnam Jr admits to it in an interview with Sound on Sound.

[Nick Sevilla]

I like them a whole lot.
They really sound great and they work like the gear that they emulate.
but,
and this is a really big but.....
most of them cut off at 48k.
they pass signal at hi-res but they cut off at 48k.

It's the dirty little secret of UA and their plugins.

I can't find it right now but Bill Putnam Jr admits to it in an interview with Sound on Sound.

Yep. But, they sounds really good. I also have Waves Mercury. And have done some informal comparisons. Most of the UAD ones, the ones emulating real gear, are about 1-6% better. Not much, but sometimes they do a better job, depending on the source sound. They also have a few emulations which Waves does not have, like the first version of the la2a.

[roscoenyc]

I think the UA plugs are the best I've ever heard but they cut off at 48 and there's absolutely no language on that in any of their manuals or on their site.
I recently started a label with another guy distributed by The Orchard. It was important to us that all of our releases be available 192/24.
Everything was recorded and mixed 192/24. All submitted to HD Tracks as 192/24 files.
It wasn't till they notified us that we realized our stuff was being cut off at 48.
"Sounds great" is fine but when you are selling things to customers who want hi-res then you give them hi-res.

We found out about this when we were about 40 records in!

https://www.solosounds.com

[Randyman...]

Wow - So that UA 48K limitation is confirmed? And you are sure your recorded files contained audio information above 24KHz (@ 48K fs)?

So they basically down-sample the 96K input to 48K, process, then upsample back to original Hi-Res sample rate? That is basically opposite of what native plug-ins would do (they would upsample, process, then downsample!). If 88K input, do they downsample to 44K? Or do the extra-dirty SRC math from 88K to 48K?

Does this mean you don't encounter reduced # of instances in 96K projects (hidden "benefit" - lol - is that a feature or a bug? ). Or is the downsampling/upsampling also eating up dedicated DSP resources that would otherwise be allocated for plug-in processing? If you get 10 instances of "x" plugin at 48K, do you only get 5 instances at 96K? Or???

Just curious. UAD has ALWAYS piqued my interest, but I would need two identical Octo setups (for studio/track and home/mix), plus the added ITB latency is a non-starter for me (I'm not an Apollo + 'UAD Input DSP' candidate; I use RME MADI and lots of it!).

[roscoenyc]

I can't find the article right now.
Bill Putnam Jr admitted that their emulations had to downsample.
Bob Ludwig had called him out on this also.
Bill admitted it in SOS.
They still haven't addressed it in any of their manuals or their printed literature.
UAD makes a few plugs that pass hi res signal but those aren't emulations of older hardware.

[roscoenyc]

In our testing our recordings had content all the way up until the UAD plugs were applied then they cut off at 48 K.
We had to go back and start re-mixing the records using hardware. We are still working on it.

Here's the article

https://www.soundonsound.com/sound-advi ... d-plug-ins

[Nick Sevilla]

Most of the stuff I do is 24 bit 48K.

A little of 24 bit 96K, and in those I may or many not use a UAD plug in.

If it is going to CD or lesser quality, I do use if needed, on the master buss. Love their ATR102.

[digitaldrummer]

ok, read the article. sounds like don't put UAD plugins on your master bus if your client is going to do spectrum analysis. Most of what i do is 24/44.1, but occasionally I get requests for higher sample rates. I rarely use UAD plugins on the master bus though - but who has checked every plugin out there? I bet many others do something similar and for the same reasons. And how much of that vintage analog gear UAD is modeling has unlimited bandwidth? I suspect none. I do like the sounds, and Universal Audio is constantly sending me coupons hoping I will buy more (which is really what prompted my original post awhile back).

[Nick Sevilla]

ok, read the article. sounds like don't put UAD plugins on your master bus if your client is going to do spectrum analysis. ...

I had one client like this. A bit of a pain, until I asked him to just LISTEN.

I really have a problem with musicians trying to do everything themselves, and especially the ones who get stubborn about it.

They used some jackass mastering engineer. He ruined the album. RUINED. All because of the client wanting to use the fucking analyzer.

I hope in the end they just used my mixes sans mastering. Cause that shit was FRIED to hell when they were done with it.

[roscoenyc]

It's still important if you are selling your music on a hi-res site like HD Tracks.