Octo Card (centre) with (right) selection of plug-ins included in the Ultimate package
The UAD-2 Octo is the new flagship of Universal Audio’s UAD-2 range, boasting eight SHARC DSP chips and doubling the DSP power of the Quad card. Mike Hillier heads into the box
UNIVERSAL AUDIO’S UAD-2 platform has gone from strength to strength, first with the release of the Apollo audio interface with built-in UAD-2 DSP processing and most recently with the arrival of the new Octo card – an eight- chip DSP processor PCIe card, which doubles the amount of DSP power available compared to the previous flagship Quad card. While it’s all very well having a huge bank of processing power to call upon, it’s the quality of the UA-developed plug-ins that has led users to consistently turn to the UAD platform when mixing, over Native alternatives. This, alongside more DSP-intensive plug-ins, such as the Manley Massive Passive, has driven the need for more and more power from the UAD cards themselves. My studio has been equipped with a UAD-2 Duo for about a year now, and to say the plug-ins have become a mainstay of my mixes is an understatement. The Duo platform is perfect for mastering purposes, where the various EQs, compressors, limiters, exciters and stereo tools provide a wealth of options.
However, when it comes time to mix, I often find myself running low on DSP resources on the Duo system long before I’ve finished a mix, meaning decisions have to be made over which channels get the UAD plug-ins and which get Native alternatives. The new Octo card should make this problem a thing of the past, for all but the very largest mixes. The Octo card is available in
three varieties; Core, Custom and Ultimate. The Octo Core comes with the Analog Classics bundle of plug-ins (American spelling of ‘analog’ I’m afraid!), a collection that includes emulations of the 1176 compressor, LA-2A limiter and Pultec EQP-1A EQ. The bundle also includes the UAD CS-1 channel strip and RealVerb reverb processor. The Octo Custom comes with this same Analog Classics bundle and a voucher for any three additional plug-ins from the UAD Store. Finally the Octo Ultimate comes with all 55 current plug-ins for the UAD platform. Unlike the previous Solo, Duo and Quad cards, the Octo is not available in the Satellite
configuration as an external FireWire device, but only as a PCIe card. This is no doubt due to the bandwidth requirements that would be needed to make use of all eight cores. However, UA has been quick off the mark with the Apollo Thunderbolt- card, so perhaps a Thunderbolt equipped Satellite is in development for the Octo? One of my favourite plug-ins on the UAD platform is the Manley Massive Passive. However, this is also one of the most DSP intensive, using around 65% of the cycles of a single DSP chip at 48kHz. This means on the Duo I have been restricted to only two instances of this plug-in, leaving little room for anything else. On the Octo I was able to load up eight stereo instances – one per core – and still have more DSP remaining than the entire Duo system. While I probably won’t need eight Massive Passives on a single mix, it’s encouraging to know it’s possible. I could easily imagine having a couple spread across different busses. The Massive Passive is an extreme example: most UAD
plug-ins don’t use even half as much DSP resources as that. I was able to open a 64-channel session and apply an instance of the Studer A800 and Neve 88RS channel strip on every channel, emulating a traditional console running off tape. Even with the latest Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor emulation I was able to get 120 instances at 48kHz – something I’d be impressed to even see in the real world. The UAD-2 Octo is the perfect
addition to any mix studio, even if you have an enviable collection of outboard there are plug-ins you are unlikely to have here, and certainly not in the quantities that can be supported on the Octo card. The quality of the emulations too surpasses anything else I’ve heard in software. The only problem is that once you’ve bought the card and heard the quality of the plug-ins, you’re likely to want to spend even more of your money expanding your collection. The Octo Ultimate bundle might be pricey, but if you’re going to end up with them all anyway it can actually be quite a bargain.n
PRICE AND AVAILABILITY f Octo Core £1,499 (€1,860) inc VAT
f Octo Custom £1,899 inc VAT fOcto Ultimate £5,499 inc VAT