API Hardware vs UAD Software Shootout Part 1

In this first video of the three part series, we'll take a look at all the technical considerations for this comparison and go through our signal chain piece by piece. I've loaded up our API The Box 2 Console with a pair of 550b EQ's and will utilize the built in pair of 527 compressors to create a signal chain just like the one found in the larger API Vision Consoles that Universal Audio has copied for their API Unison Plugin channel strip.

We'll go through the similarities and differences between each part of the hardware chain and how we're able to track through Hardware and Software simultaneously in order to achieve as close of a comparison as possible. You'll be able to hear the API Hardware and UAD Software side by side with similar settings and understand the matching process before we tackle the full tracking session in the next video.

Although this is essentially an introduction into the video series, it's important to understand the process and all the steps that are being taken to insure this is an accurate process moving forward. My goal is to provide you with the most thorough and helpful video possible so that you can hear for yourself the differences between hardware and software. This will be the best Analog vs Digital video you've seen. At the end of this video series, we'll have a full production start to finish not only showing tracking, but also the mixing process as we'll mix the hardware files through the API Console and the digital files through Universal Audio's API Summing modules inside their Luna DAW.


Timestamps

0:00 Introduction
3:39 Acoustic Guitar Description
4:32 Preamp Comparison
5:17 Preamp Consideration
7:04 EQ Comparison
7:53 EQ Considerations
10:09 Compressor Comparison
11:17 Compressor Considerations
15:05 Analog vs Digital Time Alignment
16:49 Outro