Comparing a Unison (UAD) plugin to my real Avalon 737 

You're back! I've missed this channel so much

At first i thought A sounds a bit crisper and B more muffled, but in the end i think i did not hear any difference. Very impressive!

Thank you for the review! The differences are very subtle and when you compare price of plugin vs hardware, it’s incredible how far we’ve come!

Sir, this was brilliant! I love the integrity you had to record the same source audio. I did guess correctly, ironically just because of the slightly higher frequencies that I heard coming through. I was more than halfway through your test and listening intently to make a guess about it. It was just that though, a guess, because they sound so similar I had to go out on a whim. Thanks for doing this! Please keep making more videos.

Top notch comparison ! not everybody does a null test. Subscribing right now. Thanks !

@3:45 this is PERFECT. Every A/B test has to be like this. sound only. great job!

It's always great to hear from you :). I didn't hear any difference with my monitors … though obviously there's been a lot of audio compression involved between the record and the video reaching me, which might influence the result. It's really amazing how close these are, especially from your spectrum analysis.

Been looking out for a video from you for a while. Appreciate this though.

You saved me a ton of money. Thank you. Most excellent in detail and much appreciated.

Amazing this comparison 👏 Thanks for sharing it. Much love 💕 Matthias 👋

Good shit bro!!! I appreciate this! You've convinced me to jump back into the uad world!

Leo. I must say. I LOVE your transparency. Really refreshing, I was tempted to invest in a hardware Avalon but now......hmmmmm....I love UAD Plugins. Best by a mile compared to other plugins. Really excellent content. Thanks for sharing. Subcribed

thanks for this video! I notice those little differences you describe and wow! I think I will go for the plug-in! will stay around...

What an amazing video. Great work, thank you for making this.

Hardware lowend to low mids are super creamy & sexier/pleasing to my ear & the plug is very transparent sounding which i consider that a plugin sound in general vs a hardware. It was a personal big difference for me & instantly guessed it right. This is the best review ever as well thank you man!

And yet there are some proclaiming all over the place that there is no comparison to the hardware. Over and over and over. This was great. Thank you.

I picked it because I felt there is a slightly warmer tube fizz on B but it’s so slight I thought I was not going to be surprised if I was wrong. Wow. I just picked up this plugin. Awesome test. Thanks!

This video convinced me to buy a Solo and will pick up the 737 plugin once the sale price makes sense to me. Thank you fo such a great video.

Although the results are extremely close I couldn't decide which one I preferred at first....until I finally went for A, which to my ears sounded a bit more open and a little less muddy...I was positive A was the hardware until you actually gave out the results....wow....this is not the first time I go for the UAD version of a hardware after doing a blind test, that happened to the Neve 2254 E as well...I've been demoing the Avalon for a few days now trying to decide whether I should buy it or not, until I watched this. It's a no-brainer really! So thank you so much for putting this together, you've just made my day!

Great video man!

I hear a big difference. I've only used plugin preamps thus far, and A has this warm, sugar coating that I get when I used Unison, so figured (hoped) A was the plugin (so I don't have to shell out on hardware). Thanks for taking a real scientific approach.

great review

Excellent!! This video is great!

It seems to me when I focused on the S and T sounds in your speech, the hardware recording sounded like it had less treble, the UAD recording sounded brighter with more pronounced and clear S and T sounds. I guess some could also describe this difference by saying hardware is more "warm" or UAD is more "fuzzy". Amazing how close it is.

Former 737 owner here and I had it for a good number of years. When UA released the 737 model I was slightly hesitant to try it out but did it anyway. Once I did, i immediately put up my hardware for sale cos the differences was so close that I couldn't justify having the hardware in my rack, that kinda frees up some cash for me to get the Ultimate 10 bundle from UA. Yes there are differences and tubes over the course of time and nearer to its end of life does change the sound of the hardware to some degree, I've had dead tubes in my 737 before and have changed them out and it sounds different after the new tubes are in. Other than that, great video and good work!

Having done a number of these tests between hardware and software, and owning a 737, I was able to tell which was hardware /software on first listen. There is a noticeable difference. Even blinded I can hear these differences and correctly guess which is which take is playing with 100% accuracy. The difference is primarily in the high end, or possibly the transients. To me the Apollo sound brighter in the upper frequency range. If you cant hear it, it possible that your monitors are too dark the hear that level of detail in the higher frequencies. Also the age of the tubes (old, new?) were not mentioned, so that is another factor that can affect the sound of the hardware unit. Newer tubes have more high end detail, older tubes usually less. Also it would have been good to see the EQ and extremes of the plugin vs the hardware tested, because that's where you see if a digital emulation really compares to hardware.

Thank you for making it clear to people that recording back and forth between plug-in and hardware will always have different results in tone. It is almost impossible to keep your mouth in the same exact position. Case in point. Try doing a song in multiple days. Try singing the verse on separate days and tell me what you have?

Great information! you are a jewel my friend.

I'm at 6:44. A seems an just a very slight amount warmer and more "fuzzy" (in a pleasing way) B sounds cleaner and clearer to me. Listening through an 12AX7 loaded Argon HA2 amp with a pair of Denon AH-D5000. Edit: Danm, it's good to have you back, bud!

I have the hardware and the plug-in and know the hardware very well. The pre amp is very close and they matched the feel very well. It’s a pre that’s very easy to recognize and I recognized the color instantly with the plug-in. Where the hardware really outshines is the eq and hi gain knob color. Especially on bass and low mids. If you take the “big vocal” preset from Mike Deans folder and match that setting on the hardware with Hi Gain on, that’s the best sound I’ve gotten out of the hardware and you can really hear the difference between the software and hardware with that preset.

Heeeey Leo. Cool video. Would be so interesting to do the same with the LA-2 (hehe now u need to purchase that). I use it on everything. New desk looks fire!!

I heard the difference right away. And knew the hardware was B. Quickest way to tell is listen for blocky-ness of the interface preamp vs the rounded smooth sound of dedicated hardware preamp. Volume levels during talking also stay more consistent from word to word on the real preamp. Great comparison and video man.

Good stuff. I highly recommend you get a pop filter!

Thanks Leo. I appreciated the effort made to make the video as distraction-free as possible. How did you make your animated audio visualization? Also, FWIW, I heard the opposite of many others. I though the difference in the top end was cleaner and more detailed on the Apollo. There will be a big different in people's preferences based on the kind of work they produce. For VO and narration that top end detail can be important.

You can still use your PCIe QUAD card via a Sonnettech PCIe enclosure. Also - though you can hear differences - I don't think it matters. You'd likely hear differences between two Avalon 737s the same as I have when using two different Neve 1073 preamps. Nice video.

I'm blown away !!!!!

非常棒的比較!

Listening to it, for maybe about the 1st 60%, I thought they were indistinguishable. After a while, I noticed that when it went back to A, it sounded duller. B sounded clearer, more open, and possibly toppier on the high end - or perhaps just less diffuse. I'm listening on HS8's, so they're pretty accurate. I'd like to know if both went through the same pre; or what each was. I take it you used the built-in UAD pre, but if you said what other pre you were using, I missed it.

Question ? Were you using the high end button on the plug-in ? Cause that alone adds like 4db to the signal And were you using Line or Mic

this is a brilliant video

THANK YOU

I thought A was better to my ears and thought A was hardware.. Wow, plugin seems amazing ..

Awesome comparison. There is a diferrence, but it's veeeeeeery small. Very close indeed.

Hi Leo That was a very informative study you have done...... fabulous attention to detail. Thank you! One question......please? I actually have a pair of 737s, but have recently bought a UA X4 interface, and wondered which were the most important plugins that I should aim at buying? I am asking UA users for their views on this. I realise that my choices will depend on what I need to do musically, but a general overview would be handy. Thanks again for your presentation.

Hey Leo. Loved the video. Quick question to you…printing through the daw with UAD plug-ins VS printing through Unison technology? Can you quickly let me know if there’s a difference? I use studio one and there’s an option for me to print through the input (somewhat like unison) and I wanted to know if it’s the same or if there’s any difference what so ever

I can't describe it, but B ever so slightly had this smoothness to it. It almost felt compressed somehow in a very clean way. The A felt just a bit muddier. But sooooo close! Hanging out for Black Friday to hopefully pick up a deal on the UAD 737.

So my question is can I just hook my analog cl1b up to my Apollo Quad 8 with out buying a preamp and just use the unison preamp and if so how do I bring that in do I bring that in as a mic input or line in Or do you think it would be better to just buy a analog pre amp and if so for rap vocals which pre do you think would be better for rap vocals 1. Neve 1073 Spx 2. Avalon 737 3. Neve 1073 mpf Bae with Eq

I was right from the beginning of the video, and the hardware sounds better. I say that as a UAD x4 owner and someone who prefers to work mostly in the box for convenience.

Best avalon uad comparison. Thanks. I preferred the unison with eq and comp and the hardware as preamp. I think the plugin was dialed in better. But they are.close enough to not care about he hardware.

Interesting. There are some differences but not to the point where I think you couldn’t get something much more similar with some tweaks or some additional EQ on the plug-in. But more important to that is I think you could use either to get a great sound. They may not sound the same exactly, but they don’t need to either.

@leomakes can you compare the unison version vs the native plugin version?

Nice! I could tell wich one was wich from the first seconds (B had some clearer higher frequencies) but once you activated the EQ and compressor the difference became close to nothing. Pretty amazing when you think about it.

Can you show your setting on the plug-in

I could be biased because I have the hardware too BUT I've used the hardware for so long I was able to tell by this: As soon as the test began I picked B without knowing and I kept listening. Interestingly what stood out for me was the clarity in the emphasis of the ahs and ehms and the beginning of your words followed by a much dense rumble in your voice. I could also tell by the lack of "digital sheen" in B. Now in a musical context would it matter or make any difference? IMHO, it's the increments of the small things down the line that make up for a better picture overall. BUT!! I can't sit here and say you can't get a great sound out of the plugin. Choose your weapon...

I was able to point out which was which. I heard more high frequency digital sizzle on the plugin. Very close indeed though!

I picked out B as the hardware but both sounded great. The main thing I noticed was some extra midrange in the plugin that made the vocal sound a bit harder and less lush than the hardware IMO. The difference was not huge though and could be EQ'd to match.

Find a used eGPU thunderbolt box and add your card to your Mac Mini. I use a Sonnet enclosure and they work great.

I chose A, thanks God I didn't pull the trigger on a real Avalon a long time ago and instead I chose a Neve Clone (Heritage TT73). Now I have the Avalon pluggin from UAD and I know I'm covered, but to be honest I think I could turn off my TT73 and I'm still covered cause their 1073 and 1084 pluggins are very good as well. Thanks for the review.

Excellent Thanks

you try this on the native plugins?

That tiny bit becomes a lot when compressed and polished. There’s also a mushy frequency around 800hz in the plug in that the hardware doesn’t have.

Came here expecting to hear a nulled example, especially since you then go on to show a screenshot of the result!

Plug-ins have came a LONG way...💪💯👍🔥

I read everywhere that the 737 is switchable between 850/2000 ohms of input impedance, but how do you switch between these?

UAD emulations are band limited to 30Khz. That may be the reason why the hardware has more high end information. Other than that - extremely impressive. And considering the price difference it's unbelievable.

I didn´t know which one was which, but I liked the sound of B more than A every single time.

Non-audiophile here, I couldn't hear any difference between the two! This was really fun to try and figure out which was which while hearing about how the test was conducted. Gave my brain a good workout

what about a half normal patchbay to split your signal?

Very subtle in the high frequencies in B that's why I could tell that it was the hardware, But A sounded clean and nice a bit too much that's why I could tell it was the plug in. Other than that it was identical with the low end, and mids.

I own an Avalon. did you make sure to warm up the unit at least 1.5 hours before testing? there is a significant differece after is been warned up

Before seeing the results I’m going to say I prefer B because I hear more detail and depth. I’m also an Apollo user but still track trough a Daking pre and WA76 Comp for vocals and sounds wonderful. Great video btw!

I heard it right away. B=Hardware. Ive had this Avalon Pre and TLM 103 combo since the 90's so I know the sound very well. Besides listening to frequency response I also listen for dynamics, front to back effect and size of the sound field. The hardware sounds more open and free with that sweet subtle back throat grit that makes it sound like the vocalist is in in front of you. As for the plugin the frequency is very close but sounds a bit flat and constrained and slightly colder. With this test your low mid voice frequencies definitely came out at you more on the hardware then with the plugin. To me the magic of analog is that sense of dimension you get and openness. Those analog qualities ad up beautifully in a recording and mix. Thank you for taking the time to do this. Great test.

Yes, it's a beautiful desk I would just add a larger monitor though

very close but B has a clarity at louder volume, less weighty if that's a word to use

this is crazy !

I did Hear a lil a was louder but honestly the plug in passes the test

I could hear the differences between the two and I really preferred the hardware. Granted the difference is not huge so you can save money and just use the plug in version. However when you start adding multiple tracks with a real 737, now the difference becomes even more noticeable with each additional track that you use it for. Plus the hardware is more fun to work with compared to using your mouse.

I heard a small difference before switching in the compressor but afterwards there’s no real difference. Another way to check is to flip the polarity of one and send them both to the output. What’s left is the difference between the two.

bravo

version b has more low end to me but both sound really good

It’s weird the a and B test felt like the B was more mellow , then once you revealed the results I did notice the hardware having more high end before you mention it, it wasn’t really noticeable prior though, prior the hardware was more rolled off on the top it seemed but then after the reveal it was more airy ontop? Confusing lol

What mic were you using

Well, listening on iphone spekears…”A” sounded more dynamic 🤔 i heard more attack and body. And I’m a hardware fanboy. Maybe a lil’bit harsh, but I liked A. They both sound great, but if you are not stacking tracks upon tracks of audio rec., I say you can save 3000$

yea its close, but those little difference doin the magic especially in a mix I think, for example I've got a an 6176 if I try to emulate it on plugins with uad console it sounds nothing like the real thing for my ears.

I have a thunderbolt pci-e chassis that I can use my uad octo card when someone brings a laptop into the studio

I'm not going go lie, I wasn't sure, I went back and forth on which one was the hardware.... and I've owned high end gear from Prism Sound, RME, Apogee, Antelope....etc. I have custom high end tube mics and analog gear....and still, I couldn't definitively tell which was which.

I noticed the extra high end right away but oddly enough I thought it was the plugin. UAD

Any difference that I hear could have been more profound between 2 individual analog units. I have the UAD version. It is my go-to for acoustic guitar and woodwinds. Great plugin, and much cheaper (and space efficient) than the hardware.

it's a big difference and it will become more noticeable when you stack tracks....

I've noticed the highee frequency difference right away, but it's negligible

Interestingly enough I guessed correctly that B was the hardware because it sounds a bit warmer. The top end is a bit more rounded off which to my ears is a positive thing for a TLM103 (based on what I've heard, I haven't personally used it). However, the difference is so subtle that I'd much rather go UAD (despite it sounding every so slightly worse to my ears) because of the flexibility and the ability to instantly recall presets. However, I won't deny that using analog hardware looks like more fun and it DOES sound better.

Its a slight more high end in the b recording. nothing i couldn't do with a plugin that can add it.

I here more breath in example A, which did sound louder maybe crisp to some. But Def more air/or more breath to the voice in example A.

the difference is in price only, that is the most important point..

I wonder if you could have purchased a Thunderbolt-3 PCIe expansion chassis and simply moved the old UA PCIe card in it. If so, it would have been the equivalent of a UA Satellite for $300-ish.

Thought A was the hardware, but they are very similar.

night and day: B! But If the uad was then monitored through a summing mixer with the emulation passing from uad Apollo out into a channel of the summing mixer (and monitoring from the summing mixers speaker outs) , it would be very close I reckon (and the gear not summed through summing mixer but fed into its external input to bypass the summing. Interesting though... definitely sounds similar but night and day still.

i still believe in the hardware but i love the plugins too.

Hmmm. The A sounded a little more flat frequency wise, while B had a little more low mids, making it sound slightly less clear. It was obvious. Not sure how they could completely cancel. Maybe you would need to phase test the RU-vid versions of the files. That type of audible difference has been experience with UAD vs hardware. This test further reinforced and confirmed it.

Great! I thought A was a but warm, more ‘boomy’… or so…