18 thoughts on “Universal Audio UAD-2 Satellite USB DSP Accelators Now Available”

1. What kind of latency does using something like this add to a project?

   1. a product like this is specifically designed so you can use their plugins WITHOUT adding latency… thats why it has dedicated DSP chips in it – its running from there

      but, only the supported plugins will work with this box

      1. Having a DSP doesn’t magic away latency. There is still a round-trip over USB which involves your OS’s USB stack and UAD’s driver.

         1. Round-trip latency with great sounding plugins on external DSP is still usually smaller than similar plugins running native inside daw.
            There’s a reason people buy DSP units and it’s not just because of marketing.

            1. I didn’t say otherwise.

            2. modern cpu’s today are more than capable of managing huge plugin counts with very low latency. UAD’s concept is outdated at this point and their hardware is just glorified DRM.

               1. According to this logic every digital synthesizer is just drm dongle as well.
                  I tried Alchemy which is bundled with Logic Pro X and couldn’t say its any better than Virus TI, at least in terms of sound. And speaking of CPU power my i7 ran quite hot running just one instance of this synth and with lots of cpu spikes.
                  I’d rather use a relatively slow and quiet computer running external dsp than super high end heater running all the effects.

                  1. “According to this logic every digital synthesizer is just drm dongle as well.”

                     That’s a really stupid comparison and you should have known that when you typed it out.

                     Aint no point in debating this one. If you can’t UAD for what it is, you never will.

         2. when the added latency is less than a millisecond, its not applicable and cant be considered “latency” unless you are trying to win an argument over semantics, which i have no interest in – but if you so desperately need to be “right”, go ahead and feel that way… feel it long… feel it hard. Satisfied?

   2. I was speaking of USB round trip latency. I can find many effects plugins that have zero latency. I was wondering if there would be any added latency using one of these USB boxes.

      1. Nevermind, just saw the price. Over $1000 for some DSP chips? No thanks.

2. Interesting idea, ten years ago. Today? Who needs expensive external DSP:s just adding latency?

   Bye bye UAD.

   1. Yes, it’s a pretty strange move indeed. Would there really be anyone that’s still interested in this type of thing nowadays? On a modern pc you can easily run a shedload of Slate, Softube, Fabfilter, PA, Kush, NI etc. with cycles to spare…..

      1. I imagine it can have quite an interest for people willing to mix out of the studio, isn’t it ?

         1. I don’t know, I’m perfectly happy taking my laptop with me instead of lugging this over sized dongle….

3. So, for $1,500 + … is this for those people who already spent $$ on an Apollo, but DIDN’T realize they had a low-end PC?
   Seems like those people don’t do much thinking.

4. Nice hardware but too restrictive as it traps you in the UAD universe.

   We need a device like this but capable of running standard VST (2,3) instrument and effect plugins. With the option of routing audio out back to the host PC/Mac or out of a high quality DAC or SPDIF/Optical.

   I suppose MUSE-Receptor already does this and the V-Machine tried to but was under powered with a clunky architecture ????

5. Buy a second computer and separate audio interface. Route audio between main computer and second one. Do the same thing but less expensive plus here’s the amazing part: you can use any plugin on either side. Get some Analog Digital Conversion magic.