Tommy Byrnes

I love UAD the company and struggled to leave their ecosystem as my main interface but I wanted the best drivers, clock and converters I could get in a single unit so I chose RME. No real life experience with their equipment but their reputation and long conversations with other studio owners convinced me. Knowing that I can still use the Apollo firewire as essentially a preamp and plugin host, connect my other ADAT pres and sync them all to the RME clock made the choice pretty easy. I got the inside info on the new converters and clock for the UFXIII from my Sweetwater guy, who is a studio geek whom I trust.

I have to admit, I'm not that interested in UAD at this point other than for the Unison preamps in my Apollo. I use them to track with all the time but there are so many native alternatives to most of their other plugins, and at a much more friendly price, that unless it's a useful Unison plugin or truly unique I don't feel compelled to pick up more of their plugins. I've recently built a new main studio computer and I'm going to get the new RME UFX III USB 3 when it comes out. I'll connect the Apollo via ADAT and clock it to the REM. I should then be able to run just about any session natively without any real sacrifices any more regarding CPU management. UAD's commitment to Thunderbolt and their treatment of Windows users as a second thought (uh, where is Luna for Windows?) kept me from going with a newer Apollo instead of the RME. I figured USB has been around and will be around forever and RME's drivers are second to none. We've had 4 iterations of TB already and since Apple owns the tech I don't have much faith in the future of it. Firewire is now obsolete but not too long ago it was going to replace USB.

I just completed a build with this case and I love it! It is really, really quiet and the airflow is fantastic.

I almost always track electric guitar cabs miked through the UAD Helios plugin (That and the HLS are emulations of the Olympic Studios Helios console) and use the HLS during mix. EQ-wise it's like fishing with dynamite but they have this great very colored sound that makes guitars and bass growl. The preamp gain is where the magic is. Gain stage with the fader.

No new Pro Channel. The upgrade was free for me. Be sure to be logged into your account.

I love the Cakewalk Plugin Manager because I can easily make various plugin lists, such as Essentials. The number of plugins installed and the space they take up isn't a reall issue any more with 1+TB SSDs. I have all samples installed on their own drive and backed up on an external drive, as are all the plugins and their installers. So, if I need a stripped down, uncluttered plugin list I can just use a custom plugin list in the Manager. It's an illusion as the plugins are still installed but it does help a bit. ?

I think the reason so many of us lean towards emulation plugins like 2As and 3As and 1176s and Fairchilds is because they have been essential studio tools for decades. The behavior and sound character is so well known and those "sounds" have been an integral part of recorded music for so long that results from their use is a known commodity and easily gets folded into one's mix strategy. Opto, FET, VCA, tube, etc. all have various attack/release times and ratios and the type of sound being compressed informs us on which might be best suited to the program material. For instance, an LA2A has no adjustable ratio (it's set at around 3:1) and the attack is about 10ms. But what makes it so desirable is the multi-stage release. The initial release is around 60ms or so for the first 50% and then the last 50% of the release takes from around 500ms to 5 seconds, depending on the source. This allows the signal to "sit" in the compressor at all times, with a couple of dBs of reduction as a constant. Louder parts of the signal will then be attenuated more but since the comp is already engaged the compression will be very smooth and buttery, which is why it's a perfect vocal comp. Very hard to get a standard digital comp to do this. Plus, being a tube-driven compressor the non-linearities of tubes colors the signal in a pleasing way. One could certainly use a distortion plugin to try to emulate the sound but it's not like the organic part of the 2A's sound. Each piece of hardware (and its plugin emulations) has its own personality. Knowing which one to use is part of being an informed engineer and can greatly improve one's craft.

I grabbed this primaraly for the 3A. This is a really good plugin! Being able to M/S is a great feature.

I concentrate these days on primarily the Unison stuff and have all the ones I want at the moment. Being able to track through the plugins is what led me to UAD 8 years ago. Native plugins have come so far that they rival a lot of the UAD plugins, though being able to off-load CPU cycles to the UA hardware is very helpful as well. The real magic is with the Apollo pre/Unison plugin signal chain. For instance, I usually track electric guitars by miking cabs through the Helios console in a Unison slot, followed by the UAD Distressor. Sublime. It got me back into committing the sound "to tape" like the old days as opposed to trying to fix stuff downstream. The Neve 1084 is wonderful (I like it better than the 1073. The upper mids sound smoother and less spiky to me), the Avalon VT-737 and the Manley VoxBox are go-tos on vocals (the VoxBox is also great on a bass DI), the SSL 4000 gets used for tracking almost everything, as does the API Vision. The plain Neve and API preamps alone do wonders to an incoming signal. The Helios, though, is a secret weapon. It's about as surgical as a grenade but push it a bit and it sounds amazing. To be sure, it's a sizable investment to enter into the UAD world but it's helped me make better, more inspired recordings from the very first day.

True, I did not demo it, just based my snark on the audio examples.

The other two in the Studio Series (Fame and Sunset Sound) are super versatile and one or the other is on just about every project to put things in a room together. I don't think I'd want to run my stems through what will make them sound like they were recorded in an aircraft hanger. This would be great for "that" sound but I doubt I would use it enough to grab it. I love this idea, though and hope other great sounding rooms make it to this series. Putting different stems through the Fame verb with subtle pre-delay, along with the various positions available in the plugin makes me think I'm mixing tracks recorded in a really great sounding room. My tracking room is small and tight so sometimes I'll use Sunset Sounds, which has a bigger, more "rock n roll" sound to it to open the sound up. The Farm Stone verb seems less versatile to me.

This is the one BF sale I was hoping for. Soothe 2 is amazing. I used the demo a couple of months ago and was amazed at how much better my mix was with just a bit of resonance supression on a few offending tracks. Regular price was a bit too high but I'm in on the sale.

This is a wonderful EQ!

Thanks, Scook. I figured that might be the case.

Hi folks, Is there a way to set the multi-track grouping that is located in Preferences/Project/Multi-Track Grouping so that the default is Always group all tracks? A couple of times I've forgotten to check this when recording drums or whole bands and have had to go back and manually group them afterwards to keep the tracks and takes lined up. No fun. I looked through the ini file but didn't see anything. It would be great not to have to worry about it and avoid the "holy crap, I forgot" feeling. Thanks, as usual, for the help!

CPU gobblers at any price.

Holy moly! The ability to turn on or off all instances of a plugin is huge, especially when using channel strips across multiple tracks. Quick group delete all instances is also much appreciated. This is a great update. Thanks to the Bakers!

This really is a drum DAW. It's an amazing piece of software and I use it every day. I have most of the others but I rarely go to them anymore. What I can do inside SD3 is crazy. If you can swing the very expensive $295 you should consider it. No demo, though, as there is 4,921 terabytes of samples to download. ? The upgrade price was doable when it first launched so I jumped and and am really glad I did. I can't imagine crafting drum tracks without it.

I had a similar experience with the Ultralite and customer service around the same time. I won't go into all the details but it was such a problem I wrote a letter to the president of MOTU. MOTU and I reside in MA. I mailed it on Friday and on Monday morning I got a call from his wife and the company's CEO. We spent two hours on the phone, discussing what MOTU could do better (Windows drivers and tech support, for starters), our kids, her amazing Marine Corps dad, the plans for the company, etc. Within weeks they revamped their customer service protocols and vastly improved their Windows drivers. We have since become friends and regularly chat. She's sent me products to try out and keeps in touch. MOTU gave lots of money to a benefit music festival I used to run before Covid. MOTU has a very loyal customer and I recommend their products to my clients and students over Focusrite and others. And their products are wicked good, as we would say. My little interface for travel and teaching is the M2. Kills the Scarlett 2i2. Drivers are rock solid, excellent converters, mic pres are actually OK and it's built really well.

When Gibson did the knife in the heart thing I moved briefly to Studio One before the CbB era. One of the things I missed most was the Plugin Manager in Cakewalk. I would be lost without its versatility. Here is how I have my plugins laid out. I have several custom menus, which I couldn't do in S1.

You're probably right, David. I just ran out of time. I did run it and it did show the files I needed as orphaned so I just went to the folder and imported the files I needed into a new project.

I bit the bullet and went through the project audio folder, took the correct files and just rebuilt the project. There were four full band takes so making sure each track corresponed to the right take was a bit of a pain but it's back and running, just in time for my clients to get here. That was a close call! Thanks for the help, folks. I'll have eagle eyes on what the heck I'm doing from now on.

Everything is on the dedicated projects/audio drive. It was a long session and I was pooped at the end of a crazy long day so I really don't know what I did. Nothing got moved as far as I know. This is great advice but I am trying to re-associate the files and not remove them. What I'm wondering is ifthe actual project file got deleted somehow and left behind the audio files. Yet, there is a project file with the right song name but the wrong audio. What a mess!

Hi folks, I'm having a problem that I've never experienced before. I finished up sessions with my client this past weekend and when I went to open one of the songs this morning it opened a completely different song. I've checked the audio files folder and the correct files with the correct project title are in there but the Cakewalk project file is associated with another tune and will not open the correct audio files. I tried to import the tracks into a new project but of course it imported each file to its own track. This is mostly laying down live drums with several takes so trying to sort it out manually seems impossible, given the number of tracks, which was over 150 when each clip was imported. Yikes! The stuff of nightmares! So, how do I get the project to recognize the correct audio files that go with the project and not point to a completely different song? I'm sure I messed something up but I can't seem to find what I did. It's a real poser and I've been at it for a couple of hours without any luck. The band is back in this weekend and I need to suss this out before they come in. Redoing the tune is not going to go over well and not really an option. As always, thanks for the help. Cheers, Tommy

I really wanted to like this more than I do. It's kind of fun but I'm just not crazy about the sound of the verb.