At the 2018 NAMM Show, Universal Audio introduced the Arrow Thunderbolt 3 audio interface for Mac and Windows, which, like their Apollo interfaces, features on-board effects processing.
We talked with Amanda Whiting Gerstle, who gave us a quick overview of the Arrow.
The 2×4 Arrow Thunderbolt 3 audio interface offers two Unison mic preamps, Realtime UAD Plug-In Processing, and Universal Audio conversion, along with a collection of UAD plug-ins to record vocals, guitars, and more at near-zero latency.
Features:
- Desktop 2×4 Thunderbolt 3-powered audio interface with ‘class-leading’ 24-bit/192 kHz audio conversion
- Unison mic preamp technology provides the tone, touch and feel of popular tube and transformer-based mic preamps and guitar amplifiers from Neve, API, Manley, Marshall, Fender and more
- Realtime UAD Processing allows near-zero latency tracking with UAD plug-in effects, regardless of software buffer setting
- Includes studio compressors, EQs, reverbs, and guitar amp emulations, and more as part of the “Realtime Analog Classics” bundle — featuring 14 UAD Plug-Ins
- Bus-powered connection to modern Mac and Windows systems
Pricing and Availability
The Arrow is now shipping, with an estimated street price of $499. See the UA site for more info.
what else is new
Only 2 lousy inputs ?
… come on !
… and no DIN MIDI … WTF !
The issue with UA-stuff is that unless you can afford all of their plugins (and there are many and they are very expensive) you will have all their many demos in your plugin folder. This leaves your plugin folder cluttered and therefore hard to navigate. You can of course remove the plugins you don`t have manually (by erasing files), but everytime you choose to update their software you`ll have to remove the demos all over.
Why they don`t have a “remove unowned plugins from plugin folder” checkbox in their software is probably a money issue. To me it feels like I imported a commercial platform into my daw. I`ve written ua several times regarding this, but they don`t see the problem…go figure.
iOS could really use one of these. Of course you would have to put Midi in there as well.
Refuse to buy an AI with a guitar icon on inputs.