I have been sort of getting together a new home recording setup after the old one was getting too old and cranky.
The old version was simply an old MacBook and Logic and to be honest, I did not bother much about anything else except the plugins and stuff included and used an Old Line6 interface which worked well enough for basic songwriting and scratching the recording itch.
With the new system which will be a 6 core Mac book pro stacked with memory and SSD which happened to come my way.
Currently, I am just using the Helix as the interface and it seems good enough for my needs but keep bumping into Universal Audio stuff being used online think they have their product placement well sorted.
When i first looked in to their stuff besides the price I liked the idea of the DSP onboard to help with running their channel strips and plugins digging deeper it seems the old Sharc DSP they use do not really let you do that much in terms of tracking with multiple effects and channel strips perhaps 4 is a realistic limit.
See lots of positive views and they certainly seem very good but I am now wondering if the lack of DSP power makes them not worth bothering with the expense unless you go for one of the very powerful ones, which see, over the top for an at-home recording demo systems.
Any experiences about how many of their plugins you can run and are they worth it
thanks
Comments
There is for me, and I have pretty much all of them now.
I don't track though UA plugins most of the time- I have outboard for that.
At the mix stage I find them indispensable- they are some of the best emulations out there, especially Distressor, SSL and API and I have the hardware equivalents to compare them too.
Studio: https://www.voltperoctave.com
Music: https://www.euclideancircuits.com
Me: https://www.jamesrichmond.com
They're not the lowest latency cards on the block, but they're not terrible. And it has been the most solid interface I have ever used since I was a wee nipper! I will never go back to a USB2 soundcard I tell you that. I had endless problems with them over the last couple of years with cpu spiking and latency. The x8p is just solid.
But it's a lot of money. I'm using the DSP once in a while. Most of the time I'm still using plugins. The Console application that comes with it is great though, it really is. And I love being able to use virtual outputs.
So maybe the hit on the latency is fine. In practice it hasn't bothered me too much.
What has stopped me selling it is the resale value - it's not as high as I thought it would be.
thanks