Considering Quitting UAD…Any Good Alternatives?

I know it was just an example, but in the spirit of the OP, some good LA3A plugs too look for:

Black Rooster - It's special, IMO, this is the one I use. I have no idea how it compares to hardware, but whatever it does sounds right to me. It sings. Makes me want to try their other compressors.

Waves: not bad at all, part of the CLA series.

And if you've seen that guy Masterclaes on Youtube, the Overloud Comp LA seems to be the closest match to his particular vintage LA3A. It was closer to his hardware than the UAD was.

I'm sure the UAD is fine, but, as expected, you have options.

I guess some people like "wasting time" and using mental energy exploring options, I put myself in that category 100%. Must be some sort of Meyers Briggs thing, the people that want to tinker and dwell VS the people who just want to get on with it.

Right over the plate, nice and high...

If you are pro and steadily booking multiple gigs per week, then you need recall and UAD is perfect. If you aren’t doing that, then either it’s for fun or serious. Cheap fun is to be had with stock plugins, logic is great for this. Reason is great too, just kind of different. Both are super fun to play with.
If you are serious and not really working for others, then RGO greatest hits’ hardware is another step up. I sat in a session with stuff from Heiserman, audioscape, LTL, CAPI.. they were replacing plugins with real percussion and synths. (And vocals.. h47fet sounds killer on female btw)A giant leap up in quality. Like eyes popping out..

Im semi-professional at this point. Used to work full time in production, now I have a day job and have a handful of serious repeat clients I work with with some one offs here and there. So I definitely need a serious setup but don’t need the marketing draw (or resources) that a commercial studio needs.

Here is another way to think of it that works for some people according to your needs. This does not apply to professionals who are locked into or rely on Protools for example.

If you are like me, old school and used to the console and tape machine analog workflow you might really enjoy the simplicity and sound of LUNA.

Yes there are huge things not yet implemented like external IO and sidechaining but the rest of it is very slick.

Personally I can't even bring myself to look at or click around in the Logic or Protools interfaces anymore... it just feels so convoluted and dated in comparison.

Im just working on my own music as a personal artistic endeavor/journey so it feels like I am swimming upstream with those old tools.

The integration with the tape and summing plugins and now the console channels in LUNA is so easy to use and get superior results quickly that I can't even imagine manually adding all those kinds of plugins to every single channel and bus in other DAW's anymore to build out something similar.

Gain staging in mass alone means LUNA wins easily.

For me just think of it as buying the ability to use LUNA. The tape, summing and console plugins can be had for similar prices to competitors offerings during sales and bundles but are MUCH easier to use due to the tight integration in the interface.

Additionally it sounds much better than other DAW's to my ears. (controversial I know...)

I have to give UAD credit where it is due. I was close to leaving and selling of my UAD plugins for a while but now with LUNA its a no-brainer to stay.

The Apollo has been 100% rock solid from day 1 on my M1 macs and my old macs while I hear horror stories about several once solid companies still struggling with their Big Sur drivers and software. Zero pops, clicks, distortion or crashes.

I don't even rely on UAD plugins for color or mojo. I have nice outboard and mics for that. Often I just use LUNA as a realtime rack of reverb and time based effects for sends/returns on my console while working all analog from real tape machines and then capture the final mix back to LUNA. Even for these simple tasks it beats out other DAWS.

The price of used Apollo X series is pretty much in line with equal interfaces in that caliber of AD/DA conversion. The sharc chips are not adding much to the cost really and its nice for the simple ARM monitoring workflow even with its inherent limitations.

I still prefer all analog workflow but for digital UAD with LUNA is hard to beat.

Just my two cents...

I'm still not "getting it" on Luna somehow. When people rave about it I feel like I'm missing out but I'm just not sure what I'm missing out on. It doesn't seem all that great to me, I actually find the interface a bit counterintuitive (though I only spent about an hour with it).

I'd agree that that's where things are headed, or maybe are already sort of there. The availability in recent years of really nice hardware for much more affordable prices has turned the plugins for everything paradigm on its head. Go into the computer with some nice hardware signal chains and then let plugins take care of mixing or go some sort of hybrid mixing route with a combo of plugins and hardware inserts.

By the way, to what "session" are you referring?

Hey Quint, it was just a session I got to sit in on, the artist is nobody famous (yet). A very nice DIY 47 w Heiserman capsule was the main mic, and also paired to a h47fet as well. Both were outstanding sounding, the tube 47 was used mostly but I was truly impressed with the h47fet on vocals.. very edgy like I’d figure a c800 or 251 being pushed, but with amazing low-mid round warmth and zero sibilance. Both mics had a long chain, CAPI, LTL, Audioscape tube EQ and LA2A, 76s (v comp?)or whatever else. All new small builder stuff, no vintage anything that I noticed. So yeah, 47fet isn’t a classic tube mic, but give it a great pre, a pultec and Vari-mu, take it home with a silver bullet, you’d probably make something pretty interesting, bold and round tube sounding. Synths and the Percussion run through the chain were also round, massive. The top end is where it just sounds so gorgeous compared to the ITB stuff. Of course it always comes down to the final mix and master, so in that aspect nothing is ever perfectly easy street. But it sure is nice to hear in the control room

Just as a used example, here is a guy having trouble selling an X twin quad with an awful lot of plug ins.

someone could likely grab this at a very very good price vs retail and cherry pick any possibly missing plug ins and or expand with rack Apollos.

uadforum.com/buy-sell-trade/53559-selling-apollo-twin-x-quad-ton-plugins-whats-all-worth.html

I sympathize, the USB may be the challenge ?

Just keep advertising here, Gearspace, reverb, evilbay, Craigslist , UA forum etc.!

Plugin Alliance installer is dangerously easy to use.