7 reasons to buy UAD-2 powered plugins

For professional studios looking for vintage analog sounds, without the budget for racks full of Abbey Road-standard gear, Universal Audio offer the solution – their user friendly plugins do everything that the hardware counterparts do, but take far less space (and money)!

Here are the top 7 reasons you may want to consider investing in the new UAD-2 quad DSP Accelerator.

1. Top-of-the-line processing power

The UAD-2 QUAD is Universal Audio’s most powerful processing package, thanks to a high-bandwidth PCIe card, with 4 Analog Devices SHARC floating-point processors. This frees up the internal CPU by giving you a plugin-specific processor (or four), making light work of the power-hungry UAD plugins.

2. Full digital rebuilds

Unlike many other emulation plugins, which use signal modelling to reproduce the effects of classic hardware, UAD’s software engineers physically remodel the hardware using original manufacturer’s schematics and “golden” units – and often working with the original engineers - to reproduce the behaviour of each unit as well. However you drive the plugins, they’ll react as if you were cranking the knobs on an old rack unit.

3. The UAD plugin library

Although sold separately, the UAD-2 DSP Accelerator allows your system to run the entire library of UAD plugins, including digital versions of Roland, Neve, Manley, Studer, SSL, Lexicon, Empirical Labs, EMT, and Trident gear (among others of course!)

4. World-class sounds

The Analog Classics bundle does come with the UAD-2 quad, and with that you get the LA-2A Classic Audio Leveler, 1176LN / 1176SE Classic Limiting Amplifiers, and Pultec EQP-1A and Realverb Pro reverb plugins. The quality of these sounds is hard to argue with, and they’ll give your mixes that “magic” element you’ve been missing.

5. Wide product support

UAD plugins are compatible with ProTools, Logic, Cubase, Sonar and many more DAWs, in formats including VST, AU, and RTAS. That means whatever software you create in, there’s a set of UAD plugs perfectly fit for purpose.

6. Expandability

UAD provide support for up to four UAD-2 devices in a single system. Providing you have the PCI slots available, this gives you a gargantuan amount of processing power – and lets you layer plugins to your hearts content, without worrying about PC overload! And trust us, once you start using UAD sounds, you’ll soon want to add more and more of them to your mixes.

7. The 1176

Yes, it’s covered by #4 – but the UAD-2 Quad is worth its price simply for the 1176. The original UA 1176LN was a major breakthrough in limiter technology — the first true peak limiter with all transistor circuitry offering superior performance with a signature sound — and set the standard for all limiters to follow. The digital recreation meticulously reproduces the ultra-fast attack and unique sonic characteristics of the original hardware – giving you access to a classic sound right within your DAW.

The UAD-2 DSP Accelerators are also available in Solo and Duo PCI / DUO- and QUAD-core FireWire 800/400 processor units.