Has anyone tried UAD Plugins with GP3?

Plugins
1

Hey,

I was curious about what latency UAD plugins may have. Is it possible to run an Octo card with UAD plugins in GP3 live?

Thanks

2

I wouldnā€™t bother. The latency is too high for live playing. I have a thunderbolt Quad UAD and as soon as you add any UAD plugins itā€™s adding an extra 10-20ms (on top of your base setting). Even with the PCIe cards I used to have it really is only practical for mixing IMHO,
(Latency compensation keeps everything in time (most of the time).

I have to have my buffer at 256 or lower for live playing. Having a UAD in the chain is the equivalent of having a buffer of 1024-2048.

there are so many good low CPU plugins available these days that for me itā€™s getting harder and harder to justify buying any more UAD plugsā€¦although in my studio I couldnā€™t live without the UAD EMT Plate and the LA2A comp and pultec eq!..but then again Arturiaā€™s are pretty goodšŸ‘

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3

I though UAD plugins were hardware DSP accelerated. It seems that it is not really acceleratedšŸ¤”

4

Ah, the SSL emulation and LA2a are very nice from UAD, thatā€™s a shame. I know they also have a LiveRack version, would that be any better with GP3? or does that still add the same amount of latency. I know that some UAD plugins are not compatible with the LiveRack version though.

5

I recently purchased an Apollo x4 for my home studio and I am not experiencing any issues with latency or otherwise. I tested with the Teletronix LA-2A, the Fairchild 670, and an SSL E Channel Strip. Buffer is set to 512 samples. I have not had a lot of burn-in time with it yet, but seems fine to me. Only strange behavior is that the GP plug-in block always takes the name ā€œUAD Powered Plug-Insā€ regardless of what plug-in I choose. Plugs from other companies donā€™t do that.

6

If you can play plug ins live with that much latency youā€™re a cleverer man than me.

Playing piano or drums must feel like playing in jelly :thinking:

7

Live rack still adds latency but I donā€™t know how much. Bear in mind also that some plugs add more latency than others. There is the basic UAD latency ie the round trip of the card and then on top of that a compressor would add more latency, a simple delay not so much, a simple preamp emulation less again.

I would keep UAD for Your DAW and studio use. It makes no sense to me to take it out for gigs and no one in the audience is going to tell if itā€™s a UAD ssl emulation or a Waves one.

8

Pipe organ players in churches deal with latency in hundreds of millliseconds!

9

I know Iā€™ve done it! But piano? Yuk

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10

I didnā€™t mean to imply that 512 samples was the limit for UAD. I know that I can go to 128 samples, but the fact is I have been playing live for five years using 512 samples to avoid pops and crackles as I layer as many sounds as my laptop will allow! I am not experiencing latency problems with the apollo x4.

11

In the UAD Control Panel you can also ā€˜uncheckā€™ the Extra Buffering checkmark. That will also lower you latency. Also you could put the plugins in Livetrack mode (which will put extra strain on your cpu). Iā€™v learned to use UAD plugins only during mixing, and not while tracking or live use, as especially drummers and guitar players will start complaining about it. So for live use, or realtime monitoring during tracking I mainly use Plugin Alliance plugins nowadays. In Cubase in the plugin-info screen you get detailed info regarding plugins and extra buffers that need, and for UAD thats most of the time > 200