UAD Sound City Studios Plug‑In
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UAD Sound City Studios Plug-In
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F. Schoffelen
A room with a sound
As an old time user of Ocean Way to pep up recordings in a small dry mix room I was curious about this one.
//Room & Mics
Quite a bit more tools but also fewer microphone-settings. On my stuff it imparts a good room-sound which can turn a bit boomy when certain low frequencies are overly present in the original : Pre-Eq to the rescue or the internal EQ module ( although that is very limited in variability). I will rarely use the mono microphones and I wonder a bit that there are more MONO mics than STEREO field mics. Especially on the close mics. I love the sound of the Ribbons but mono? Why restrict that so much when you're at it ?
//Dynamics // EQ
I like the variety of dynamics processors where the dolby one is my favourite at this time, second would be the AIR setting. I wish the dynamics module would not default to "crush" though, as that is rarely needed in my line of music ( acoustic & acoustic VI's) . The EQ is a bit minimalistic but of course that is easily resolved by any EQ in a DAW or in Console.
//Stereo field //
When I use it on quite wide stereo acoustic recordings ( stereo Neumanns panned ) I can hear the stereo field of the recording become A LOT SMALLER or tighter. Even with the WIDE setting on the added Reverb-Room module and selecting the C414 stereo close mics and the stereo room mics. You get the room and the mic-placement : you can't change the placement in "wide-ness" as you could ( a bit) in Ocean Way. This has been brought up in other reviews and I guess it is something that can present a problem. I am going to try to do parallel with this and give the complimentary channel just the original side-signal. If phase coherence permits...
// Native-ness
I wish it was usable in console as well. I use Ocean Way there and it does work nicely also for printing. Please UAD : make it APOLLO as well. On my 16 core Mac I don't notice any big impact using 5 of these but I can understand that a lot of people would.
// Sales
As I bought it in a special 2 for 99$ pack so omnipresent during the BF to NY sales frenzy it was a no-brainer for me. Please offer 2 for 1 deals retrospectively to people who bought if of the bat only days or even weeks before sales. It is good customer-binding.
To sum it up : Great plugin and welcome addition to the kind of Plugins that Universal Audio does so well : Room and Equipment virtualisation.
M. Koprak
Great room! Versatilities as you wish
Great room! Versatilities as you wish
E. Nerva
Great sound, but very cpu hungry
You would want to use multiple instances in a mix to get the most out of this realistic-sounding reverb. That way, you could make use of the source-dependent algorithms. However, the CPU usage is through the roof, even by UAD standards. Other people I've spoken to have the same issue. Unfortunately, after 15 minutes of testing I replaced it with my usual go-to's. Hopefully, they will bring some optimizations with future updates.
Z. Toman
Native only
As always, the plugin sounds good, but the native-only option is disappointing. It seems that UA is slowly abandoning the hardware, and professional users in general, for the cash cow that is the casual home user. I don't mean that as a disparaging to casual users. Rather, both groups have different needs. I need to have the ability to run plugins on the way in, on the Apollo, as part of my workflow.
And with the constant sales and price drops, what is a UA plugin truly worth in late 2023/early 2024? I never minded the price, as long as I got the absolutely best plugins money could buy. But is that what we're getting? Is Sound City up to the standard of the classic Ocean Way? I'm not sure.
J. Castro
UA what's going on? No Native?
I spent a lot of money to have DSP power now, this is Native only? come on guys what's happening? also your Customer Service/Technical Support is terrible nowdays. If you continue like this, you're going to lose a lot of your fan/customer base and become just like an regular low quality plugin company
A. Skage
Turns your little village into sound city
Flexibility for days, sweet sounding ambiences and reverb . Highly tweekable room solution for pop rock productions . Love it.
D. Lawrence
People need to stop
For years everyone complained about UAD not being Native. Now they finally did it and people are one starring a pristine plugin. What is wrong with people? THIS PLUGIN IS PERFECT. Do your self a favor and disregard the stars. The low overall rating is due to people angry that they missed a sale or that the plugin does not run on UA DSP.
c. chamberlain
SoundCity
As a longtime OceanWay user I felt I knew what to expect. As much as I dig OW, SC is a major surprise. Really well done. Great room, with certainly more obvious character than OW which is a wonderful purpose built room that is way more subtle. With SoundCity that sound is there on default. Great tweak ability to shape any sound source. I love drums in there. Ditto acoustic piano (so far). Very nice on acoustic guitar/electric guitar. Really good on multi voice harmonies. It’s OK on lead vocals but that might be my problem getting there and not the plugin. Thanks Team UA… I will be using it a lot going forward.
E. Montoya
Fantastic reverb
This makes my acoustic track sound professional. Thanks UA for creating another wonderful plugin, thanks also for the sale. Great job!
S. Batten
Be careful. The stereo imaging is really weird.
Initially was very impressed……then after playing with it on a parallel drum buss it does weird stuff, and the snare disappears……and it does something really wrong in the stereo imaging…..hit the mono button and see how much phase it kills. Use very very sparingly. It also adds an ugly low end boom to everything.
H. Yong
Apollo Version?
Great plug in.
Will there be a version that works with Apollo ?
.
Sound City / Scam City
Bought this plugin at my “discounted” offer. Then UA dropped the two for 99 offer. When I contacted them to see if there was a way to maybe take advantage of the new offer, they have ghosted me for over a week. A no is fine, but maybe rolling me in to the two plug-in deal would be way cooler. But you’d have to respond to emails in a timely manner for that to be an option. Great plugs. Terrible Customer Service.
P. Carbonaro
ripoff
charged me full price and a day later put plugins on sale. not happy
K. Kelley
Nice!
Very Kool!
C. Allen
First use: Wow! Just Wow!
I've been a long-time user and appreciator of Ocean Way Studio's room plugin. But this Sound City Studios plugin is NEXT LEVEL! I initially brought in some pro-mixed drums (from purchased studio multi-tracks). A few tweaks and the improvement was near instantaneous. With familiarity with OWS, I found it quite intuitive to make adjustments. The dynamics section is a nice bonus! Making it unnecessary to add additional plugins. This is truly one-stop shopping for room drums optimization!
G. Hudson
Didn't bother!!
I was going to buy this and another in the last offer, until I realised it's native only.
I have a new I9 12core with 64gb of ddr5 ram so no issues running this plugin, but I also have an apollo quad and octo and quad pcie cards .
Why did I buy these UA, if I can't use my expensive hardware on new released. plugins .
Another really annoyed loyal customer, who feels let down because you're now chasing the native subscription market.
E. ARRUDA
Sound City gives a slight flavor of Dolby Atmos scenery.
I already owned Ocean Way Studios. There has been progress in some different features included in Sound City. Judging by Sound City's beautiful sound, I think UAD missed the chance to develop a plugin in this category to operate in a Dolby Atmos scenario. Btw, UAD is owing other tools for the Dolby Atmos scenario.
j. jorquera
Complemento Nativo
Me decepciona que no se puede utilizar con el satélite o con el DSP de un interfaz de Universal Audio. Ya no hay diferencia entre waves y UAD
E. LOPES DE OLIVEIRA
Great sound.
Got UAD complete....This plugin is amazing!
p. coultrup
blah plugin. cute ui, but does not sound good
i expect more from UAD i got this in a bundle and its just not good. The compressor in it is unique enough to use, but the room and mic emulations are no bueno. You can get better room tones with just random IR's from reddit. The eq and reverb are also not good. Eq is brittle in the top end, harsh and not musical. The lows lack impact and depth. Mids are just gross. Chamber reverb is 3/5 at best. If this is the way UAD is heading.... well, we'll see. im also a little disappointed in UAD in general right now because of their upgrade pricing / lack of customer loyalty, but oh well.