UAD-2 PCIe DSP Accelerator Cards

A1 I love it!

It's works perfectly and give a lot more power to my DAW and the plugin Bundle is just awesome. Great for home studio. Easy installation no problem and compatible with windows 10. Excellent jog UAD. I'm now on a next level with you guys. Keep going.

Give a second chance to your old computer !

My Mac Pro was underpowered for mixing large Pro Tools sessions so I decided to give him more power !
The UAD-2 Octo Ultimate card did it perfectly and even more than i expected !!!
Now my mixes sound really better: All plugins provided are really amazing !
Thanks to Universal Audio for this great product .

UAD Octo Power & the download Session

Hey Guys,

the Octo Card is very powerful and makes me happy ;-).
Only I had problems with the downloads Version 7.0. I need a lot of downloads til the right result. And now I can not select a demo-mode in the Software for test new UAD PlugIns....

At present I combine the octo in my workflow with built in my Mac Pro and on the road with my Book i use a sonnet chassis. A new Satelite Octo would be the best . My Wish for the future...
So sorry for my english...

Best regards to America ;-)
Thank you for your cool development. You all are doing a good job.
I am a very big fan!
Your
Stephan
PS: In this time I have often Problems with my Satelite Quad _ Firewire 800 to my Mac Pro.If I don't working some minutes ist the fw- stream interrupted

Replacement Duo Card

Service department was incredibly helpful in solving my problems with my card. They replaced it immediately. I swear by my card. I can't live without it! It brings my mixes to life. It's like having 10 racks full of processing at you fingertips. How did we ever do without this?
Universal Audio ROCKS!!!!!

Let's not pull any punches here. This is a little bad boy DSP processor. I replaced my 1E with it and it out pro-forms it. Sweet like candy. For the price it's the best way to get onto the platform. Expansion has been made so easy due to the fab drivers just keep adding cards. To keep it real, everyone who's anyone and no ones use these cards. It's a must.

AO

Wow, this things got some juice! I recently upgraded from XP to Windows 7.
I upgraded from 2 UAD-1 PCI cards to the UAD-2 DUO. I opened up some of my old mixes that were tapped out, and man, there's plenty of power to spare.
I didn't even bother installing the UAD-1 cards, there's plenty of power with just one UAD-2 DUO card.
Now I have to check out some of the new UAD plugins, can't wait!

I have Pro Tools HD 2 with last Pro Tools HD 10.2 software.
I've used and tried tons of DSP plugins (TDM) ad native plugins (Waves, McDsp, Heat, Avid, Soundtoys, Softube, etc.)
I was thinking that adding a UAD-2 to my system would be ... something you can live without: well, I was wrong !
UAD-2 Nevana adds a lot of realism to my mix and using Neve plugins seems using the real thing: you have the sense of using a real knob with a real reaction.
I'm still using TDM and native plugins: I was wrong in the sense that UA plugins add a lot (a very lot) of colors in your palette, and are something different in the sense that I think they're the "retina display" of your sound ! Luca from Bologna, Italy

The Good:
I finally upgraded my old UAD1 card for the UAD2 Duo. I'm loving the increased DSP power; I can use UAD plugins on far more tracks than before.

The Bad:
I really miss the Nigel guitar suite. That thing was an unsung hero, especially (surprisingly enough) on my bass tracks.

The Ugly:
The harsh fact is that these cards are expensive. For a proffessional studio, I'd say it's a no-brainer, but for a project studio like mine, well, let's just say my wife will not allow me to buy anything else music-related for a while.

I'm amazed! I've been a big UAD fan since I bought the first Mackie PCI card version many years ago. The quality of the initial plug ins gave my work a very clean and professional sound. I kept adding plug ins, and realized that I had more tools for mixing than any recording studio I was ever in, even into the early 90's. Over the years I had accumulated (4) UAD-1 cards just for the power and flexibility it gave my system. Then the UAD-2 platform came out, and I knew I needed to get a Quad! I wanted to keep pace with the new plug ins that became available. The increase in power allowed me to use an incredible number of my favorite plugins. To me, the most amazing thing about UAD, is the care and respect shown to long-time customers by creating the rebate plan,

I always use NEVE EQs and several compressors powered by UAD-2 for each drum parts of VST instruments when composing. UAD-2 QUAD is powerful enough to trim every sounds of kick, snare, hat, toms, crush and ride, also overhead. This makes big difference in my drum unit. It turns lively so much.
EMT-140&250 are also my favorite. Those are unique in UAD and you can't find them in other plug-in distributors. They will give some organic reverb to your vocals and guitar solo.
One thing I have to tell is that if you use UAD-2 DSP, soon you need more. I chose a UAD-2 QUAD for myself, but it is not enough to put plug-ins into every channel which I wanted to use them. I might buy another QUAD card, that is a problem.

When the UAD-2 systems came out, I already had four UAD-1 cards in an external expansion chassis. I bought the UAD-2 QUAD and had it running in a slot in the computer (not in the expansion slot) at the same time as the UAD-1 cards. They worked together without any problems. However, as I was hoping, the UAD-2 was more than powerful enough to replace the four UAD-1 cards. So, I eventually sold the UAD-1 cards and the expansion chassis to simplify my hardware setup.

I'm loving all the UAD plug-ins and the UAD-2 Quad gives me more than enough power for almost every mix I do. With some of the new intensive DSP plug-ins, I can occasionally manage to max out the card, but that is fairly rare, and I can also freeze tracks to free up some DSP when needed.

The only negative I have to say about the UAD-2 QUAD card I have (which is one of the earliest ones), is that the PCI-E connector is very small, and didn't fit very tightly into the slot on the original computer I had it in. Plus, it didn't seem to line up correctly with the backplane of the computer, so when I screwed it down, it was angle slightly, and sometimes it wasn't making proper contact in the slot, and one or two of the QUAD's processors wouldn't show up, or sometimes the entire card wouldn't even show up, and I'd have to shut down, and reseat it in the slot. I ended up have to loosen the screw on the card itself that held the backplane bracket so that I could pull that bracket a little further back to allow it to fit better into my computer.

I have since built a whole new studio computer system, and the QUAD seems to fit tighter and lines up slightly better with the backplane in the new computer, although it's still not a perfect fit. But, no problems so far with the card not being recognized.

Even with my new i7-950 based system, which can handle quite a bit of plug-ins all on its own (I also own Waves Mercury + SSL, plus many other Native plugs), the UAD-2 Quad is a major part of my mixing arsenal. UA makes great sounding plugs that I rely on for every mix, even though I have other similar native options. Something about the UAD versions just sound right to me and seem to be easier to dial in to get the sound I want.

In this age of powerful computers with Quad processors and a jillion cores in your CPU, why buy extra hardware cards to process audio?

That's the question I asked myself when I was considering buying UAD cards. But after researching all the possibilities, and going on the forums and seeing how good the support from the company was (very important to me!), I took the plunge.

I liked the results so much that I bought a second UAD-2 card. The sounds are just so darned good, and the processing cards lets my Mac use all its power for Logic and any native AU plugins I'm using.

The UAD plugins work as advertised, and any time I had questions the tech support was immediate. That's the second time I've mentioned support, because I feel it's SUPER important when dealing with high end cutting edge stuff like audio recording. And software updates are regular, free, and smush any bugs.

Basically, I feel very well taken care of and I feel like this company really understands musicians. Yeah, the stuff is a little pricey, but I'm happy to pay it since it works right the first time and every time. That alone is worth the price.

I'm so glad I spent the money on this instead of the Waves plugins -- so many problems with those and vastly overpriced. (I know some people run both, but I'm an a limited budget). On a limited budget, every dollar counts -- and my UAD dollars are very cost effective.

I don't mean to ignore the most important thing of all -- awesome sounds!

UAD Octo in external Thunderbolt Chassis

UAD Octo in external Thunderbolt Chassis connected to McBook Pro Quad.
A breeze to work with! Disconnected the internal fans, which are unbarebly loud.
Gets hot but still o.k. Working on the road finally becomes uncompromised!!
Great.

Misinformed sales people and poor customer support made the upgrade to UAD2 platform from a UAD1 card a horrific experience. Lost over a thousand dollars of registered plug-ins on original card and got "sorry about that" as a peace offering. The product is "okay" not any better than others available, but don't expect any help from the customer service department. They will not go the extra mile to help a customer no matter how much you have invested in their products. Unless of course you're somebody famous. Guess where that left me. Save your money, stick with packages less costly and more customer friendly. I had to rate this a 1 star as it wouldn't let me leave it blank, which is what it deserved.

unfortunately nothing new as I have traded in from a uad 1 (an undesired purchase) and also waited more than one month after purchase with no communication from the retailer...

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.

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.

Added to my Flexi card. Now the power drain on the computer is almost as expected, in the ProTools LE world.

Great product!

Thanks,

Ian

only caan say you rock the best plug ins the prooos

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.