CRAS AES was honored to invite Brandon and Dave from Universal Audio to talk about the history and current adventures of UA. Dave went over the history of UA, It started with Bill Putnam Sr. in the 1950's with analog devices, and then was sold. Eventually Bill Putnam Jr. bought UA, and began making Digital Signal Processing devices, eventually moving into making plugins. Dave told the story of his time here at CRAS after UA released a distressor plugin. UA had paired with empirical labs to release an accurate plugin version of their distressor. Dave and an instructor did an Null test with the plugin, and the outboard gear. They were so close that they had 95% cancellation. Dave mentioned that UA does more than make a sounds-like plugin, they actually go in and mimic the circuitry of the original gear, in order to make as close of a replica as possible. Dave then turned it over to Brandon. Brandon talked about his experience on plugin replicas allowing him to know what to expect when interacting with the hardware in a studio. He also showed us the Apollo Software paired with a sphere mic. The Sphere has 38 mics that it can mimic. It is a dual capsule, so it can mimic 2 different mics at the same time, or it can be used as a stereo mic. The Apollo software also allows for mics to have any polar pattern, even if the original mics do not have different polar patterns. This can be done after the fact as a plugin, or in real time. Brandon emphasized the versatility, and the uniqueness of the Sphere. He also showed us the other mics that UA offers, showing an A/B comparison of the mics on the same gtr track. He also showed us SoundCity, which is a plugin that is offered as a part of Spark.We got a look into the synths that UA offers as well as a part of spark. Brandon showed us the sphere software, and showed us how you can blend different mics to create wholly unique sounds. Dave brought CRAS Teaching Assistant Cliff Graham to talk about his experience with UA equipment, and he spoke very highly of the UA gear that he had with him, especially the Unison preamps. He also was very complimentary of the portability of the UA gear he had worked with. The next AES meeting will return to our normal format on Monday 4/11. Thank you Brandon and Dave for sharing so much about Universal Audio with us!
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