UA Black Friday Monday sale

Where are you seeing this?

Edit: nevermind, it's in the bottom in bundles section, also mentioned on their forum.

BTW I did get a UAD Octo Satellite after all.

Primarily for extra eqs in mixes and also to set up rough mixes and then replace key parts with hardware, like vocal and buses. Still tracking with lots of hardware.

Here are my thoughts.

The newer 1073 EQ really sounds a lot like my BAE 1073Ds, which is a clone, but still. The Slate in comparison is much pointier when you crank it and the phase change is not there. But the UAD sounds so similar on kick and snare and guitars, same with saturation.

The 550B is great on kicks. 550a on guitars and pushing mids on bass. Very smooth and alive sounding and mids from within rather than on top of, like vast majority of plugin emulations vs hardware.

The SSL channel strip is unbelievably good. To me this sounds much more recognizable than Brainworx (eq not dry enough, dynamics is off) or Waves.
The new G Bus, also great in direct comparison with my turbo GSSL.

Of course the new distressor is great. Arousor is more transparent, and the UAD I can't tell from the hardware if I'm being honest.

The softube curve bender I shot out vs clips of the hardware and plugin affected dry. The curves and the inductor highs are very very accurate. I think bass on the hardware is maybe slightly more solid, and depth and sweetness are just a hair better, but in a hybrid mix with some hardware (like this eq before a hardware bus compressor), not sure anyone could tell difference.

Pultec is same deal (eq would be good before hardware comp), but I think the highs are sweeter than the Warm as I recall it.

1176s are cool, better than the Slate, but I like my Mohog best.

Also really like the LA2A gray, but i have a Cl1B so not sure if worth it.


Thought the Fairchild MKII sounded good.

Thought 88rs sounded very impressive, just not necessarily my thing.
I liked the compressor in the vision, but thought the 550a sounded better than the vision eq.

Also have major soft spot for AMS reverb, but not really too useful for the kind of work I do. We'll see.

Thanks.

I think it was confirmed on facebook that the +1 bundle deal at least lasts all 12 days.

Yes, you're right the gray LA2A is great on bass. Open but preserves the round lows. Whereas the distressor is more midsy.

The chain I ended up with was 1073 hpf then pultec boost and cut at 100hz then LA2A gray then a touch of 550a 800hz +

Meant 560 for the kick. Good for tight 30hz thing on slower tempo stuff.

I think I've read some people prefer the bell in the SSL black eq on kick, and I like the brown with the dryness helping snare.

The gbus sounds awesome on 4:1 ~100-180hz hpf, 30 attack, auto release, 2-4db gr. Really nails it and has that tightening and glue.



Thought the 1176 AE sounded the best overall of the 1176s on parallel drums. I think the distressor is great for shell bus.

Also been messing with the Zener on parallel now. An embarrassment of riches.

I think the 2500 is a very good emulation but I always though the hardware was a tad pushed and claustrophobic.

Yeah basically the little tips you read about in interviews with pros all work on their post MKII emulations.

Are you planning to mix with only UA plugs? If not, you’d be hard pressed to run out of power on an Octo...hell, I mix with both native and a quad and the native plugs keep me from running out of juice on the quad and the UAD keeps me from running out of processing power.

[quote author="joseph"

I think the 2500 is a very good emulation but I always though the hardware was a tad pushed and claustrophobic.[/quote]


What do you mean when you say the API 2500 hardware is pushed and clautrophobic ? I own the hardware. So , I'm curious.

Ugh. I need an Octo or something. My quad is just not enough for what I'm trying to to with 96K projects.

Yeah I wish I had the 4 for $399 deal ready to go, I could easily make use of that.

My UAD plugins are just all the basic stuff it would be fun to get fancy with them.

A little too punchy and closes off the top end, for the mix at least. I think part of the issue is that people like the color and the snap even in feed forward is not so obvious like an SSL so they use it pretty aggressively.
33609 is more relaxed in grab of the top end, and one tends to use low ratios on mix with no hpf sidechain. For whatever reason it enhances the low mids but stays open sounding.

The new SSL types with variable sidechains also leave things sounding open and pretty wide and vs 2500 the mid-forwardness has a different not as thick and punchy quality.


Last master I heard that used an 2500 I thought it ruined the open sound of the mix, made it more fatiguing. Granted I didn't like the way the high mids were eq'ed either but the loss of the openness I'm quite sure was an overused 2500, because my friend told me it was used, and the color is obvious when you push it at all, and there was also a version with a thermionic, which was judged not rock enough.

I think the 2500 sounds good with a touch of dry on drums though. And the UAD does this thing perfectly. 

I would like to hear the cap modded hardware though.


[/quote]

I agree that the API 2500 is punchy , but in my experience it doesn't close off the top end. My Smart C2 (SSL type) closes it off more  and is narrower overall, particularly when used in stereo instead of dual mono. For the mix bus I use the API 2500 for rock songs: Attack=10, Ratio=4, Rls=.1, knee=med, thrust=med, mode=old, 70% link. At the mix's loudest, I want 3db of compression. 

I experimented some more with the UAD API 2500.

I still feel it sounds best not completely wet, but the compression characteristics and low end thickening are very hardware-like. To reiterate, I also remember liking the hardware best in parallel.
The UAD really sounds excellent on drum bus because it does not shift the spectral impression of the low end, but rather reinforces it.

The Chandler I think is good in parallel, but not so much wet and to my taste it brings out cymbals a bit too much and the THD brightens the edge, thins out the low end slightly, even with hpf all the way up.

Distressors also brighten albeit with a different timbre but tend to leave the low end a little more solid.

I think the Chandler is excellent at doing its thing but the 2500 is definitely more all purpose and natural. Course if one is after a Beatlesy sound, the Chandler rocks.

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I also tried the 88rs mkii again and for one track I found it had better phase coherence with overheads, so I got that since all Neve stuff is on sale. The 33609 emulation has nice action, but is more transparent than the hardware.


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I prefer the ATR 102 emulation without the transformer modeling and you really have to dial in the eq settings by ear. I tweaked the ultralinear presets to taste. Also hitting it harder than -15VU doesn't sound too good to me.
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For bass, LA2A gray still killing it, and I think I might even prefer it for this application to some of the less transparent hardware clones I've heard, which would probably be more flattering on vocals.

For snare parallel, I preferred the 1176 E MKII, then the distressor.


Btw, I directly compared the UA 1176 E to my Mohog and sample of various 1176s with documented settings. But as one would expect you have to match by ear rather than settings.

I also at one point owned a Warm and it was good on vocals but a bit more broadband and not as spongey in the midrange as the Mohog or as much grit as the UREIs. At higher ratios I thought it kinda fell apart in comparison to the Mohog.

Anyway, my conclusion is that the UA E at least definitely sounds a lot like the hardware, provided you match by ear. I think the UREIs are slightly more pushed back in the mix, and the Mohog has a tighter low end.

Seeing what a difference the FET model Q bias control makes in DMG trackcomp, I bet a lot of this is the FET calibration and then the Mohog using better spec transformers than the UREIs.

The Slate I thought was harder to match, and I hate the metering, for whatever it's worth.