Universal Audio plugin users, have you converted to native?

[RABid]

The post in the software sales thread about the UA sale got me thinking about installing native on my laptop. I had not been in any hurry knowing that any song I need to finish will end up on my MacMini with the Apollo connected. But, today I decided to go ahead and install. First, I had forgotten they use iLok. Already had that on my MacBook and only had to link accounts. What they really need on the UA site is a list within your account that specifies if the plugin is Native. I have 84 plugins in my account. To see which are available as native I have to look them up, one at a time on the plugin page. It would be so simple to put a check box in the list next to each plug and give that information. Well, I installed UA Connect on my MacBook to let it notify me which plugs I can use without the hardware. Turns out to be only 23. Only 27 percent of my plugins. Not good.

 

Is the MPN crowd doing better than me? I really hope so.

[Anderton]

Something like a Manley Massive Passive is going to be a HUGE hit on your CPU. It may be support doesn't want to deal with "I used your plugin and now my DAW crashes all the time and I can't get enough tracks and you suck."

 

Still using the hardware here.

[Nowarezman]

No reason not to use the UA hardware that I already have and save CPU cycles for other stuff. 

 

But I am thinking about moving from my UA interface to an SSL Big Six.  If I do that, I'll have some decisions to make about the 30-odd UA plugins I use....

 

nat

 

[NewImprov]

Long time UAD2 hardware user here, my current system is 12 cores (octo satellite + a quad PCI card in a thunderbolt enclosure). When I updated my studio computer to an M1 Mac Mini, I updated the UAD software which included the native (UADX) versions of the plugins I owned in the UAD2 format.

 

Using the UADX plugs is exactly the same as the hardware, they sound great, and at least for the ones I own (mainly the 1176 and LA2A compressors), the processor hit on the M1 is negligible. But I did run into one issue. I normally run my studio computer without an internet connection, and just use my iPhone hotspot when I need a connection. The other day, I was running a mix with a lot of the UADX instances while connected to the internet, and they were all disabled. It seems that a new software update had been released, and the UADX plug-ins automatically check, and automatically disable if there is a new version. Fortunately, you can update the plug-ins individually not do the whole UAD package at once, like the UAD2 plugs. But it was a pain. I generally don't like auto-updating on my audio machine, I'll keep running older OS and software as long as they work.