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His Dual 1.8 shouldn 't be PCI-X and therefore doesn't have the issue. I have 2 cards in a PCI-X machine and I have yet to run out of dsp. But I also don't use Nigel. I only ever use one EMT 140, 2 or 3 Fairchilds, a Pultec or 2 and a ton of LA2As and 1176s. Personally I know that the AMD chip plays havoc with the UAD in the G5s but it has yet to cause me any grief.

I tihnk a lot has to do with how you route things. Using one or two reverbs for instance and routing sends so instruments share helps a lot.

I tried to be explicit about how much I was asking of the card, but perhaps I was unclear. The computer is PCI, not PCI-X, so there is not the AMD chip problem.
I have in use: one Dreamverb, on an aux bus, and inserts of 1 x 1176 LN(mono), 1 x LA-2A(stereo), 2 x Pultec Pro (both stereo), 1 Fairchild (mono).
If that's 75% of a card, then so be it. I was just surprised, given the claims on the UAD-1 box.
As for the earlier point that hardware versions of these plugs would cost a fortune I think that's kind of silly. A few years ago one would pay $40,000 for an analog 24 track, so would we all be content with a G5 that only gave us 8 tracks?
My point is my G4 dual 500 under OS9 happily ran numerous instantiations of the BF 1176, LA-2A, a realverb or 2, 1 Altiverb, Waves plugs, etc. 12 tracks of autotune, etc. Oh well...

Oh, here's a newbie question. It seems from what some have said that one can add extra cards to get more processing power. Does that mean ALL my plugin licenses would be good on all/any UAD-1 cards? That would make expansion much less brutal.
Sorry if the answer to this is obvious to everyone else. I miss stuff sometimes.

It's not a silly question. One of the things that makes wanting/having extra cards so cool. Each license is good for all cards.

Originally posted by jimj:
As for the earlier point that hardware versions of these plugs would cost a fortune I think that's kind of silly. A few years ago one would pay $40,000 for an analog 24 track, so would we all be content with a G5 that only gave us 8 tracks?

I think his point was that a UAD-1 software LA2A today cost a lot less than the hardware LA2A today.

My point is my G4 dual 500 under OS9 happily ran numerous instantiations of the BF 1176, LA-2A, a realverb or 2, 1 Altiverb, Waves plugs, etc. 12 tracks of autotune, etc.

Apples and oranges. The UAD plugins are more DSP-hungry than many others, but they also sound better. The tradeoff for the more exacting algorithms is lower count. Even in the UAD package, some plugins can be used at much higher density: you should be able to get 18-20 LA-2As from one card on a PCI machine, for example.

If there were options that sounded just as good and allowed you to run more on the machine, then the UAD-1 would be a bad deal. This, however, is not the case. Many people find that the UAD-1 gives results better than any other plugins, and almost as good as hardware, at a small fraction of the price of the hardware.

It's like saying that since I can open 40 small, low-resolution .gifs at once on my old computer, I should be disappointed if I can only get 15 4-megapixel images open at once.

That said, I agree that it would be delightful if one could open more plugins per card. Hopefully the next-generation card is not too far away.

<small>[ July 14, 2005, 01:24 PM: Message edited by: mongoose ]</small>

speaking of next generation cards.... Anything on the horizon (maybe displayed at NAMM) I should hold off for before going for a UAD?

r.

Originally posted by jimj:
I have in use: one Dreamverb, on an aux bus, and inserts of 1 x 1176 LN(mono), 1 x LA-2A(stereo), 2 x Pultec Pro (both stereo), 1 Fairchild (mono).
If that's 75% of a card, then so be it. I was just surprised, given the claims on the UAD-1 box.

The plug in counts advertised on the box pretty much line up with what you are seeing: box says you can run (8) 1176 on one card at one time - that means (1) 1176 takes 12.5% CPU. It says you can run (12) Fairchild, so (1) Fairchild = 8.3%; (19) LA2A stereo, so (1) LA2A = 5.3%; (6) Pultec Pro stereo, so (2) Pultec Pro = 33.3%; (6) DreamVerb, so (1) DreamVerb = 17%. That all adds up to 76.4%, which is right on for what your meter is telling you. I don't think UA is guilty of false advert on this one. Box also states that you can only run (2) Nigels per card, which means (1) Nigel takes 50% of the CPU - explains why you can't add a Nigel when you're at 76.4%.

As the previous post states, some of the UADs are CPU hungry, but they sound good....the price we pay.....

<small>[ July 14, 2005, 07:25 PM: Message edited by: Resonant Alien ]</small>