Universal Audio UAD-2 is ten times more powerful than UAD-1

Universal Audio has announced the UAD-2, the successor to its highly regarded UAD-1 powered plug-in system. This is a PCIe card that comes in three configurations - Solo, Duo and Quad.

All the UAD-2 cards are powered by the same Analog Devices 21369 SHARC floating-point DSP - the difference lies in how many chips each one features. Even the Solo model is said to offer two and a half times the power of the UAD-1, though, while the Duo and Quad versions deliver five and ten times more processing grunt.

Commenting on the launch, Universal Audio's VP of Marketing Mike Barnes said: "The UAD-2 is set to shake up the audio industry even more radically than UAD-1 did. We listened hard to the power, feature and plug-in requests from our loyal UAD-1 user base.

"Then we designed the new potent UAD-2 DSP platform for DAWs to be 'the one' that delivers all the sound and channel counts of large-format analog consoles plus all the authentic tone of classic outboard FX inside the box."

Third party support

As well as Universal Audio's own plug-ins, the UAD-2 will also run processors from Neve, Roland, SPL, Valley People and Empirical Labs, who previously developed for the UAD-1. What's more, Harrison, Moog and Little Labs have signed up to develop new UAD-2 plug-ins, too.

The UAD-2 is available now in nine different bundles, with prices ranging from $500 to $2000. It's Mac- and PC-compatible and supports the VST and AU plug-in standards (RTAS support will follow in a software update).

Full details are available on the Universal Audio website.