UAD Sound City Studios Plug‑In
Customer Reviews
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.
y. yamada
Sound city studio Plugin is a masterpiece. but,,,
UAD is not just dishonest with its regular customers. I feel angry at the way the sale was conducted. I won't buy it again until it's under $39. If you don't do this, you will lose a lot of money. I would be grateful if you could reconsider your management strategy. This review was written with the feeling of "help me". However, all products are masterpieces.
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.
A. Bergmann
What for?
I'm not going to buy expensive hardware just to have UAD waving this native rubbish under my nose and taking me for a fool.
You haven't done your homework.
Fire the sales strategist and think about it!
Keep it up and your customer base is gone!
M. Gillausseyn
NATIVE ONLY! WTF!
Great plug-in... But runs NATIVE ONLY which completely defeats the purpose of paying a premium price for a product that is supposed to give my CPU extra head room. The fact that they don't even make it clear before purchase is completely disingenuous behavior that you would not expect from a company with such a large and loyal user base. So angry, so disappointed. Shame on you UAD.
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!
s. muraki
UAD's fundamental marketing logic failure
Does UAD want to continue developing products for professionals and users who want to make good music, or did they stop improving quality and development, temporarily increase new users, and cut off professional users?
I have no idea what strategy UA will use in the future to develop products, secure sales, and acquire users.
If I were a UA employee, I would definitely leave UA. And if this strategy continues, professionals and users looking for good sound will no longer choose UAD.
Fire incompetent marketing leaders.
You will be giving away your best asset, which you have spent over 10 years building up, just for a temporary sale.
Eliminate the fake marketing department and restore the best software development department in the history of the original product development-driven hardware manufacturer.
If this continues, UA will definitely collapse.
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.
