UAD-2 PCIe DSP Accelerator Cards

Problems with apollo X4 and pcie

It seems that there is an imcompatibility with these two units. When the pcie is plugged in I can’t see my apollo X4. When I unplugged the pcie I see it. I’m using windows 11pro on a motherboard asus Rog Maximus XIII Hero with Thunderbolt 4.

Initial setting

It didn't works with my first Pcie slot. I change to another and it works. weird...

Well that was a hassle

So the gear works as advertised but please note that this will NOT boost processing power for audio being recorded in realtime. Anything coming in on your Apollo will only be able to use what every juice you've got on that machine and will not be able to harness resources from a satellite/PCIe. I wish this was something that was a little more clear from the advertisements but not understanding this caveat was my fault so I shouldn't knock UAD for this I suppose. And as not having this isn't really a game changer for me at this point I suppose I'm mostly happy with the unit.

The HASSLE was dealing with UAD support trying to figure out what the promotion package would include as I already owned Ultimate 8. It probably took about 7-8 emails to get everything somewhat worked out. My case run up the chain to the supervisor, I guess for being one of the noisy ones? I don't know. Even then it was often unclear or unanswered. I would leave a list of about 4-5 very concisely worded questions but in their reply they would only answer 1 or 2 of the questions and not all that clearly at that.

Even as I am writing this for example, there is one unanswered question from UAD still sitting in my mailbox:

"I am planning on purchasing a Townsend Labs Sphere l22. According to the Townsend website I will receive a download voucher for the UAD Sphere l22 plugin upon purchase of the microphone. Could you please confirm that this is indeed the case?"

Is that an annoying/difficult question? Does UAD realize the reason why I would like this question answered when I have a vouchers for 4 free plugins (what I eventually received as in exchange for the promotion plugins). Boys wake up!

Well that was a hassle

So the gear works as advertised but please note that this will NOT boost processing power for audio being recorded in realtime. Anything coming in on your Apollo will only be able to use what every juice you've got on that machine and will not be able to harness resources from a satellite/PCIe. I wish this was something that was a little more clear from the advertisements but not understanding this caveat was my fault so I shouldn't knock UAD for this I suppose. And as not having this isn't really a game changer for me at this point I suppose I'm mostly happy with the unit.

The HASSLE was dealing with UAD support trying to figure out what the promotion package would include as I already owned Ultimate 8. It probably took about 7-8 emails to get everything somewhat worked out. My case run up the chain to the supervisor, I guess for being one of the noisy ones? I don't know. Even then it was often unclear or unanswered. I would leave a list of about 4-5 very concisely worded questions but in their reply they would only answer 1 or 2 of the questions and not all that clearly at that.

Even as I am writing this for example, there is one unanswered question from UAD still sitting in my mailbox:

"I am planning on purchasing a Townsend Labs Sphere l22. According to the Townsend website I will receive a download voucher for the UAD Sphere l22 plugin upon purchase of the microphone. Could you please confirm that this is indeed the case?"

Is that an annoying/difficult question? Does UAD realize the reason why I would like this question answered when I have a vouchers for 4 free plugins (what I eventually received as in exchange for the promotion plugins). Boys wake up!

Great but...

Got to find and configure the right pcie slot on pc. Did not worked on my pcie 1 slot. Only on my pcie 16. Maybe due to my bios configuration. But I've expected it to be easier to connect

Tom Tedesco SR

The plug-ins sound great! Best I've heard so far.
The downside is there is no balance to disk feature, it almost was a dealbreaker thought about returning the system.
I added it to my ProTools HDX computer the sound is great, but it brings me back to one I was mixing on my old NEVE..
Why can't you guys figure out some way to speed up the balance to disk.
It really crunches the workflow, ProTools can bounce at 22 times real time.
This is great to audition and send things back and forth so clients can approve things. I can't use the system to do that everything has to be balanced at a little bit more than real time.
In my opinion this is terrible

PCIe OCTO card, easy and good

yep, the OCTO UAD card does the job for me. easy to instal and set up. i just wish UAD would get competitive to Waves, with regard to pricing of the plugs. $29 from waves and $150 to $299 from UAD. so mostly i use Waves because of this. i use UAD only when i really need the special ZING factor,which UAD delivers, but its really expensive. sorry but true.

Almost

I recently bought a rack mounted quad FireWire. There's nowhere near enough processing power. Rendering tracks individually is pointless as the coherent ambient space is sliced up. I bought an Octo card in hopes that I could render the entire project down only a single time. Processing power is still an issue but it's not that big of a pain to work around. What sucks is everything comes with the same plug-in suite and if you already own it it's useless.

PCLE ACCELERATOR

I have 2 of dose, one in the apolo ( but it can be use without issues so is like is not there ) and i have another one connected as a dsp aceleratoe... this one works almost perfect, part of the uad plugins still crushing .... for now my score is 7 (3 strars) why?! cause the crashes and to much dsp consuming, im working also with wave and sound toys plugins and never experience crash or any other issue...+ is super annoying that they sell the apollo firewire when they know is not a good product and is not enough for a pro studio.... still waiting to the thundrbolt to pc may solve the problem....

Awesome system but not stable enough

I have 2 uad pci e Octo installed in my system. Enough power to use the awesome plug ins from U-audio.
The support is great but unfortunately they software sometimes is not seeing the hardware.. So I need to reboot.
This has probably something to do with OS-X but this big dongle (lets face it, it is) should be working stable , and at this point it isn't.
But the plug ins are awesome and I have faith in UAD that they will make this stable again! (like it was in the past)

Pro tools HDX 10

Dear sirs,
Happy with the sound of your products but worried with some problem I ve being having with PT10HD. I read that could be incompatibility with UAD products.
Regards
Hernan

Good stuff - and I think you know that

It is a really good concept, that plugins don´t steal cpu but I think the cards are overpriced, measured by the amount of additional power you get. For this kind of money you could've easily put a bunch of i7 processors on the card.
kind regards

It's just a dsp card. Only as good as the plugs it runs.

I was disappointed my local dealer wouldn't allow me to trade-in 2 x UAD-1's for the Duo Flexi. Well, I guess that's what you get when you live in Thailand and your local UA dealer sucks.

NOT BAD
IF YOU HAVE A DEAL ON ANOTHER PLUG-IN
LET ME NO

RICHARD

We are having problems with this device.

1.) Using PT HD2 8.1.1 windows - we have a latency issue. Great sounding plugs but massive latency. If we knew about this in advance, we may have not bought this board (yet).

2.) We have a problem with DEMOS EXPIRING. This has cause errors in the middle of our Protools sessions. One of these errors actually shut down the PT session while we were trying to bounce final mix!

We can easily see that this is a great product but it does not work well for windows machines. We are in the process of obtaining a Mac computer and will try this and our 2 other SOLOs in that machine.

EV & SUE
Paradise Sound Art, LLC

About a month ago I purchased the UAD-2 SOLO DSP Accelerator, At first I was not impressed with these effects, I auditioned almost all of them at the same time.
Then I started to use a few of them together, the sound improved a lot.
Now I have a $500 voucher, that came with this system, to buy effects and I can't decide what to buy because the 14 days trial expired.
It would be nice if Universal Audio would allow to reaudition these effects even if they would put in a click every minute or so.

My advise to anyone buying this system, audition only a few effects at the time.

generally i really like your products. i think your products excellent.
everything im writing here come with deep concern to the future of your company since i honestley think your company is the audio software crown jewl in so many aspects.

generally, music/recording/mixing is just a hobby for me (30 years some hobby...)
as u can see i spent lot of money on your cards + plugins + just bought a quad.

but.... i begin to wonder if it was a good decision.
the cards are very expensive + the plugins as well. now days computer/hardware got stronger, market flooded with very good plugins. decision much harder now.

it is my opinion UA have to cut the prices of one of the two : cards or plugins.

my job in "real" life is a manager for software/hardware company. i know the price for planing, testing + manufacturing and distrabuting cards and the price on the cards are expropriated.

so my first wish.. lower prices for cards.

my favorites plugins : 1) lexicon 2) manley 3) fatso.

my wish list (order by priority) :

1) dynamic eq like glissEq (where u can see the waveform structure and changes)
can be expantion to cambridge

2) more presets, please! a function within your website to exchange preserts. naming preset with what they good for, not meaningless name

3) more mastering tools.

ido.

The UAD-2 Duo is not powerful enough to justify its cost. Like everything else at Universal Audio, it is over priced. Fortunately, I didn't have to purchase it - it came free with my LA-610 MkII, which is also over priced (like all Universal Audio Products). Getting the combination for just the price of the LA-610 MkII amounted to a reasonable purchase so I would recommend only buying these products when there is a comparable sale. Also, the UAD-2 Duo will prove frustrating due to its lack of power (I can't image what a one-processor version would be like let alone the original UAD-1!!). Wait until the Quad version is offered free with another product you're interested in before purchasing. Unfortunately, the plugins are also very expensive so you're committing to a pretty expensive endeavor. As for the performance of the plugins, they are generally good. You can find most of them in less expensive versions from other companies however that are just as good. UA's unique ones are where the value is (Cooper, Massive Passive...) so if you get a Quad for free and stick with those, it can be a reasonable investment.

This card is a good starter UAD-2 card. I love working with the plugins that I also purchased since having this card. I really want to invest in another UAD-2 card, another solo or duo, but I would like the kinks to get worked out between UA and Avid PT 9. Overall it delivers!

Muy buena calidad de plugins pero vienen muy pocos. Si quieres comprar plugins nuevos son muy caros y además las tarjetas no tienen mucha capacidad de proceso, en seguida llegan al máximo de su capacidad. La quad es carísima.