Considering the Waves SSL Bundle. Any owners?

I have a UAD2 Solo, and although I'm far from a master mixer by any stretch, there are some INSANE plugs available for the UAD system. The Plate140 is simlpy the best reverb unit that I've ever touched - I'm completely addicted to it. UAD is worth it's price for this plugin alone. The precision mastering series is pretty amazing too, (come to think of it - so is the Neve channel strip)....

Bobby

UAD's website is actually very unclear on how to purchase what I need to get rolling with their products. What exactly do I need to buy? The Solo2 is a DSP card correct? And with that I can purchase and run the plugins, correct? I tried to figure out how to buy a bundle with the DSP card and some of the plugins, but it kept taking me to a "find a dealer" page and none of the info on the site was very clear about "you need THIS card to run THESE plugins", etc.

I really think I am leaning towards that UAD stuff over the Waves. Does anyone know if the UAD Neve plugin is consdierably better than the Waves SSL stuff? I would love to be able to just A/B it myself, but I don't have the means to hear it and make my own judgment. This is more or less going to be a blind purchase, so I am really trying to trust the experts here on the board! For the amount of money I'm looking to spend, I just want to make sure I'm getting the best and RIGHT bang for my buck :D
 
It would depend on which you could see aiding your workflow the most. You can mix release-quality records with either... it's not really so much a question of quality, but which is better suited to what you want.

Do you want the massive latency UAD cards, with plug-ins that are generally imperfect emulations of analogue gear, with an intrusive dongle and a 'screw you' when you run out of onboard DSP?

OR

Do you want lesser latency (SSL chan has 1 sample) imperfect emulations of analogue gear that require a smaller dongle to run, entice you to pay a yearly fee to maintain your plug-ins, cost about 3 times more than they should, and run entirely off your own CPU, with no limits based off B/S obsolete DSP?

Whichever is the lesser evil, go for it.
 
Umm, tell me more about this yearly fee?
I walk into a furniture store and I say "hello I would like this bed for my bedroom", and the salesman says "okay, you may enjoy this bed for one year, but if you plan on sleeping on this bed that you own for more than a year, you're going to have to pay me more money or the mattress will ... expire"?

What kind of a joke is that?
 
im not poo-ing on that as its proven as true.

but id much rather just load up a different eq for its q values to be adjusted and go from there, rather than trying to mimic a ton of eq's with just one by sitting there comparing q values.

Exactly. That's valid.
 
I really think I am leaning towards that UAD stuff over the Waves. Does anyone know if the UAD Neve plugin is consdierably better than the Waves SSL stuff? I would love to be able to just A/B it myself, but I don't have the means to hear it and make my own judgment. This is more or less going to be a blind purchase, so I am really trying to trust the experts here on the board! For the amount of money I'm looking to spend, I just want to make sure I'm getting the best and RIGHT bang for my buck :D

The UAD versions tend to sound less grainy than Waves, and that's true for the SSL vs UAD 4k plugins also. If you want to believe the tech people it's because of Waves goal of taxing your CPU as little as possible and then sacrificing sound and accuracy to achieve that. So technically Waves are supposed to be pretty bad emulations compared to dedicated DSP platforms but that doesn't say much about how they perform musically, so be that as it may...

What the UAD platform is considerably better at compared to Waves IMO is compression.

To run the UAD plugins all you need is a UAD card. In the current UAD-2 range there are three versions.. SOLO, DUO and QUAD offering different amounts of DSP. All the other bundles Nevana, Omni, Flexi etc.. are just different set of plugins accompanying the card and with the Flexi just being a voucher that you can use to purchase the plugins you like from the webstore. There is no limitation as to what plugins you can run on which card though. You buy the card that will fit your needs and then you buy licenses at the webstore. Simple as that.
 
TRA I didnt want to talk crap about you...I didnt believe your post and I never got that clue...

I read the gearslutz thread about it and you have your point!!!
People wrote, that they got f.e. the ssl eq 90% notching with their p.eq....
It´s 90%....which is great.

I did never had this results!!!
When I used the p.eq in cubase sx 3, cubase 4 or logic 8.

Maybe the SSL/V-series/ren/api stuff I own let me get FASTER to the point I like the tone....

I realy dont know...

But for me I never were happy with the results out of the p.eq I own or I owned..

cheers
 
and one question:

I thought the different sound is put together out of:
phase shifting
harmonic content
filter action of each band

So do you say that this are all the same with software eq´s
or do you notch you p.eq to work like for example the ssl...(and where you change the phase and filter reactions???)
It is damn interesting!!!