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Post by kcatthedog on Jan 31, 2024 11:21:42 GMT -6
You are missing my main point, that UA had and has a simple means to make things more equivalent between its lightly invested and more heavily invested clients and it chose and continues to choose not to do that. So, it just exacerbates and increases the cost inequity.
You’re ok with that, I’m not: vivre la difference!
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Post by indiehouse on Jan 31, 2024 12:24:18 GMT -6
You are missing my main point, that UA had and has a simple means to make things more equivalent between its lightly invested and more heavily invested clients and it chose and continues to choose not to do that. So, it just exacerbates and increases the cost inequity. You’re ok with that, I’m not: vivre la difference! You are mad because you didn't get a loyalty offer? Or because you did and it wasn't what you expected? If I remember, you've bought and sold off most of your UAD stuff? And now your upset because that doesn't qualify you as a "loyal" customer? Honestly don't care one way or the other, just trying to understand. |
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Post by thehightenor on Jan 31, 2024 12:24:31 GMT -6
You are missing my main point, that UA had and has a simple means to make things more equivalent between its lightly invested and more heavily invested clients and it chose and continues to choose not to do that. So, it just exacerbates and increases the cost inequity. You’re ok with that, I’m not: vivre la difference! I’m in complete agreement with you. |
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Post by thehightenor on Jan 31, 2024 12:40:35 GMT -6
This is how it went ( using example arbitrary numbers)
New user - here grab a huge collection of plug-ins for essentially a few hundred dollars.
The high tenor - although you’ve spent $4999 on UAD hardware and plug-ins - and the new user just got all your plug-ins for cents on the dollar …. well tough luck.
People complained.
New plan - Loyal users who spent £5000 here you can have some plug-ins for $400 …. lucky you. Not.
The high tenor - you only spent $4999 so clearly you’re not a loyal customer, we don’t care about you - tough luck.
Genius stuff.
This is how it should on gone.
New user - same as above.
Loyal customers - for every 10 plug-ins you’ve bought we are rewarding you with 2 free plug-ins so you can add to your collection.
Thank you for your loyalty over the last 15 years and buying a Manley Massive passive for £250!!!!
The High Tenor - wow thank you - I feel really appreciated.
I’m going to grab that Ox box and UA pedal I’ve fancied.
Would have made more sense than p**sing off half your old user base!!!!
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Post by notneeson on Jan 31, 2024 13:25:59 GMT -6
You are missing my main point, that UA had and has a simple means to make things more equivalent between its lightly invested and more heavily invested clients and it chose and continues to choose not to do that. So, it just exacerbates and increases the cost inequity. You’re ok with that, I’m not: vivre la difference! (You may not be responding to me, but what the heck). I really appreciate your empathy for other users. I am not defending UAD, I think they were gouging while the gouging was good. They burned their TDM users a squillion years ago, and have shown us who they are as a company over and over again. They've always been in the planned obsolescence business. But I guess where we differ is that I see waaaaayyyyyyy more common good in plugin prices going down across the market than bad. Perhaps this isn't the thread for such sentiment. |
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Post by kcatthedog on Jan 31, 2024 13:26:43 GMT -6
You are missing my main point, that UA had and has a simple means to make things more equivalent between its lightly invested and more heavily invested clients and it chose and continues to choose not to do that. So, it just exacerbates and increases the cost inequity. You’re ok with that, I’m not: vivre la difference! You are mad because you didn't get a loyalty offer? Or because you did and it wasn't what you expected? If I remember, you've bought and sold off most of your UAD stuff? And now your upset because that doesn't qualify you as a "loyal" customer? Honestly don't care one way or the other, just trying to understand. Not mad at all: disappointed in UA’s response to a problem it created, has never been straight up about and just continues making worse. I believe in a much higher order of customer service. |
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Post by kcatthedog on Jan 31, 2024 13:30:34 GMT -6
You are missing my main point, that UA had and has a simple means to make things more equivalent between its lightly invested and more heavily invested clients and it chose and continues to choose not to do that. So, it just exacerbates and increases the cost inequity. You’re ok with that, I’m not: vivre la difference! (You may not be responding to me, but what the heck). I really appreciate your empathy for other users. I am not defending UAD, I think they were gouging while the gouging was good. They burned their TDM users a squillion years ago, and have shown us who they are as a company over and over again. They've always been in the planned obsolescence business. But I guess where we differ is that I see waaaaayyyyyyy more common good in plugin prices going down across the market than bad. Perhaps this isn't the thread for such sentiment. Yes, but, I don’t disagree with your main point, but this thread for me was about just UA’s pricing duplicity and greatly favouring the least invested client, literally at te expense of its more invested client. |
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Post by kcatthedog on Jan 31, 2024 13:33:07 GMT -6
This is how it went ( using example arbitrary numbers) New user - here grab a huge collection of plug-ins for essentially a few hundred dollars. The high tenor - although you’ve spent $4999 on UAD hardware and plug-ins - and the new user just got all your plug-ins for cents on the dollar …. well tough luck. People complained. New plan - Loyal users who spent £5000 here you can have some plug-ins for $400 …. lucky you. Not. The high tenor - you only spent $4999 so clearly you’re not a loyal customer, we don’t care about you - tough luck. Genius stuff. This is how it should on gone. New user - same as above. Loyal customers - for every 10 plug-ins you’ve bought we are rewarding you with 2 free plug-ins so you can add to your collection. Thank you for your loyalty over the last 15 years and buying a Manley Massive passive for £250!!!! The High Tenor - wow thank you - I feel really appreciated. I’m going to grab that Ox box and UA pedal I’ve fancied. Would have made more sense than p**sing off half your old user base!!!! Agreed, a fairer solution was so doable. |
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Post by subspace on Jan 31, 2024 13:55:26 GMT -6
The sound of UAD users kicking themselves on the internet has become deafening.
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Post by kcatthedog on Jan 31, 2024 15:07:13 GMT -6
The sound of UAD users kicking themselves on the internet has become deafening. I was almost a chorus of one a few year's back at ua forum, when ua launched the sub plan, just pointing out that it was turning its business model ( UAD 2 exclusivity, dsp dependancy, you have to buy sharc chip cards etc.), that everyone up until then had invested very heavily in upside down. The more recent deal that was just offered to soon to be lapsing subscribers, just further crystallized the awareness of how ua was chasing new customers but not so concerned about treating its entrenched clientele equitably. Since UA saved the new subscribers literally $1,000's, I wondered if it might go big and offer established clients the choice of completing Ultimate 10 or maybe a sizeable coupon towards a hardware purchase of the clients' choice. Once UA covers its development costs and overhead selling plug ins is a gravy train. Since it basically kept like at least $2000 in the pockets of the new subscribers who got ultimate 10, what if it had offered people say a $500 coupon for hardware ? For those who are holding out for the new Apollo, that would have been significant, getting a deal on plugs in you don't want, is a marketing red herring. I would have liked to see UA be bigger about this, in the context of the sizeable investments many have made. I think they warrant a larger gesture of "loyalty" recognition and "caring" for its clients. |
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Post by Deleted on Jan 31, 2024 16:28:30 GMT -6
you can count the hardware compressors that come close to what’s in the box now on your fingers. EQs? Good luck getting a recallable compressor with matched, switched L and R, a clean sound, and broad range of filters and Qs Dan, I can count on no hands the number of plug-in compressors that sound as good as a good hardware compressor because that number is ZERO. Use what you like and I'm not trying to convince you or anyone else to invest in hardware because I think now more than ever it makes less sense financially speaking...but...from a sonic perspective...come on dude...we have to deal in reality here. We use plug-ins because they are cheaper and more convenient and our industry is in the toilet...not because they are more advanced and sound better. Our ears like analog artifacts, saturation and distortion. Getting rid of all that sounds flat and boring, a.k.a ITB. Digital has ways to reduce distortion that do not exist in analogue, which is limited by available electrical parts. The more advanced analog compressors are filled with internal trims meant to be calibrated by the factory or a tech from instructions to compensate for parts variance. Digital is mainly limited by the bandwidth but that can be solved by proper coding and adequate upsampling of functions. Both are limited by design the relative lack of it on new products. There's no reason something from the 80s or 90s you can get for a couple hundred bucks, get it fixed up, maybe upgrade the signal path if that bothers you, should be more advanced than most of today's products but it often is and will often have smoother control of the signal than something that attempts to copy an inaccurate dynamics processor from before they could be accurate, often with even lesser parts quality.
The broadcast processors are all digital and most of the analog and digital music products that try to copy them are mostly quite primitive and distorted devices. Outside of some of the Waves and TDR plugins and restoration tools, their features do not exist at all in anything targeting the music industry. The multiband stuff is probably better left to the broadcast devices too but music embraces it now for maximum loudness like a bad radio station, most of which butcher the audio with their Optimod or Omnia type processors. Those processors usually undo much of the crap done in music production now to maximize the volume for the transmitter. |
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Post by seawell on Jan 31, 2024 16:59:05 GMT -6
Dan, I can count on no hands the number of plug-in compressors that sound as good as a good hardware compressor because that number is ZERO. Use what you like and I'm not trying to convince you or anyone else to invest in hardware because I think now more than ever it makes less sense financially speaking...but...from a sonic perspective...come on dude...we have to deal in reality here. We use plug-ins because they are cheaper and more convenient and our industry is in the toilet...not because they are more advanced and sound better. Our ears like analog artifacts, saturation and distortion. Getting rid of all that sounds flat and boring, a.k.a ITB. Digital has ways to reduce distortion that do not exist in analogue, which is limited by available electrical parts. The more advanced analog compressors are filled with internal trims meant to be calibrated by the factory or a tech from instructions to compensate for parts variance. Digital is mainly limited by the bandwidth but that can be solved by proper coding and adequate upsampling of functions. Both are limited by design the relative lack of it on new products. There's no reason something from the 80s or 90s you can get for a couple hundred bucks, get it fixed up, maybe upgrade the signal path if that bothers you, should be more advanced than most of today's products but it often is and will often have smoother control of the signal than something that attempts to copy an inaccurate dynamics processor from before they could be accurate, often with even lesser parts quality.
The broadcast processors are all digital and most of the analog and digital music products that try to copy them are mostly quite primitive and distorted devices. Outside of some of the Waves and TDR plugins and restoration tools, their features do not exist at all in anything targeting the music industry. The multiband stuff is probably better left to the broadcast devices too but music embraces it now for maximum loudness like a bad radio station, most of which butcher the audio with their Optimod or Omnia type processors. Those processors usually undo much of the crap done in music production now to maximize the volume for the transmitter. That's all fine and good in theory, but why don't plug-ins produce sonically as pleasing sounds as hardware? If hardware is just a bunch of outdated distortion boxes then it seems like it would be easy to surpass. |
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Post by thehightenor on Jan 31, 2024 18:20:50 GMT -6
Digital has ways to reduce distortion that do not exist in analogue, which is limited by available electrical parts. The more advanced analog compressors are filled with internal trims meant to be calibrated by the factory or a tech from instructions to compensate for parts variance. Digital is mainly limited by the bandwidth but that can be solved by proper coding and adequate upsampling of functions. Both are limited by design the relative lack of it on new products. There's no reason something from the 80s or 90s you can get for a couple hundred bucks, get it fixed up, maybe upgrade the signal path if that bothers you, should be more advanced than most of today's products but it often is and will often have smoother control of the signal than something that attempts to copy an inaccurate dynamics processor from before they could be accurate, often with even lesser parts quality.
The broadcast processors are all digital and most of the analog and digital music products that try to copy them are mostly quite primitive and distorted devices. Outside of some of the Waves and TDR plugins and restoration tools, their features do not exist at all in anything targeting the music industry. The multiband stuff is probably better left to the broadcast devices too but music embraces it now for maximum loudness like a bad radio station, most of which butcher the audio with their Optimod or Omnia type processors. Those processors usually undo much of the crap done in music production now to maximize the volume for the transmitter. That's all fine and good in theory, but why don't plug-ins produce sonically as pleasing sounds as hardware? If hardware is just a bunch of outdated distortion boxes then it seems like it would be easy to surpass. It’s actually quite an amusing debate. As if Retro, AS, Millennia, Coil, Thermionic, Chandler, Buzz, Serpent, CAPI, API, Wes, BLA, Tube Tech, Neve, SSL, etc etc etc etc ….. Could sell units costing $1000’s in some cases many $1000’s if a cheap cartoon GUI “plugin” could do the same job sonically. Of course they can’t, even my lovely non musician wife can hear how superior hardware sounds. Ironically, the opposite has happened, the obvious sonic inadequacies of plugin EQ and compression has spurned a whole new industry of boutique builders. I have so many friends dumping plug-ins and getting into hardware again. All my current wish list is for hardware. I’m going to need some more racks  |
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Post by drumsound on Feb 1, 2024 0:02:26 GMT -6
Hmm, good for whom, the new client whose just starting to spend or the established client only to see their very large investment devalued by a company that turns its business model upside down? “ With UAD it's not just about making new people pay a fraction of what the earlier adopters did. It's also about damaging the investments we've made in the brand. ” Bingo! Good for consumers who have better options at better prices outside UADs ridiculous dongle ecosystem which has always been overpriced and a bad “investment”. And UAD knows this. The jig is up. The plugin market doesn’t care about anyone’s sunk costs. Ask me what my HD3 rig is worth now? 🫠 Digital ANYTHING depreciates quickly and always will. There's always new tech, inovations and the like. We have to know that going in. Digital has ways to reduce distortion that do not exist in analogue, which is limited by available electrical parts. The more advanced analog compressors are filled with internal trims meant to be calibrated by the factory or a tech from instructions to compensate for parts variance. Digital is mainly limited by the bandwidth but that can be solved by proper coding and adequate upsampling of functions. Both are limited by design the relative lack of it on new products. There's no reason something from the 80s or 90s you can get for a couple hundred bucks, get it fixed up, maybe upgrade the signal path if that bothers you, should be more advanced than most of today's products but it often is and will often have smoother control of the signal than something that attempts to copy an inaccurate dynamics processor from before they could be accurate, often with even lesser parts quality.
The broadcast processors are all digital and most of the analog and digital music products that try to copy them are mostly quite primitive and distorted devices. Outside of some of the Waves and TDR plugins and restoration tools, their features do not exist at all in anything targeting the music industry. The multiband stuff is probably better left to the broadcast devices too but music embraces it now for maximum loudness like a bad radio station, most of which butcher the audio with their Optimod or Omnia type processors. Those processors usually undo much of the crap done in music production now to maximize the volume for the transmitter. That's all fine and good in theory, but why don't plug-ins produce sonically as pleasing sounds as hardware? If hardware is just a bunch of outdated distortion boxes then it seems like it would be easy to surpass. As ericn said (in this tread, or another plugin based thread) people like distortion. It's literally that simple. |
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Post by thehightenor on Feb 1, 2024 3:21:42 GMT -6
Dan, you dig plug-ins, I can respect that. I don’t - to my ears hardware is far far superior sonically. I’m sure you can respect my tastes and opinion too. okay then you are probably using hardware for distortion rather than solving the problems those types of processors were meant to solve with the least amount of artifacts. Why not solve the problem with the least amount of artifacts and distortion because the intrinsic artifacts and distortion of typical hardware might not be appropriate for all material that you receive. Then you can distort it as you see fit separately as the material warrants. The issue with complex hardware is they were basically building analog computers and now they have real computers powerful enough to solve the equations with adequate bandwidth in semi real time so the complex hardware isn’t really made anymore in any quantity or it’s what can easily be built with a bunch of off the shelf ICs. Even then hardware compressors eventually got so clean that any minutely distorted pleasing boxtone they whatever harmonics they might have almost a hundred db down or so is overwhelmed by the intermodulation distortion and required harmonics from gain reduction. The compressor must multiply the audio by the dc side chain, the creating and filtering of which requires distortion. Why not go digital at that point with modern computers? Dan, you’ve just described the very reason I don’t like plug-ins. Digital is too clean and FOR ME PERSONALLY (I need to emphasise that for me personally) I don’t particularly like digital distortion and saturation. Of course I use hardware for distortion and saturation, that’s stating the flippin’ obvious. I use tube guitar amps for the same reason. I put my voice into certain keys because when I drive my tenor voice it becomes “saturated and slightly distorted” in a very attractive way. Plug-ins are the equivalent to a choir boy singing - clean and pretty but it ain’t rock n roll. You like Photoshop. I like oil on canvas. Crude analogy, but they’re both art and both can co exists without each artist trying to piss on the other artists choice. As I said, I respect your choice of using plug-ins. You seem concerned by my choice of using hardware and wish to question my choice, as if I’m a fool for “spending all that money”! After 42 years a full time professional musician and creative (I’ve literally never had a job outside of music) …. I’ve worked out the difference beteeen hardware and plug-ins |
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Post by skav on Feb 1, 2024 11:21:10 GMT -6
Sometimes products lose their value over time..
I doubt UA's recent radical changes would have been implemented if they had not absolutely had to. I assume it is attributed to things which are largely out of their control, such as technological advancements and its impact on the market at large.
Maybe they could have been better at improving on their existing solution throughout the years, instead of 'resting om their success.
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Post by Johnkenn on Feb 1, 2024 12:37:26 GMT -6
Just clicked on the link and tried to find 10 plugs I’d want…there are maybe 2-3 that I think I’d use, 5 more I’d probably forget about and then I can’t even pick the last two because I know I’d never use them. I’m sure I will want new plugs…but I’m kinda maxed out at the moment. Need to put this into hardware at this point.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2024 12:55:11 GMT -6
Digital has ways to reduce distortion that do not exist in analogue, which is limited by available electrical parts. The more advanced analog compressors are filled with internal trims meant to be calibrated by the factory or a tech from instructions to compensate for parts variance. Digital is mainly limited by the bandwidth but that can be solved by proper coding and adequate upsampling of functions. Both are limited by design the relative lack of it on new products. There's no reason something from the 80s or 90s you can get for a couple hundred bucks, get it fixed up, maybe upgrade the signal path if that bothers you, should be more advanced than most of today's products but it often is and will often have smoother control of the signal than something that attempts to copy an inaccurate dynamics processor from before they could be accurate, often with even lesser parts quality. The broadcast processors are all digital and most of the analog and digital music products that try to copy them are mostly quite primitive and distorted devices. Outside of some of the Waves and TDR plugins and restoration tools, their features do not exist at all in anything targeting the music industry. The multiband stuff is probably better left to the broadcast devices too but music embraces it now for maximum loudness like a bad radio station, most of which butcher the audio with their Optimod or Omnia type processors. Those processors usually undo much of the crap done in music production now to maximize the volume for the transmitter. That's all fine and good in theory, but why don't plug-ins produce sonically as pleasing sounds as hardware? If hardware is just a bunch of outdated distortion boxes then it seems like it would be easy to surpass. I thought about this for a long time. Poor programming, distortion or lack of it, and insufficient bandwidth. Bad digital compressors cannot detect the signal, only the pcm samples, so they cannot get the real absolute value of the signal or the real rms. This means you must always overcompress with them to compress at all. They have issues with fast attack and release. They cannot switch between attack and release well since they cannot detect the real polarity of the signal. The multiplier aliases in the top (digital only) and bottom ends (analog and digital) because both the control voltage and the audio signal are nonconstant. There are bandwidth issues that only modern computers and old school compressors that limited the bandwidth of the control signal could solve. There are a few digital compressors that solve these issues to cover the full audio bandwidth. Some of them are exemplary even compared to the best analog like the Weiss DS-1 or Kotelnikov. Others are a smacky grand old time like Pro C2, just like many analogue VCA compressors. Another issue is lack of distortion. PCM is linear so there is no harmonic distortion from amplification stages, the voltage controllers amplifier, or variable resistor to hide the harmonics of gain reduction so it had better be clean. Digital also has ways to reduce distortion like better rectifiers, thresholds, rms detection, more possible attack/release stages, and most controversially of all: lookahead and the resulting fir smoothing of the sidechain. Now this is about to get super nerdy. Traditional compressors are feedback thus reacting to the processing of the signal. Thus they will over or under react and then overcompensate later. More accurate compressors made with ICs are feed forward, react to the signal itself. Digital compressors can react in advance of the signal and not release prematurely. There is a delay of the side chain, the compressor attacks to the maximum level in the delay period where the level is supposed to go, there is a hold to at least bring it to the length of the delay, and then there is an additional fir smoothing of the signal or the entire attack low pass is a fir with a minimum filter length equal to the delay. Either way it won’t be \_ with \ being attack and _ being the hold to pad it out for at least length of the delay to not release prematurely, it will just be a smoother \ then a normal / for release. The issue is this is not very reactive. Analog compressors are constantly switching between attack and release and the times on the front are infinite rates, describing the slopes of an infinite filter rather than any finite period of time. So even if it says 30 ms, it is not attacking for 30 ms, that’s just a vague description of the rate to compress some amount of decibels of the ratio with a test signal even if the compressor isn't logarithmic like you hear (almost every VCA compressor using DBX or THAT chips) but linear (like an 1176, which wisely doesn't put anything but generic numbers). The lookahead compressor must attack for at least the period of the lookahead. If this period is too long, this means that that the compressor is incapable of compressing certain frequencies if it all. It cannot apply the non-linear transfer curve to the signal and becomes just a controlled fader ride. Some examples of compressors that do not really alias in the top end of the audio path in the box. I don't really want to talk about almost wholly dysfunctional tools though so none of these are that bad given what they do: Kotelnikov cannot really be criticized at all. It pretty much doesn't distort and has working ultra fast, sub millisecond attacks on Insane quality. There is no lookahead on Kotelnikov nor its filthy cousin Molot. They just go fast but Molot is solely a peak detector and can warp the curve into a more sigmoid one like many analog compressors have on certain ratios and attacks, to not harmonically distort the peaks of the signal at all through gain reduction. If you're going to limit that signal later anyway, this means that you're not distorting the distortion later on.
The Oxford Dynamics has 20 samples of lookahead. This prevents it from massively aliasing in the sidechain and audio path but how long must it attack for? 20 samples divided by 44100 hertz gives us about .454 ms. How long is a .454 ms wave length? T=1/f so f=T/1 which gives us a time period about the length of a 2.2 kHz sine. Put a test tone into it into span and it doesn't do anything to anything above 3 kHz. This keeps everything from distorting like crazy and attack/release from totally misfiring but doesn't cover the full human auditory bandwidth. It simply acts as a fader rider when triggered by high frequencies, hopes the transients that trigger it are relatively full bandwidth but often they never are. Thus the tendency to get brighter on drums and guitars. A super complex analog dynamic, parallel effect multi-processor might be smoother and sound better but good luck building one. You can take a lot of a vocal with the Oxford but more percussive sources tend to get homogenized by it. It can quickly destroy a drum performance.
The old school Waves stuff, e.g. L1, L2, Renaissance Compressor/Vox/Axx, often has 64 samples of latency. This means it must attack for a minimum of 1.451 ms. They have to stop working above a 689 Hz sign and by 1 kHz they are nothing but a fader rider. They have some clever program dependence to not sound like total garbage though but the limiters cannot physically detect the true peaks and cannot physically compress a 1kHz sine; they just switch between a volume modulator and a clipper from program dependency, L2 with multiple releases for peak and RMS. The Renaissance ones have interesting program dependencies and encourage you to not totally destroy your signal. Renaissance Compressor slows down or speeds up at 3 db of gain reduction. Renaissance Vox has an instant attack, soft knee, slow to slower release and an expander but tends to let some ice picks through that must be true peak limited. Renaissance Axx is more successful because it has an adjustable attack so you can set it slower to not totally misfire. There are much worse analog compressors out there than these. Now to something I like on mixbus sometimes (Adaptive Glue can be SSL auto release like tweaked a bit but cleaner because it's not really compressing) or on a vocal for just some straight leveling but it cannot compress at all: Sound Radix Powair. It has 2205 samples of lookahead at 44.1 kHz. So that comes out to 50 ms, which would mean it cannot do anything like the old Metric Halo Channel Strip not compressors that had a 30 ms hold but Powair is a little more advanced than that. A 20 Hz sine lasts 50 ms. So it cannot compress the audio at all. It doesn't harmonically distort at all.
Goodhertz Faraday Limiter has 512 sample lookahead. So it must attack for 11.6 ms. So the Faraday Limiter is laid out like an 1176 but it cannot really compress above 90 hz at all. It has a built in overshoot that depends on the attack so it's leveling the audio in advance and is just remapping the transients. It sounds cool as an effect but it has little to do with what is fed into it as it levels and overshoots your audio. The same is true with these dedicated lookahead mastering limiters that have far too long lookaheads. They end up just being pumpy levelers into sound garbling maximizing clippers rather than 1176 style peak limiters or even the protection limiters that are typically RMS volume modulators meet peak clippers.
Now a very short lookahead can sound quite good. The Weiss DS-1 has a minimum .02 ms preview time. This means it can compress everything up to 50 kHz. I checked the plugin at 192 kHz myself just now to confirm it. A huge improvement over the Renaissance Compressor that doesn't even go up to 1 kHz. It also has simultaneous peak and rms detectors and other sorts of built in goodies that smooth the action more than all but a handful of analog compressors. Most of the "sound" is just from having attack/release come before the gain calculations. Think about it. If it low passes the signal, the low pass is the attack, before it hits the threshold, then it doesn't see the initial portion of the signal unless you soften the knee up. The same with release where it can release instantly towards 0 db of gain reduction. This can make it sound cool while with threshold dug in and ratio not cranked to almost infinite, attack and release will be smoother like a more traditional compressor.
UAD, the topic of this thread, stopped trying to sell everyone working digital compressors or new design analog ones long ago. They just put a bunch of simplified circuit models running at 192 kHz in their UAD2 and now native plugs and they just don't really work that well in the real world at doing what the analog hardware does. They model the circuits so they can sound quite cool though. They'd have to run their circuit models into the mHz to work well, which would restrict their potential customers. There are some emulations that work a bit better like the Glue but Cytomic choose to emulate a lot less of the hardware to get close to the gain reduction behavior of the hardware digitally. There are also newer optical emulations from UVI with some interesting papers published but the Opal (and the new Neold U2A too) while smoother than the UAD LA2A, again still isn't as smooth as just using the ancient Oxford Dynamics to level and limit different parts of a vocal to me.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2024 13:39:21 GMT -6
That's all fine and good in theory, but why don't plug-ins produce sonically as pleasing sounds as hardware? If hardware is just a bunch of outdated distortion boxes then it seems like it would be easy to surpass. It’s actually quite an amusing debate. As if Retro, AS, Millennia, Coil, Thermionic, Chandler, Buzz, Serpent, CAPI, API, Wes, BLA, Tube Tech, Neve, SSL, etc etc etc etc ….. Could sell units costing $1000’s in some cases many $1000’s if a cheap cartoon GUI “plugin” could do the same job sonically. Of course they can’t, even my lovely non musician wife can hear how superior hardware sounds. Ironically, the opposite has happened, the obvious sonic inadequacies of plugin EQ and compression has spurned a whole new industry of boutique builders. I have so many friends dumping plug-ins and getting into hardware again. All my current wish list is for hardware. I’m going to need some more racks A cheap cartoonish GUI is much more powerful than anything Audioscape has put out. Audioscape improves the design sometimes but if they built some new analog compressor using the cleanest vca or multiplier they could find with whatever additional distortions they want on it, they wouldn't be able to sell it to dreamers on the internet because it wouldn't be a reliquary containing the bones of some dead rock saint.
Retro adds more program dependency to their recreations but they are still using outmoded technology that is no longer cheap because it is no longer mass produced in western countries. Only communist countries make small signal tubes and mostly for guitar amps.
Millenia and Tube Tech make faster optical compressor. Optical compressors are dying off. Especially vactrol now that the EU banned cadmium sulfide and post COVID, many other parts were discontinued.
Neve will redesign older units onto modern PCBs to sell it to people who want to pay 3000-5000 bucks for compressors that will turn things into a fart when the diodes age but still sell a lot of utilitarian clean hardware.
API dynamics are are mostly IC based VCA compressors. VCA chips are much more consistent than optical sensors and tubes and the THAT ones are logarithmic so they can compress like you hear rather than mangle the sound when used for real gain control. The 2500 is an RMS compressor with very interesting sidechain with an equal loudness power filter. The 525 is a FET but has more program dependency and probably better distortion cancellation than an 1176. They insist on using the same old opamps and transformers. This greatly limits the utility of API equipment in the real world where recordings can be anything, clean, post-production, or for video while increasing cost. They might not need the top end loss of a 2520 opamp.
There are no sonic inadequacies to the better digital compressors and eqs. There are even digital eqs that work on ideal circuit models of analog filters now that would be impossible to build physically. There are compressors that don't really distort insomuch of the action of their gain reduction, the same as the modern design analog hardware. Even a standard digital compressor that upsamples 2-4x is fine for some overshoot and will do it better than someone setting an 1176 on slowest attack and fastest release. They solve problems. Almost all post-production and popular music has moved onto digital. Analog audio processors are a boutique industry for mostly hobbyists outside of a few audio processors left that solve real world problems and many of these would be sneered at like voiceover chains using the dbx de-essers with their cheap circuitry that isn't considered to distort as cool as the cheap DBX circuitry from the 70s. All that DBX 500 series stuff is cheaper than UAD emulations not on firesale and kicks their ass in the real world. So do old Waves plugs though prior to their awful hardware emulations.
Go to sweetwater, vintage king, or kmr and look at what is being sold. It's almost all a clone of the past just waiting for the next musician to buy it who thinks that it will enable them to sound like musicians who were better than them or in better bands than them. These are not tools, they are recreations of cultic objects because the aspiring musicians cannot afford the relics themselves at estate or bankruptcy sales.
There is good new hardware of course. Musicians just don't want to buy it because they don't know how to fix their performance flaws anyway, have to pay someone else to do it, or operate mostly in the world of pre-mixed samples and orchestral libraries. They can't ride a fader on the track or a send into an older hardware piece that only has a small sweetspot on the input or gain reduction meters. They wouldn't be able to figure out what compressors have an enormous sweet spot or lack one in general if their life depended on it. Why should they? A better performance needs far less work and their instrument isn't an audio dynamics processor.
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Post by sirthought on Feb 1, 2024 13:53:21 GMT -6
Yeah, this would be a good deal like five or six years ago for me. It's a stretch to find four or five items to add.
At this point it's just sending UA $ hundreds for redundant tools.
Several items that I couldn't afford years ago I've long found new solutions. Do we really need that Echoplex, AMS, or Eventide vintage delay with so many quality options that have been more affordable?
And in the case of the Sonnox, Softube, or Plugin Alliance plugins I'd prefer owning the native versions, as you'd rarely track with them, despite a great price in this deal. The Spitfire stuff would be awesome, but you can only use those in LUNA.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 1, 2024 14:08:24 GMT -6
Yeah, this would be a good deal like five or six years ago for me. It's a stretch to find four or five items to add. At this point it's just sending UA $ hundreds for redundant tools. Several items that I couldn't afford years ago I've long found new solutions. Do we really need that Echoplex, AMS, or Eventide vintage delay with so many quality options that have been more affordable? And in the case of the Sonnox, Softube, or Plugin Alliance plugins I'd prefer owning the native versions, as you'd rarely track with them, despite a great price in this deal. The Spitfire stuff would be awesome, but you can only use those in LUNA. A few years ago, for 30 a pop, I would've bought a ton of this stuff to fool around with and find weird uses for. Like the Neold U2A sounds cool on a kick. UAD Connect turns me off the native versions. Take the 1176 emulations. Yeah it's a sound but I have PSP Fetpressor and I got the Pulsar Smasher for free. They don't really sound like any 1176 and the Fetpressor can misbehave like crazy but the Fetpressor has the sandpapery grit and the Smasher blows stuff up. I also have a lot of stuff to brutally smash down or add a little harder hit to things. |
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Post by Quint on Feb 1, 2024 14:13:30 GMT -6
Just clicked on the link and tried to find 10 plugs I’d want…there are maybe 2-3 that I think I’d use, 5 more I’d probably forget about and then I can’t even pick the last two because I know I’d never use them. I’m sure I will want new plugs…but I’m kinda maxed out at the moment. Need to put this into hardware at this point. Offers like this might be a more meaningful gesture if they didn't have an expiration date and didn't require you to purchase as a specific bundle. But with a short expiration period (isn't it like two months or something?), and the inability to apply the discounts as YOU see fit, instead of as how UA sees fit, this is really just as much about driving up additional sales for UA as it is about salving any customer dissatisfaction. Why not give out a voucher that can be used, in a piecemeal fashion, towards multiple purchases over an unspecified period until you've used the total value of the voucher up? THAT could be seen as a serious attempt to try to correct the situation. What if there isn't much I would want right now, but maybe, as new plugins are added, there might be stuff I want next year? Of course, there will be somebody who will reply that stuff like this affects yearly budgeting and what not, and that's why UA can't give out a voucher with no expiration. Well, if UA was SERIOUS about trying to make dissatisfied, long time customers happy again, they'd just deal with it on their end instead of putting all of these restrictions on the customer, but UA ISN'T serious about trying to actually do anything REAL, so they're just going to push a mostly useless "offer" out to dissatisfied long time customers and then pretend like no one should have anything else to complain about, going forward. The clown show continues! |
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Post by kcatthedog on Feb 1, 2024 15:33:42 GMT -6
PREACH.
I laughed when Drew suggested this response came from its “engaged” clients, it’s everything UA would have wanted and little that a long term heavily invested client would want: corporate window dressing.
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Post by Quint on Feb 1, 2024 16:13:58 GMT -6
PREACH. I laughed when Drew suggested this response came from its “engaged” clients, it’s everything UA would have wanted and little that a long term heavily invested client would want: corporate window dressing. That's why I called Drew out on his bullshit when he claimed that there were no limits or guardrails on what was or wasn't in the realm of possibility for the panel to consider as options. He knows damn good and well that there were limits on what would be allowed by the powers that be. He just didn't want to admit to them. But half of what that guy says is bullshit, so what else is new. |
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Post by kcatthedog on Feb 1, 2024 16:33:48 GMT -6
It’s ironic, as after dropping like $20 grand on UA stuff over the year’s, I started to think about selling out because of the trial balloon it slipped into its annual customer survey about 5 year’s ago about a subscription plan.
As ua doesn’t allow you to sell the plug ins you want to, all or none, you were lucky to get .30 cents on the dollar as the market knew your hands were tied.
This was around the time slate started it’s sub plan and I had already experienced the drop in value of those plug ins.
My experience subsequently selling UA plugs is that their market value continued to fall.
So, when UA then gave, just lapsing subscribers the best price ever for Ultimate, that further undercut used sales and was my last straw, so I sold.
My point is, that it was UA’s favouritism of new clients and lack of reciprocity for heavily invested clients that caused me to disengage.
So, very ironic to have Drew rationalize and explain to poor old slow me that it’s appropriate that the new program offers me nothing due to my: by implication, lack of engagement.
Ya, right.
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