I’m generally just interested in hearing what is your experience with working within the UA ecosystem.
I’m being offered a UAD-2 Satellite TB3 Octa with a bunch of plugins at a decent price.
I’m mostly doing improvised ambient stuff using external gear, processed through Live, as well as some techno.
I’m just wondering if the UA ecosystem is best suited for someone who’s recording bands etc, or wether it has any value for an ambient/electronic producer working mostly with synths, and software plugins?
Can’t speak for their plugins but I’ve got the Golden and it’s just that! Epic. If their plugins are running the same software then you’ll get miles out of it.
Do you use a desktop or laptop computer? I have an Apollo in the studio with my laptop, and it’s great as a neve preamp etc for mics or emulating guitar amps. The plug-ins are great but I get frustrated when I’m using or editing my tracks on my laptop and I’ve stuck a compressor or EQ somewhere and it’s missing because I don’t have the hardware with me. If you always make music in the same place, they’re great.
Though saying that, I’ve just got better at doing anything recording/mix related in my studio and anything editing/arranging out and about I don’t need to hear that processed, unless I want to bounce an edit down and then it’s missing the fx.
I have an Apollo 8 and some 70% of their plugin library. I’d say the quality of their plugins is really phenomenal. Console (the control software for the Apollos) mirrors a mixining desk worflow. You can plug your plugins into Console and use the effects that way when live tracking with 1ms latency…so that’s awesome. Console is NOT midi mappable though (needs a third party program to be mapped via midi), so if you play live this is a bit annoying…BUT:
Luna (UAD’s free recording software/DAW) can also serve as Console and Luna IS midi mappable.
Overall I love my Apollo. Sound quality is excellent, preamps are good, the plugins are excellent (compressors and reverbs are particularly good in my book) and the device has been super solid for me.
Interesting fact about that the effects are not midi mappable. I’m quite used to being able to midi map EQ parameters and effects to my LaunchControl XL for live playback. This is definitely a huge drawback for me. But maybe something that I can work with. And not really a fan of the idea of switching DAWs so the UA DAW is probably not something I’m keen on switching to
The main reason I’m even considering this is that I mostly work with piano layered over some ambient pads, and recently I’ve been hitting a brick wall of latency when playing fast arpeggios and faster piano stuff.
I’m working with a stage piano (nord stage 3) and internal effects in Ableton. So lowering the latency sounds like a good solution to that problem So one just has to evaluate whether I value higher, latency or midi controlling of plugin parameters.
But also an important question for me is what audio interface I can use. Does it have to be an UA one in order to keep the latency down?
Currently I have a Scarlet 18i20 and Behringer ADA8200, and would love to keep using those, but just wondering if that will introduce to much latency into my chain? Getting a dedicated UA interface with enough IOs (I need about 16-18 inputs and 8-12 outputs) is quite expensive and they all include some CPUs that I don’t really need if I’m getting an UDA-2 Satellite Octa.
I’ve been trying to find information about this online but surprisingly I’ve failed.
You pretty much need a UA or UA hardware accelerator for the plug in suit to work optimally. They are very powerful effects and use up a ton of resources, so while they can be loaded you’ll max our your system extremely quickly.
if you are getting the UDA-2 you can easily use any interface you wish i believe
another thing that you can try is add certain effects that take up a lot of resources AFTER you record the track. Only keep the effects on while you track that you feel are absolutely necessary to have on while you play to capture the vibe you need to play properly.
When you track with a whole stack of effects on you are making your computer work really really hard and are creating an environment where latency’s effect are at a maximum
I’ve been looking into UA interfaces recently as I’ve outgrown my old Focusrite Scarlet. Seems they might be releasing a new line soon though so I’m holding off. Mind you I’m not desperate for DSP and may well opt for an RME interface instead, however I’ll see which way UA swing first
absolutely worth it. i have been a uad user for around 10 years and have now installed an additional 3 x second hand uad dsp chips distributed over two cards in my system. Just check out and try the tape pluginslike ampex, studer or the SSL channel strips (each plugin can be tried for free for two weeks). The midband EQs are heaven!
Quite hard to evaluate what’s this experience is going to be like
I’m quite used to Live and wondering how the experience will be when I just load the UA plugins into my Live session. Will I still get decent latency, or will this setup start to introduce to much latency problems that I can’t really do proper live tracking? Seems to me that I maybe need to do the recording in the Console app for this to work, which is starting to be a bit to involved of a process for this to be appealing.
Satellite does not offer low latency Console based recording. It only gives you access to the DSP plugins. Note that UA plugins are also going native.
You’ll need an Apollo for low latency tracking.
Now, depending on the price of the Satellite and the plugins you get with it, it might be worth it for the plugins alone (You’ll get the corresponding native plugins if they are available) but keep in mind that Satellites are on their way out.
NAMM is around the corner and they may announce their new low latency system. I’ll wait a bit.
Ahh ok I thought I was heading into latency heaven with this unit
So if I’m running my scarlet 18i20, with a small buffer set in Ableton, and all the plugins are UAD plugins running on the OCTO I will still be experiencing quite some latency? To much to be comfortably playing an external piano with live tracking?
yes, you will get the latency of your audio interface plus the latency of the plugins.
I use my Apollo for tracking at 96khz with Arturia Piano v2 in stand alone mode sent into a virtual channel of the Apollo (basically virtual channels allow you to route sounds from your computer into Console in order to process them with low latency and record it too), it gives me 0.7ms of latency (without any plugins on the input but I do use auxes for reverb).
As I said, the DSP plugins are being ported to native land so Satellites are going to be a thing of the past really soon. That’s why so many people are selling them right now.
So a Satellite could be worth it to offload power hungry reverbs when mixing (lex224, capitol chambers, emt 140, hitsville are really good) and a few other plugins but I would not buy one, NAMM or not.
I would wait to see what they show at NAMM (or during NAMM) in order to buy an Apollo.
Apollos are great though!
If they announce a new generation that is still compatible with the actual Apollos, you could certainly grab one a bit cheaper on the second hand market.
I’ve been dipping my toes into their native plugins, gotta say I’m really impressed. The hitsville chambers is great for kind of vintage lofi style reverb. And I got the pultec, which sounds amazing. Expensive shit tho.
I’ve used UAD hardware (Arrow, now an Apollo X4) for around five years. I track everything through it using UAD plugins in Unison mode (which models the impedance of the device that’s being emulated). Latency is effectively zero. I mean, it’s not actually zero, but it’s so low it is impossible to tell you’re not using an actual amp or front end channel strip/analog mixer channel etc. If I didn’t record instruments/vocals etc I think I’d be less likely to use UAD gear as there are plenty of native plugin alternatives (although the good ones can cost as much as a UAD plugin). But for tracking, UAD are the business… the hardware is very high end and the plugins are stellar.
I use UAD Spark and most of the plugins sound amazing! I did not expect them to be that good actually. The 1176 really sound like a hardware 1176 with its distortion and everything. I make techno and sometimes EDM Trap and I really have use for UAD when I make electronic music.
Universal audios UAD has gone native so if you have a decent computer I would go the native route and spark because I think that get more for your money with spark. With that said you can only get a few of their plugins if you go the native route. You would be able to get all of their plugins with the satalite, But the satellite is quite dated nowadays.
