Get your UAD plugs practically free

What happens if you buy a UAD bundle but you already have one or the plugins in it?

Normally nothing, you can contact and see if they will let you switch, but normally the answer is no.

What do you think of the oxide versus the other UAD tape emulators?
Thanks!

UA kept emailing me with a great offer to get 11 new plugins for $75 (the "Producer Edition"), except that the only plugin I didn't already have was the Electra 88.  Ok, so you actually want me to pay $75 for one new plugin?  no thanks.  Their marketing campaigns could use some intelligence, even if it is artificial.

If the deal allowed me to pick the plugs, I would be interested.

I have a bunch of plugs and Spark 

Winds of change have blown. I can't afford a new house with enough room for the gear.

What’s real gear? A high end interface and a rack full of remote pres and headphone amp distribution?

There are no more real consoles and most new gear is a toy. maybe Daking is the last real mixing console that’s not a front end for tracking and even that needs a daw for automation. Might as well just use a small control surface and some Daking rack gear unless you want your studio to be full Daking.

What’s the high end standard now? The DAD AX whatever that’s sometimes Avid branded as the high end hdx interface but hdx is now just a tracking front end for monitor mixed with the hybrid engine because nobody wanted to make new aax dsp plugs. And the dad and its like from Lynx and Apogee are better than clean boards but still considered very expensive when there’s no big money left in the industry except at the top where they will pay big money for a nasty distorted mix or master. Or worse the genre producer who makes everyone sound the same.

Console 1 and SSL ones are well built but have issues with the plugs that work with them. Eucon is really pro tools only so otherwise get a Kensington track ball.

hardly any new workhorse eqs, compressors, no new gates in a while. Lots of outdated or fragile tech that relies upon binning variable resistors, stupid resonant eqs, and old circuits that are fragile and vulnerable to thermal issues from Cheap or old circuitry. Phoenix n90-drc/500 was the last gate I can think of.

Most small mixers are built disposable and physically fragile now. Most new gear is fragile or hard to repair. It’s mainly meant for distortion of poor recordings, musicians, and instruments. The new tools that come out are sidelined by toys and ersatz of the past that crank up the distortion for people who cannot record or mix or use the real stuff. Spiff has presets for dealing with 1176 misuse. It has a meter because the release changes with gain reduction and attack / release knobs. These guys don’t even know what attack and release are.

Same with plugs. When something new and innovative comes out, there is hardly any hype. bgrotto ‘s thread is the only thing about Arbiter outside of the TDR official one. Thimeo stereo tool is one of the best restorative tools yet only has like three people online talking about it outside of broadcast stuff. The Neold Wunderlich is a wonderful cool thing. Yeah it’s toylike but totally unique. Nobody is talking about it. It’s now 30 bucks. Plugin Alliance has 3 ssl bus compressor type things now in their sub: bx_townhouse, bettermaker bus comp, bx_glue. None of them are as good as the over 15 year old Cytomic The Glue. What’s the point? Who knows!

Most of these developers aren’t even trying. They use the same textbook or white paper approaches and try to sell it to you. People make emulations of cleanish gear with deliberately stupid distortions added. Some programmers or worse… advertising execs know absolutely nothing, contract programmers, and try to sell you dysfunctional programs and not fish the bugs. Then they rely upon paid shills or people who got free stuff to attack on the forums until the next hype thing comes out.

Plugs are the future for the racks of remote Pres setups or interface into a rack and the market seems to have decided on 30 bucks for toys or cost recouped older tools or 100-200 bucks for new tools unless you’re TDR but TDR has no problem charging 100-250 bucks for specialized tools like De-Edger and Simulathe Cut. Massenburg is charging 400-600 bucks for the DRC and he is still selling his EQ for 200. Sonnox discounts native versions a few times a year now but they mark the AAX DSP versions up out the ass. Why wouldn’t they? They’re harder to program for and update and they’re the guys who do it lower latency and higher sound quality than Avid. But there are cleaner ie better things now.

I think it’s more of a case of lots of other people could smell the money UAD and Waves we’re making and so entered the market …. and were just as good at coding and to sell in a now flooded market dropped their price.

That has crashed the market.

In recent years I’ve invested in quality hardware - you need less of it because in terms of tone and musicality it blows away “plug-ins” and longer term it’s without doubt a better investment.

These days my money goes towards choice pieces of boutique hardware.

Quality over quantity.

More people are thinking this way and so the hardware market is very buoyant and thriving.

And the ua software, spying on you: for shits and giggles !

The Hitsville EQ is very good and I have a heap of great hardware EQ's - it's impressive.

The Hitsville Chambers are also great.

They do have a few plugins I really value and they're all mostly the FX (reverb and delays) UA are very good at FX.

Vintage hardware emulations generally are a miss for me and I prefer using hardware.

“The plugs have crashed in value!”

Uh, good? I don’t understand what is alleged to be “over”. Paying more money for these processors?

There’s a ‘sky is falling’ vibe being promoted and all I hear is good news, ie, that these tools that we like are more affordable.