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Subject:UAD-2 and AP7?
Posted by: darrena
Date:12/23/2008 9:50:22 PM

Hey folks:

I recently decided to sell my venerable Yamaha 01v digital mixer. After consulting the 01v board, I'm told it will fetch around $600 and I already have an additional $150 offer for its ADAT expansion card. Along with it will go a Yamaha TX81z, MU100R, MIDISPORT8x8/s, and a Quadraverb. All told I expect I'll be sitting on close to $1k.

That's spending money ;-)

So I'm thinking what could most improve my sound. And I know anybody who's heard my stuff would say "music lessons" but let's just say that with 2 rugrats and a fulltime job, there isn't enough time in the day ;-)

So second best seemed to be a UAD-2 card and some plugs. I was wondering if folks had used the UAD-2 with AP7 and had good/bad experiences.

If you guys have any better recommendations for ways to blow my cash (on music gear, be clean guys), LMK!

Subject:RE: UAD-2 and AP7?
Reply by: SHTUNOT
Date:12/26/2008 7:22:53 PM

Don't do it!!!

I saw from your system specs that you are using a core 2 quad at 2.4ghz...

Not sure about your mobo but I say play it safe and stay native.

The thing is UAD plugins are a sort of a "hacked" vst plugin. Not the same as the rest. Now it took everybody else a lot to get it to work on their host [cakewalk,reaper,etc...] and some users are having no problems at all.

Now I fall under the user [and there are many] that has jumped through soooo many hardware hoops trying to get this freakin card to work....well once I stopped trying to be a computer hardware genius/tech/geek and just stayed with native plugins the FUN came back to music creation.

Because that is what happens. You stop mixing and start reading forums everywhere for that one tweak that will give you the performance like the other guy...or the stability...etc...

Mind you my new dual quad computer was supposed to work perfect with the uad stuff. I even asked them to make sure. Now I get the "well we don't know whats wrong" answer and I'm screwed.

Do I bitch or just stay native?

After upgrading to the newest UAD driver 5.2 instead of "bluescreens of death" I now get a "hard reboot" of my system. WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've spoken to sony and they are telling me it's a hardware issue and not acid...well I'm tired of these games dude. I have some great plugins that when used "wisely" nobody and I mean NOBODY can tell the difference.

It all ends up a 128kbit mp3 anyway.

The plugins I love are:

Izotope:

Ozone 3 [soon 4 in jan '09]
Spectron
Trash



Wavearts:

Trackplug 5
Masterverb 5

Pspaudioware:

Vintagewarmer 2
Mix pack 2
Stereo pack 1.9

Next month I'm going to add to my setup two mackie mcu extenders:

http://www.audiomidi.com/MCU-Extender-Pro---Mackie-Control--P9427.aspx

http://www.mackie.com/home/showimage.html?u=/products/mcupro/images/MCU-ExtPro-Top.jpg

This will help my mixes more than the UAD cards IMHO.

Acid is optimized for multi-mulitcore systems. If power is what you need get what I got and go dual quads. I've never had so much endless power like I have now. I've actually have re-thought my mixing practices.

I would keep adding all these plugins to every track that I'm now trying to cut back and see if a little pan/volume adjustment was really all I needed in the first place.

Remember...just because you can doesn't mean you should.

At least thats what I've learned from just having FUN mixing and not worrying about if my system will freeze up cause of a UAD hardware issue.

HTH!

Ed.

Subject:RE: UAD-2 and AP7?
Reply by: darrena
Date:12/26/2008 10:19:11 PM

Ed. VERY helpful. I was told the UAD stuff sounds much better than the native stuff. But I've never heard it, so I don't know. I already spend quite a bit of time mucking around with this VSTi or another not working perfectly, I don't need more hassle.

You mentioned that AP7 is optimized for multiple cores... and so does Sony's website.

Can you tell me how you can see your dual quad system managing multiple cores with AP7? With my single quad core, when I pull up Task Manager and flip to the performance tab, I see one CPU taking almos ALL of the load. 3 of the cores are at 2-3% CPU and one of them goes all the WAY up.

I would have expected more even distribution, especially when using lots of VSTs and VSTis... but I only really see multiple cores truly active during rendering, which I spend about 2% of my time doing.

Subject:RE: UAD-2 and AP7?
Reply by: darrena
Date:12/28/2008 10:14:09 PM

Just to underscore, check this out:

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3098/3146827194_62963264f2.jpg?v=0

Subject:RE: UAD-2 and AP7?
Reply by: darrena
Date:12/31/2008 4:55:21 PM

Well, after some good help from tech support, all 4 of my cores are now balancing effects. But VSTis are still all on one core. Still following up, as VSTis are the most CPU intensive.

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