Mackie UAD-1

[Red Rockets Glare]

Has anyone splurged on this package? Is it worth it?
http://www.mackie.com/products/uad1/index.html

[tiger vomitt]

ive been investigating this thing for a few months now. i cant decide if it would be right for me. the other choice to the UAD1 are the bomb facotry plugins. except the BF's are about 10x more expensive and supposedly dont sound as good - by a lot.

the thing that bugs me about the UAD1 is the latency. it is impossible to sing live thru a compressor on the card. i wouldnt be able to hear a synth or guitar thru the nigel processor while actually playing it. for me, it makes nigel somewhat worthless. and the messing around in DP (im a DP person all the way) trying to get the latency compensations plugins together seems like such a major PITA!

but the sound is supposed to be amazing and the price is certainly good....it's a tough decision.

[Red Rockets Glare]

man, think of all the things you could use nigel on besides guitar though!

there are a lot of things that I don't compress going in to the DAW that would make the UA stuff worthwhile.

any owners out there?

[JES]

Hey All,

A lot depends on your DAW front end -- Mac or PC? Logic or Performer or Sonar? Etc. I thin kthere are ways to deal with the latency, BUT there are other issues, like I think their dual-processor support is somewhat limited (though that may have changed).

If they ever do work out the hardware issues with DP and Macs, I'll plop down the bucks for one. In the meantime, there's always tc powercore for more $$.

Best,
--JES

[angryaudio]

I own both the UAD-1 and the Powercore, and I've had great experiences with both as well as those moments of total frustation where you wanna throw the whole fucking thing out the window. With Cubase VST on a Mac, both of these cards were sketchy at best because, well, that application was sketchy at best.

In Logic 5.5.0, the Powercore has been totally solid and the UAD-1 has only had a minor hiccup here and there. As far as the plugs themselves, they've all become such critical part of my rig that I'm not going OSX until they do as well.

With both packages the only latency problems occurs when using these plugs on a group bus or as a send. (When you use them as regular track inserts the latency is automatically accounted for) In these instances you have compensate your non UAD or non Powercore tracks with the corepsonding compensation plug-in. It's works well enough, but it's a bit of a headache. What I've gotten in the pratice of doing is using the Powercore and UAD plugs as only inserts. And then if I need to compress a group channel or add a reverb on a send, I use a native plug.

The Powercore should go OS X any day now, and my mole at UA says the UAD OS X version should be out real soon after. If you've got the cash go for it. If you've got a super-fast DP Mac and you need some higher-end processing right now, go get the Waves stuff.

My two cents.

AA

[Red Rockets Glare]

can't you just run a track already on the DAW through the effects and then have it processed for good?

[NewAndImprov]

Has anyone splurged on this package? Is it worth it?

I really dig mine. I've only had it for about 3-4 months, and I got it just before starting a big mix project. I mainly use the LA2A, Pultec and 1176 emulations, and the RealVerb Pro. It's worth it for those alone. I can't compare the emulations to the real things, 'cause I ain't in an economic reality that lets me use the real things, but they are the best sounding compressors I own, hardware or software. The Channel Strip modules are kind of generic sounding, but do the job with minimal processor overhead. I haven't used Nigel at all yet, but have used the Phasor module a bit.

I use it on Logic 5.5 on a Mac G4, and haven't had a problem with it yet. As somone posted above, the only reason I'm still running Logic in OS9 is because the UAD plugs aren't out for X yet.

[tiger vomitt]

man, think of all the things you could use nigel on besides guitar though!

no yer right, the last thing i'd probably use it for is guitar. i just picked up a digitech rp2000 guitar processor to use on drums and vocals or whatever. anything but guitar! i think they made this thing for 14 year olds that listen to nu metal or dream theater or some other crap like that. it just bugs me in principle that i wouldnt be able to play guiatr thru it for kicks if i had to.

how is the tc powercore in regards to latency?

[clodock]

I've had mine (uad-1) for about a year and am very happy with it. I have a Dual Vocal Combo and an Avalon 737sp, so if I want to compress on the way in, them's will be the choices. I monitor (and mix) through a console, so there's no reason I couldn't insert and outboard compressor on the monitor channel when recording. At mix time, these things are great. It does take me forever to mix, because I use like 20 of them on every song, and end up printing them to clear up cpu resources. I suppose I could break down and buy another card if I become irritated enough. But they sound so much better than anything nuendo has in it, and anything else that's free, that when I think about buying more plugins, I basically go back and forth between another uad-1 and a power core.

[thearnicasync]

Sorry for being dense, but from the previous posts I'm still trying to figure out whether or not you track with these in real time, with fairly low latency...?

Anyone know or have experiences with this?

thanks,

kelly

[WyteTyger]

I wanna know this too..

[angryaudio]

Well unless you dig that "I'm recording inside of a bucket" vibe, I wouldn't track through either of these cards. Maybe with the AU versions of these packages, the latency will be low enough that you could, but that's niether here nor there. And I agree with whoever it was who commented on the Nigel, that thing is a bit of a letdown. A Powercore/UAD version of Amp Farm would be a dream come true ... maybe someone is listening.

AA