By Dave Crane
With the release of version 4.7 of the UAD drivers and software, UAD users get a nice surprise: the simultaneous release of two plug-ins, the Neve 88RS Channel Strip and the LA-3A compressor. Because the plug-ins have been released for a few days as of this writing, many UAD fans have already used the plug-ins. But the Neve 88RS has quite a few features, and in this article we’ll review a few of them, and watch a video illustrating them as well.
If you haven’t used a full-fledged channel strip, you will soon discover just how useful an integrated channel strip can be.
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| UAD Neve 88RS Channel Strip |
To review the Neve 88RS’s features, it includes a 4-band EQ, hi- and low-pass filters, a compressor/limiter and an expander/gate. With everything on, you can get up to 12 mono instances, and with the EQ and one dynamics processor you can get up to 14 mono instances. Of course, if you're using just the EQ, compressor, gate or filters, you can get a lot more instances. You can read more about the actual Neve 88RS console in the May Analog Obsession article.
If you haven’t used a full-fledged channel strip, you will soon discover just how useful an integrated channel strip can be. Because all the modules are integrated in one plug-in instance, there is much less latency and DMA load compared to using three or four plug-ins. The Neve 88RS also features the ability to use the EQ as a sidechain EQ into the compressor (as demonstrated in the video). You can also switch the EQ so that is placed before OR after the compressor. This can have some advantages, and many UAD users have been asking for this feature (our current channel strip, the EX-1 does not have this ability; the compressor comes after the EQ).
Click the links below to watch a video of the UAD Neve 888RS in action.
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| Download the Presets | |||
If you’re in a hurry, you can watch the movie on our Universal Audio You Tube Channel.