User Manual

UAD Powered Plug-Ins Manual - 33 - Chapter 3: UAD System Overview
CHAPTER 3
UAD System Overview
The UAD Environment
The complete UAD Powered Plug-Ins environment consists of many compo-
nents. These components are:
• One or more UAD DSP hardware cards
• The UAD card drivers
• The UAD plug-ins
• The host computer system
• The plug-in host application software
• An audio I/O interface and its drivers
All these components operate together simultaneously within one computer to
form the complete audio processing system.
The other UAD component is your account at my.uaudio.com (page 41) and
the UA online store, where UAD cards are registered, UAD vouchers are re-
deemed, and UAD plug-in licenses and authorizations are obtained. Al-
though my.uaudio.com is not required during normal system use, it is essen-
tial for initializing the overall UAD system because authorization is required
to use UAD-Powered Plug-Ins (see “Authorization Overview” on page 42).
The UAD Hardware
The UAD DSP (Digital Signal Processing) hardware cards provide the
“power” behind UAD Powered Plug-Ins. Most of the UAD plug-ins use ex-
tremely complex algorithms to provide the quality sound and accurate mod-
eling Universal Audio is famous for. The UAD processor engines are signifi-
cantly more optimized to perform the complex DSP routines required for these
algorithms than a standard desktop computer CPU can deliver.
Two main UAD card “families” are available: UAD-2 and UAD-1. Each card
family has its own set of drivers which are specified during UAD software in-
stallation. All UAD card types can be used in either Windows or Macintosh
computers that meet the system requirements (the cards are identical for both
OS platforms).