I’ve started looking at alternatives to my Universal Audio plugins. And here’s why.

Steinberg is adding to the pile of me switching to Mac completely since Cubase 5 doesn’t work at a satisfactional level on my PC, but is working beautiful on my Mac. Since I don’t want to spend money on a Mac Pro all the plugins needs to be native, or use an external box like the SSL Duende. The UAD-2 Solo/Laptop won’t work since Apple decided to not include the PC card slot on the 13″ and 15″ MacBook Pro models so I’m more, or less, looking at the paradigm shift of leaving Universal Audio behind.

I’ve downloaded the PSP Xenon since they listened to the criticism and releaseed the plugin without the iLok dongle protection. A rather unexpected move, but very welcomed. As regular readers know, I’m running a 64 bit Windows Vista installation on my stationary DAW and I’ve got both Cubase 4 (32 and 64 bit versions) and Cubase 5 (native 64 bit version) installed. I first installed the 32 bit version of Xenon, which didn’t appear in any of the Cubase versions I’m running. I then uninstalled it and installed the 64 bit version of Xenon, which only appeared in the 64 bit versions of Cubase – but crashed the VSTbridge upon loading the plugin. Steinberg says they’ve developed the VSTbridge in the upcoming Cubase version 5.5 which will be released in the second quarter of 2010 - and I can’t wait!

PSP Xenon works beautiful on my Mac running OS X 10.6.2 and Cubase 5.1.1 and it’s not the only thing which works neat on the Mac and not the Windows cousin, hence the switch towards a Mac-only platform and that’s why I’ve started to compile a list of alternatives to my favourite plugins.

UAD plugin Alternative
Cambridge Sonalksis SV-517 mk2, DMG Audio Equality
Fairchild
Pultec-Pro
1176LN Softube FET Compressor
LA2A
LA3A
Realverb-Pro Steinberg REVerence
EMT 140
Precision Limiter PSP Xenon, Sonalksis MaxLimit
Precision Maximizer
Precision Multiband Sonalksis MultiLimit
Roland CE-1 Audio Damage Fluid
Roland Dimension D Is there any at all?
Roland RE-201
Helios Type 69
Neve 88RS SSL Console Channel Strip
SPL Transient Designer SPL Transient Designer

I know that REVerence isn’t really the same thing as the RealVerb-Pro, but it’s a quite nice reverb effect and I like the addition that it reads impulse response files. It actually completes my needs of a reverb. I would, however, love to try out the Space Designer which ships with Logic.

I’m no fan of copy protection as they only tend to add problems rather than solving piracy. Here are the reasons why SPL uses the iLok protection:

“There are a few reasons why we use the iLok system. Primarily to protect our customers against piracy. Thus the purchase of an Analog Code plug-in from SPL is a safe investment.

Furthermore, the iLok software protection is very common in the audio industry. You can dispose of a very broad range of products with one single protection system.”

(source http://www.spl.info/en/software/ilok-information.html)

A quick search on the Internet shows clearly that the iLok actually didn’t help protecting against piracy at all. I can’t really see in what way that I’m protected. If I lose my dongle, my insurance company have told me that they will replace the donlge itself but not the licenses stored on it. If the plugin therefore is not protected by iLok (or Syncosoft) I can just install it again from a backup and be ready to continue to work.

I don’t mean to bash at SPL as they’re bringing top notch quality hardware and software to us, music producers, but they just happened to be caught by my eye.

So, my point being is that copy protections are adding problems and not protecting users at all but on the other hand cause more expenses and head-ache.

I’ll keep this post up to date with my findings, so tune back in if you’re in the same boat as me or just curious. I’ll try out Softube, SoundToys, SPL and WaveArts to start with, and I guess I have to invest in an iLok dongle too…