Universal Audio Unveils UAD-1E Express Pak And UAD-1E Expert Pak PCI Express DSP Card & Powered Plug-Ins

Universal Audio has announced the UAD-1e Express PAK and UAD-1e Expert PAK, PCI Express DSP Cards & Powered Plug-Ins. The UAD-1e Express PAK (US$499 street) and Expert PAK (US$999 street) will both ship in Q3 2006 bundled with UA's core 15 free Mix/Gtr FX plug-in suite plus a UAD$100 (Express) and UAD$750 (Expert) voucher that customers can use to pick and purchase UA plug-in authorizations online.

"The UAD-1e Express PAK and Expert PAK offer DAW users with new PCIe-based Mac/PC computers access to UA's DSP-powered and sonically superior mixing and mastering plug-ins." said Mike Barnes, VP of Marketing for Universal Audio. "This is the first big milestone in our UAD strategy to offer a wider range of UAD solutions, help our customers cross-grade to new systems and give them total flexibility to choose precisely which plugs they actually want at the UA online store - my.uaudio.com."

Key Features include:

• UAD-1e Express PAK ($499 with UAD$100 plug-in voucher for my.uaudio.com)
• UAD-1e Expert PAK ($999 with UAD$750 plug-in voucher for my.uaudio.com)
• UAD-1 & UAD-1e can be used together seamlessly in the same system
• Cross-grade UAD$ voucher program for existing UAD-1 users who buy a new UAD-1e. Customers keep their UAD-1 & purchase an Express PAK for an extra UAD$100 voucher, or purchase an Expert PAK for an extra UAD$250 voucher.

"The PCI Express (PCIe) bus offers exceptional performance, lower system overhead, and higher reliability for low-latency audio signal processing while allowing us to maintain software compatibility with legacy PCI and PCI-X systems." stated Joe Bryan, VP of Technology. "This approach allows users to mix and match UAD-1 and UAD-1e cards in any combination for maximum flexibility. The PCIe bus and ExpressCard system interfaces are vastly superior to other high-speed interconnects, and allow us to run many more channels (up to 254 channels per card), operate reliably at higher sample rates, and offer much more powerful DSP expansion than alternatives using FireWire or EtherNet. Put simply, PCIe is the professional solution."

About the UAD-1 (PCI) & UAD-1e (PCIe) DSP Cards:

At the heart of every UAD DSP Card & Powered Plug-Ins bundle is the same revolutionary UAD DSP technology. Because of its high resolution, floating-point processing, ultra high-speed memory and hardware dithering, the UAD-1 delivers outstanding high-headroom sound quality at sample rates from 32 to 192kHz. Unlike other DSP cards, the UAD-1 uses a single, unpartitioned vector processor, allowing for larger and more sophisticated plug-in algorithms. These algorithms offer a new level of power and complexity not found with host-based plug-ins. By reducing the burden on the computer's CPU, the host DAW application can deliver more tracks, automation and native effects or instruments.