UAD Plugins
from Universal Audio

UAD plugins are one of the absolute must haves if you're serious about mastering software.

Along with Waves they've truly raised the bar as far as quality level is concerned, and they've compared favourably against many analog counterparts.

Falling under the Universal Audio company umbrella, UAD plugins require a special processor card that's installed into your computer to handle the complex number crunching chores, freeing up your CPU, and providing some of the best sounding results available from plugins.

For mastering UAD have a dedicated set of plugins which they call the Precision Series. These include:

• The Precision Equalizer
• The Precision Multiband
• The Precision Limiter
• The Precision Maximizer

The UAD Limiter is another of my most used plug ins. It can really give a great volume boost (when the client asks for it) without distortion or other unwanted artefacts.

The Maximizer provides different saturation features for enhancement of mixes. Very easily the most 'instant gratification' plug in the UAD Plugins mastering series, I prefer to use it as a spice to an almost finished track.

I match the output volume to the input and then very conservatively adjust the drive and mix controls, and re-adjust the output to match the input if needed.

I found out later UAD have provided a preset pretty close to what I just described, called 'Is this thing on'. Well, great minds....!

Other very useful plug ins include the Pultec EQ's, and the classic Fairchild limiter.

With the Pultec, many times just running a mix through produces magic (and, of course sometimes not – always use your ears!)

Another magic spot on the Pultec is a subtle gentle and wide boost at 8 kHz. This can open many mixes that may lack air or clarity.

The UAD Fairchild is another 'magic box' when just running a mix through it. A nice volume boost I like to use is mid-side compression. This can put a nice glue to vocals, and the rhythm tracks. All you need is just around 1 dB of reduction. After applying the make up gain, the extra perception of volume that also comes from an un-compressed side element, gives the bonus of a more open soundstage.

Again this is used only when it actually benefits the mix!

I've been finding recently that the LA2A can work quite well on light acoustic mixes; again just a gentle 1 – 2dB reduction (which really should be the norm for most mastering work), does wonders for giving a track a little extra body.

The Neve 33069 has nice gain enhancement with its built harmonics. However this plug in is a real power hog, using around 70 per cent of the card's processing power. For mastering, all that's left for a basic mastering chain is the Precision EQ (just 3 bands!) and the UAD Limiter.

The new UAD-2 card exponentially increases the processing power available. Existing in 3 versions, it resolves the consumption problem demonstrated by the Neve compressor and allow more complex and intensive modelings of choice analog gear.

No doubt this upped quality level convinced the long time hold-out, the Manley company to finally allow UAD to model some of their components.

This forward step from UAD plug ins indicates the progress constantly being made with mastering software.

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