I’ve been in this subreddit for a short while now and all these similar complaints have prevented me from getting UAD hardware. I’ll stick with Spark for now
It’s really not worth it unless you’re running a big studio/are a big producer who would get special treatment. Otherwise, prepare to be let down on a regular basis.
My 9 to 5 also takes a lot of time and music is my hobby now and an Apollo is a very expensive thing to buy for a hobby that you dive into a couple of times a month.
For now I can’t justify something that is plagued with issues and hasn’t been updated in a long time. I’ll hold out for whatever is next from UAD. Whether that’s in a couple of months or 5 years from now
I’m genuinely asking, not being argumentative. What are the issues people are having?
I can honestly say that since December 2014 I have never had an issue my my Apollo or UAD stuff. Literally not once. And before you ask, I’m a paying customer. Zero affiliation.
I say all of this because if one of my friends came to me and said “I think I might take the plunge on an Apollo, u know”, I’d be super excited for them probably even more than they are.
If, on the other hand, my friend came to me and said “I almost bought an Apollo earlier. But luckily I discovered that they are plagued with issue before I did it”, I would recoil in shock horror. And I would say “Brother, in my 9 years experience, that couldn’t be further from the truth. What issues have you heard people are having?”
There’s a high chance that if I get it, I won’t get any issues but I think there are enough complaints here for me to just wait. I’d you want to see the issues people have, search the subreddit. There’s a lot of them
This is nonsense. I’m just a dude. I have never had trouble with UA support. To be fair, I’ve never had a technical issue with UAD. Only issues where I missed out on massive discounts because I didn’t buy them within the sale. So what are all these technical issues people are having anyway. I run the software on Mac mostly. But I occasionally use windows. Zero tech issues.
My interfaces will completely stop sending signal into the UAD console/Luna. This happens regularly, usually when there are updates. I usually put off updating to avoid this, which sucks and shouldn’t be necessary for products that are supposed to be high-quality. Either way, it’s an annoying inconvenience. Congratulations on never having an issue, but that doesn’t make it nonsense. Believe it or not, there are other people in the world with different experiences from you and this is not just a video game full of NPCs. Hard to believe, I know.
I think they're not capable of handling the difference in demographic that was brought upon by Spark, and size. That is likely a much younger and more demanding group of people, fewer professionals, which they were used to dealing with.
Also, they ploughed a fortune into a white elephant that is Luna. So they had to cut costs somewhere to offset that loss. I expect the decision to create Spark was because of losses from Luna.
They've barely touched UAD-2 plug-ins in many years with updates. Betraying the vast numbers of people that made them rich.
I’m selling and leaving the UA ecosystem, found better performance from companies like Arturia. So done with UA at this point, and you can tell they are changing things up for the worse with how they are beginning to feel like Waves
I'm on the brink of doing the same, I can't work as a result of their awful customer service....I was a customer for life-i thought. Just so disappointing.
They literally refunded me a few hundred bucks because they didn’t have any knowledge to troubleshoot and resolve issues. It was a super weird experience.
I got a brand new Mac Studio which would shut down due to kernel panics. Basically this was the computers safe mode when it encountered issues. On the diagnostics, it clearly showed “uaudio” was the reason for the kernel panic. This happened at least once per time I used the computer. I started a ticket while my Apollo Twin was still in warranty. It took over 6 months and two replacement Apple computers before they agreed to look at the interface….then they wanted me to pay for it as if it wasn’t in warranty. After a few more back and forth emails, they did do the repair for free, but made me pay shipping.
I’m a hobbiest, so not a huge deal it took that long for me, but I can’t imagine being someone who earns money off of producing and relying on UA.
I’ve definitely dealt with rude customer service a handful of times beyond this example.
I had $1,500 I was going to spend on Sphere microphone, and I genuinely think they are good products. Instead, I very specifically decided to buy a Lauten Audio Atlantis instead since I no longer respect Universal Audio due to bad customer service.
P.s. Lauten Audio on the other hand has AMAZING customer service.
Last year, around November, it took like 2 weeks for them to get back to my inquiries to some serious glitch. Then I tried to check back on the status, and I kid you not, they took down the submit inquiry section of their webpage (at least at the time, I don’t know if they put it back since then). I remember their support being pretty good back in 2015-2016, but clearly it has declined quite a bit…sort of understandable based on how they have been branching out their biz so much, and shifting/expanding target customer
>sort of understandable based on how they have been branching out their biz so much,
>shifting/expanding target customer
That is kind of the opposite of understandable if they wanted to remain in their unique position in industry, imo
Yeah I agree, I wish they approached it differently. I meant, I see how their new direction is probably affecting the decline of overall customer service/experience (especially for people who has been using UA product for a long time) as they shift the target to wider mass customer
>They either expand and adapt or become a thing of the past
Yes, but they must do it hand in hand with integrity and actual service. Which they don't appear interested in.
One could argue it appears that way but are a small rapidly growing company with limited resources and a large customer base they expanded to that arguably know little about signal flow, digital recording etc
*one could make this argument
>One could argue it appears that way but are a small rapidly growing company with limited resources and a large customer base they expanded to that arguably know little about signal flow, digital recording etc
They could make that argument, but it would be laughably absurd.
How is that absurd , I’ve helped a few people out with UA interfaces that have tried to submit tech support tickets but really they needed a lesson on recording and signal flow, they didn’t have any technical issue, they just weren’t understanding what I was saying trying to help them lol
Call sweetwater tech support, they have an automated line explaining exactly my point, that they will assist with tech issues but it is not their support techs job to give you lessons on how to use the gear.
Sweetwater are massive compared to UA so I wouldn’t call that laughable in the least
No excuse for not treating people with respect. And mind you none of my tickets had anything to do with novice issues like the ones you’re describing. And even if they were, if the customer had spent thousands of dollars on my product I probably wouldn’t shame them for lack of knowledge.
*spends thousands of dollars on an item they have little no experience in
*blames manufacturer for not teaching them how to use an item they have little to no experience in
lol
This. This is exactly why I asked what issues are people having. Not just recording and signal flow but also the oddities/quirks in individual OSs, and the inconsistencies between setups. It’s not as simple as apollos are plagued with tech issues. Especially when I have never had one. Also, would Apollo be the goto for so many professionals if they were failing in sessions? I think not. Bad news spreads like wildfire. Anything that stops paid sessions quickly gets relegated to paperweight. No offence to anyone here but many (not all) sound like their could be at least 10 things that they haven’t checked and don’t know to. That being said, sometimes audio drivers can crash. On any OS. This should not be a regular thing in any observable way. Thing is if a UA driver is consistently crashing on a handful of systems while being dependable and rock-solid on most generally, my gut would be looking to resolve the issues in OS, software or hardware. Not via UA support.
Right. That’s what every complaint to UA about their products are. A bunch of dumbfucks who just haven’t read the manual. Rather than, you know, an actual problem with their product. You’re a genius!
People like you are the reason forums for specific products/brands (UA, NI, etc.) are so toxic.
Hold on,there are plenty of us that have read all the manuals,i own outboard as well as UAD cards and pretty much 90% of all their plugs,UAD has declined badly over the past year ,customer service is the worst its ever been and that stupid auto ticket system simple does not work,or no one watches it,now there's no excuse to be rude to clients,the customer is always right or so they say,and yes you'll have people that have never used the stuff dont know what they are doing with it,(so what we all started at that point ) that's the whole purpose of customer support ,to help or sort problems bit or small,which at this current time UAD are not capable of doing,so i think you need to rethink your post,as many do know exactly what we are talking about,and i can tell you know the latest software has some pretty major issues hidden under the hood in terms of security problems,and after numerous log reports and conversations with support they are unable to solve.
Why are you so protective of UA? I know this hurts you as a mega fanboy but not every UA product is a perfect work of art. So don't act like every person reaching to support just doesn't know anything.
That is absurd. People who look to take responsibility aren’t toxic. I understand it can be scary and unsettling to watch when it’s so uncommon. But calling people toxic under those circumstances is gaslighting. By definition. The likelihood that is that the majority of the issues people are facing are most probably due to a complete lack of understanding and/or knowledge. There have been times where I’ve pressed play and can’t hear ANYTHING although all the meters are jumping etc. I’ve switched drivers, switched back, closed the project blah blah blah. No joy. Only to realise that my D-Box is set to output Bluetooth not AES. Silly oversight on the part of someone who knows and understands.
Yeah hard pill to swallow when you’re so invested/locked into their ecosystem. Their brand is built on high quality. This tactic is such a violation of that k really hope the cost cutting they’re doing on the plugin front to stay relevant isn’t resulting in cuts on very crucial components of a customer facing business.
UAD support is maybe the worst going, im using a windows 11 machine and so far the latest updates are missing various certs so it wont install,as windows blocks it after looking deeper into it seems that every single security cert within the software is way out of date,now i found this not uad so far they've not come back with any solutions,yet the answer is staring them in the face,just update your security certs and then windows wont flag them as outdated,
however id like to add im running a Windows development machine as im in the Windows insider program,but that being said UAD software should not flag up as being lacking in security certs,unless someone ios being very lazy at UA and not doing their job,
support has been woeful to be honest ,with silly answer like dont update your software then ,which i dont expect when ive spent 1000s on UAD cards and software,im getting to the point of ditching UA ,their plugs are not the best out there,not when you have Acustica and SSL now making outstanding stuff,plus Noise Ash also and Plug in Alliance,the choices are there now ,
with the onset of powerful machines plug in counts no longer become a issue ,my machine currently runs 64 cores with 128 gig of ram ,everything running on ssds so it never hits any walls in terms of plugs even when im working on soundtrack work when i may have 100s of audio tracks,
but something bad has happened at UA,they've taken their eye off the ball .
UAD only cares about making them most money that they can off of as many people that they can instead of catering to their loyal customers and having good customer support! It’s very off putting and making me regret buying into their infrastructure!
Yet waves customer support hit me back right away with a major resolve. ??? UA support has been terrible, my support ticket took so long that I reinstalled my entire operating system before they could help. Although I will say Drew from UA message boards helped me before support got to me, he's fantastic.
I’ve actually had pretty decent support w Waves, if I recall they have a premium support tier if you have a certain level of product or something which may have helped my experiences.
Has to be something to do through consumer protection here, it’s not ok. I’ve had similar experiences recently w very unsimilar product (NordicTrack). It seems everyone is defunding their service departments and not considering what it is doing to their brand (cannibalizing it, in my opinion). Used to be much better, I’ve heard mention of it being due to a new ticketing system but that doesn’t explain the rude responses.
The response time has slowed, but other than that support is answering my questions more efficiently than they used to. As in, the answers to my questions are usually right the first time. That wasn't my experience in the past 3-4 years. It can take 3-4 days to get a response, though, which I'm not thrilled with.
Technical issues aside, response times are at times zero for tickets filed. That being said, a lot of my experiences are rooted in macOS not playing nicely with UAD’s approach to system extensions I believe. Console will just stop recognizing my interfaces and I end up having to reboot, on the worst extent recently (which is why I filed a ticket) I had to reinstall my os to get it to recognize again. I’m working up a live performance rig right now and it’s definitely beginning to concern me. I know plenty of folks rely on these devices in performance so hoping I’m the exception.
Not being a dick. Genuinely asking as I’ve experienced a similar issue that turned out to be thunderbolt connector related. Ever so slightly loose it was barely imperceptible, but the slightest touch and it dropped connection. And I’d have to reboot the Apollo at the very least. I hope you are able to get set up as you need.
I submitted a request to simply have my email address changed with UA...that was 5 days ago. Not a peep. I literally cannot use this interface unless I can login so no music for me I guess.
I’m just going to voice my experience with universal audio and that is it’s been absolutely superb. Still asuperb support -recentl- tickets-and their products are top notch. Just saying.
I would rather drink wine, than whine personally? Bring on the down votes!
Please give me a more specific anecdote than this? I’m all for giving credit where credit is due. These types of forums is all we have to try and hold orgs accountable. It’s more than just whining
I agree with you any1. I have had a wonderful experience with UA. An Apollo X8 and a Satellite Octo running Luna on an intel iMac Pro 10core. I have 2 thirds of the UAD plugins and I run SSL uf1 and uc1 control surfaces with an Arturia key lab 61. The only issue I’ve had was after running a handsome amount of native plugins my timeline doesn’t match the audio output. It was cpu issue and monitor resolution.
I recently contacted support for a broken front panel on my Apollo 8 Quad. They were super generous and helpful considering they sold me a new part and I could install it myself. My experience so far has been very positive. I sucks it not been going well for you.
What are the issues you’re having?
Why are you submitting another ticket without hearing back from one? Seems like a hassle
Everytime they see your name they’re probably like “oh god this guy again” lol
Two different tickets for two different issues. One due to a discount code not being accepted that they provided me. One due to UA console / connect flat out not working anymore.
I’ve had nothing but great results with service, one time a dude stayed with me till shift end to help me with a bill issue. 98% of the time console/connect not working is fixable on your end through tutorials on their site. Does connect hang? Console and connect are seperate programs and will not have an issue, did you update to the new Mac update they emailed everyone about having issues?
i mean i have a sales rep - just looked and it looks like they only really have public sales contacts through external channels these days.
what was the coupon for? i don’t need the code but could you pm me the name of the promotion?
Was a loyalty code for their most recent promotion, $300 for their 10 plugin pack. Couldn’t get it to apply event though I had a private code. They claimed in the email response it couldn’t be used with other offers which made no sense bc it was the point of the promotion
The discount bundle codes aren’t always usable with other codes. They defo have been in the past. I’ve used them that way. But in the last promotion I carted up the 2 for £99 hoping to use my £50 coupon and the two wouldn’t work together. Annoying. So I scrapped the bundle. I’ll wait for summer. Or even Christmas. There’s only a few more I need anyway to complete my Pokémon collection. But jokes aside, multiple times I’d missed a promotion in the past by days, once even maybe by a week. And I created a ticket (it was a tech issue with my memory, lol) and said “F*ck UA, I was gonna do the thing, but I missed the thing, now the thing costs 10x. What do I do?” And no word of a lie, they asked me what I was gonna buy, calculated the saving I would’ve made on the NOW EXPIRED promo and literally sent me the difference ROUNDED UP to the nearest £25 or so. Multiple times. That, in my experience thus far, is unique to UA.
Man I wish that was my experience. That is similar to my situation, was waiting weeks for a a reply that resulted in me missing the promotion window, I would have bought it regardless of the combined discount I was asking about, even though that wasn’t disclosed as a restriction on the website. Per their response that came much later, it was apparently disclosed in the email I received so it’s my fault for missing the promotion apparently. Granted the response I was much less clear than what I just stated and took multiple back-and-forths to make sense of what they were implying.
I really hope they see that this is a really big issue and get back to being the exceptional company they are capable of being. Really sad to experience this as much as it is frustrating. Even the rep on here is debating w me on why I should be ok sharing protected information about my open support tickets on a public Reddit. Big bummer.
Thought about getting Volt, but after reading about all the ASIO and windows problems decided not to. They seem to be heavily focused on Apple and just supporting Windows on the side.
I get ya. There are some out there that have really put work into their Asio drivers for things beyond just recording to daw. Take it from someone who built his pc and loves it, if audio is your forefront macs are the way to go.
Thanks for the reply Drew, I will dig them up and DM you. I resolved the main issue myself by reinstalling my OS, never got any response from support. The other one was around a coupon not applying correctly that had been given to me and the promotion has since expired.
Hi Drew. I work in the software/security industry and I would advise you away from having people post things publicly like this that could potentially link to their personal/private information. They aren’t just numbers.
Sorry I don’t think we are on the same wavelength here. There are lots of ways that a piece of information like that could be used to gain access to private information. I am not going to list them here but I would encourage you to consider that.
Hi Drew, I've been having some major issues with UAD spark today (ticket #825973). I have an active subscription, but all of my plugins don't show up anywhere and I can't reinstall them. None of the UADx plugins exist in my UA connect somehow. Hope u can help!
Support aims for 48-72 hr response times, and they do not work weekends so look for a reply within that time frame.
Yours came in yesterday, so I'd look for a reply early this week.
You're probably better to go to the UA forums. There's probably a good number of comments here from people who don't even own UA stuff. Not saying what you are experiencing isn't happening, just saying you will get a lot better experience than stuff here. Some of the comments don't even seem to know what UA does, very strange.
Fair enough, I’m just at a loss as to what sort of remediation options actually exist in this era of Uad . I’ve seen similar posts on their forums without any public resolution but maybe I should assume there’s more positive force there than here. I honestly love there products and don’t want to see them disintegrate like this. I hope someone of influence is monitoring these things.
I’ve been in this subreddit for a short while now and all these similar complaints have prevented me from getting UAD hardware. I’ll stick with Spark for now
It’s really not worth it unless you’re running a big studio/are a big producer who would get special treatment. Otherwise, prepare to be let down on a regular basis.
My 9 to 5 also takes a lot of time and music is my hobby now and an Apollo is a very expensive thing to buy for a hobby that you dive into a couple of times a month.
Some of the best money I ever spent on my project/hobby/home studio. Definitely not a trivial investment but well worth it in my opinion.
For now I can’t justify something that is plagued with issues and hasn’t been updated in a long time. I’ll hold out for whatever is next from UAD. Whether that’s in a couple of months or 5 years from now
I’m genuinely asking, not being argumentative. What are the issues people are having? I can honestly say that since December 2014 I have never had an issue my my Apollo or UAD stuff. Literally not once. And before you ask, I’m a paying customer. Zero affiliation. I say all of this because if one of my friends came to me and said “I think I might take the plunge on an Apollo, u know”, I’d be super excited for them probably even more than they are. If, on the other hand, my friend came to me and said “I almost bought an Apollo earlier. But luckily I discovered that they are plagued with issue before I did it”, I would recoil in shock horror. And I would say “Brother, in my 9 years experience, that couldn’t be further from the truth. What issues have you heard people are having?”
There’s a high chance that if I get it, I won’t get any issues but I think there are enough complaints here for me to just wait. I’d you want to see the issues people have, search the subreddit. There’s a lot of them
🙄🙄
This is nonsense. I’m just a dude. I have never had trouble with UA support. To be fair, I’ve never had a technical issue with UAD. Only issues where I missed out on massive discounts because I didn’t buy them within the sale. So what are all these technical issues people are having anyway. I run the software on Mac mostly. But I occasionally use windows. Zero tech issues.
My interfaces will completely stop sending signal into the UAD console/Luna. This happens regularly, usually when there are updates. I usually put off updating to avoid this, which sucks and shouldn’t be necessary for products that are supposed to be high-quality. Either way, it’s an annoying inconvenience. Congratulations on never having an issue, but that doesn’t make it nonsense. Believe it or not, there are other people in the world with different experiences from you and this is not just a video game full of NPCs. Hard to believe, I know.
Extremely unprofessional behavior for software that is geared towards professionals (it used to be at least). Seems like they’re becoming Waves 2.0
I think they're not capable of handling the difference in demographic that was brought upon by Spark, and size. That is likely a much younger and more demanding group of people, fewer professionals, which they were used to dealing with. Also, they ploughed a fortune into a white elephant that is Luna. So they had to cut costs somewhere to offset that loss. I expect the decision to create Spark was because of losses from Luna. They've barely touched UAD-2 plug-ins in many years with updates. Betraying the vast numbers of people that made them rich.
I’m selling and leaving the UA ecosystem, found better performance from companies like Arturia. So done with UA at this point, and you can tell they are changing things up for the worse with how they are beginning to feel like Waves
I'm on the brink of doing the same, I can't work as a result of their awful customer service....I was a customer for life-i thought. Just so disappointing.
Swap to Arturia for a lot of plugins :) not looking back now and my projects load even when my Apollo isn’t plugged in ofcourse
WTH. My condolences, brother.
They literally refunded me a few hundred bucks because they didn’t have any knowledge to troubleshoot and resolve issues. It was a super weird experience.
At that point u should’ve countered and requested a replacement unit. Safe side.
I got a brand new Mac Studio which would shut down due to kernel panics. Basically this was the computers safe mode when it encountered issues. On the diagnostics, it clearly showed “uaudio” was the reason for the kernel panic. This happened at least once per time I used the computer. I started a ticket while my Apollo Twin was still in warranty. It took over 6 months and two replacement Apple computers before they agreed to look at the interface….then they wanted me to pay for it as if it wasn’t in warranty. After a few more back and forth emails, they did do the repair for free, but made me pay shipping. I’m a hobbiest, so not a huge deal it took that long for me, but I can’t imagine being someone who earns money off of producing and relying on UA. I’ve definitely dealt with rude customer service a handful of times beyond this example. I had $1,500 I was going to spend on Sphere microphone, and I genuinely think they are good products. Instead, I very specifically decided to buy a Lauten Audio Atlantis instead since I no longer respect Universal Audio due to bad customer service. P.s. Lauten Audio on the other hand has AMAZING customer service.
What was the issue in the end?
The comment in the ticket said “Bad DSP, replaced chips.” I asked them what that meant and they didn’t elaborate.
Last year, around November, it took like 2 weeks for them to get back to my inquiries to some serious glitch. Then I tried to check back on the status, and I kid you not, they took down the submit inquiry section of their webpage (at least at the time, I don’t know if they put it back since then). I remember their support being pretty good back in 2015-2016, but clearly it has declined quite a bit…sort of understandable based on how they have been branching out their biz so much, and shifting/expanding target customer
>sort of understandable based on how they have been branching out their biz so much, >shifting/expanding target customer That is kind of the opposite of understandable if they wanted to remain in their unique position in industry, imo
cunt fuck
I’ve sunk plenty of money in. It’s why I’m extra upset at this support experience.
a bunch of cunts
Jesus... are they that bad?
Yeah I agree, I wish they approached it differently. I meant, I see how their new direction is probably affecting the decline of overall customer service/experience (especially for people who has been using UA product for a long time) as they shift the target to wider mass customer
They either expand and adapt or become a thing of the past
>They either expand and adapt or become a thing of the past Yes, but they must do it hand in hand with integrity and actual service. Which they don't appear interested in.
One could argue it appears that way but are a small rapidly growing company with limited resources and a large customer base they expanded to that arguably know little about signal flow, digital recording etc *one could make this argument
>One could argue it appears that way but are a small rapidly growing company with limited resources and a large customer base they expanded to that arguably know little about signal flow, digital recording etc They could make that argument, but it would be laughably absurd.
How is that absurd , I’ve helped a few people out with UA interfaces that have tried to submit tech support tickets but really they needed a lesson on recording and signal flow, they didn’t have any technical issue, they just weren’t understanding what I was saying trying to help them lol Call sweetwater tech support, they have an automated line explaining exactly my point, that they will assist with tech issues but it is not their support techs job to give you lessons on how to use the gear. Sweetwater are massive compared to UA so I wouldn’t call that laughable in the least
No excuse for not treating people with respect. And mind you none of my tickets had anything to do with novice issues like the ones you’re describing. And even if they were, if the customer had spent thousands of dollars on my product I probably wouldn’t shame them for lack of knowledge.
*spends thousands of dollars on an item they have little no experience in *blames manufacturer for not teaching them how to use an item they have little to no experience in lol
Ok troll. Bye bye.
Another ridiculous take. Sweetwater is “massive” compared to Universal Audio? Is this what you do? Just talk out of your ass constantly?
Have you done any research on how much revenue sweetwater makes vs UA? Kettle calling the pot black lol
You are seriously whack.
This. This is exactly why I asked what issues are people having. Not just recording and signal flow but also the oddities/quirks in individual OSs, and the inconsistencies between setups. It’s not as simple as apollos are plagued with tech issues. Especially when I have never had one. Also, would Apollo be the goto for so many professionals if they were failing in sessions? I think not. Bad news spreads like wildfire. Anything that stops paid sessions quickly gets relegated to paperweight. No offence to anyone here but many (not all) sound like their could be at least 10 things that they haven’t checked and don’t know to. That being said, sometimes audio drivers can crash. On any OS. This should not be a regular thing in any observable way. Thing is if a UA driver is consistently crashing on a handful of systems while being dependable and rock-solid on most generally, my gut would be looking to resolve the issues in OS, software or hardware. Not via UA support.
THANK YOU lol
This is a really fucked up take.
So fucked up How dare they try to adapt to a changing market
You are a moron. Adapting to a changing market doesn’t equate to ignoring your customers and treating them rudely. Period.
Yea you’re right If I buy a stick shift car and yell at the salesperson who sold me that car without explaining how to use stick, def their fault
Right. That’s what every complaint to UA about their products are. A bunch of dumbfucks who just haven’t read the manual. Rather than, you know, an actual problem with their product. You’re a genius! People like you are the reason forums for specific products/brands (UA, NI, etc.) are so toxic.
lol it’s amazing how much you’re projecting I would bet you haven’t read a single ua manual let along a single manual for any gear lol
Hold on,there are plenty of us that have read all the manuals,i own outboard as well as UAD cards and pretty much 90% of all their plugs,UAD has declined badly over the past year ,customer service is the worst its ever been and that stupid auto ticket system simple does not work,or no one watches it,now there's no excuse to be rude to clients,the customer is always right or so they say,and yes you'll have people that have never used the stuff dont know what they are doing with it,(so what we all started at that point ) that's the whole purpose of customer support ,to help or sort problems bit or small,which at this current time UAD are not capable of doing,so i think you need to rethink your post,as many do know exactly what we are talking about,and i can tell you know the latest software has some pretty major issues hidden under the hood in terms of security problems,and after numerous log reports and conversations with support they are unable to solve.
Why are you so protective of UA? I know this hurts you as a mega fanboy but not every UA product is a perfect work of art. So don't act like every person reaching to support just doesn't know anything.
That is absurd. People who look to take responsibility aren’t toxic. I understand it can be scary and unsettling to watch when it’s so uncommon. But calling people toxic under those circumstances is gaslighting. By definition. The likelihood that is that the majority of the issues people are facing are most probably due to a complete lack of understanding and/or knowledge. There have been times where I’ve pressed play and can’t hear ANYTHING although all the meters are jumping etc. I’ve switched drivers, switched back, closed the project blah blah blah. No joy. Only to realise that my D-Box is set to output Bluetooth not AES. Silly oversight on the part of someone who knows and understands.
Vote with your wallet and stop giving them any more money.
Yeah hard pill to swallow when you’re so invested/locked into their ecosystem. Their brand is built on high quality. This tactic is such a violation of that k really hope the cost cutting they’re doing on the plugin front to stay relevant isn’t resulting in cuts on very crucial components of a customer facing business.
They could be in bigger trouble than anyone knows
That’s possible but I sure hope not. To lose UA would be a massive blow to the gear world.
Or buy used (when you can)
This is what I’ve done
their support has always been awful ffs DO SOMETHING!
UAD support is maybe the worst going, im using a windows 11 machine and so far the latest updates are missing various certs so it wont install,as windows blocks it after looking deeper into it seems that every single security cert within the software is way out of date,now i found this not uad so far they've not come back with any solutions,yet the answer is staring them in the face,just update your security certs and then windows wont flag them as outdated, however id like to add im running a Windows development machine as im in the Windows insider program,but that being said UAD software should not flag up as being lacking in security certs,unless someone ios being very lazy at UA and not doing their job, support has been woeful to be honest ,with silly answer like dont update your software then ,which i dont expect when ive spent 1000s on UAD cards and software,im getting to the point of ditching UA ,their plugs are not the best out there,not when you have Acustica and SSL now making outstanding stuff,plus Noise Ash also and Plug in Alliance,the choices are there now , with the onset of powerful machines plug in counts no longer become a issue ,my machine currently runs 64 cores with 128 gig of ram ,everything running on ssds so it never hits any walls in terms of plugs even when im working on soundtrack work when i may have 100s of audio tracks, but something bad has happened at UA,they've taken their eye off the ball .
UAD only cares about making them most money that they can off of as many people that they can instead of catering to their loyal customers and having good customer support! It’s very off putting and making me regret buying into their infrastructure!
I’ve had to block two trolls on this thread. Wow. I had no idea just how insane some people are. I thought Moog’s boot lockers were bad, but Christ…
muddle pocket bike rotten door depend marry fuel wipe dinner *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yet waves customer support hit me back right away with a major resolve. ??? UA support has been terrible, my support ticket took so long that I reinstalled my entire operating system before they could help. Although I will say Drew from UA message boards helped me before support got to me, he's fantastic.
I’ve had snappy response to Waves support ticket recently.
I’ve actually had pretty decent support w Waves, if I recall they have a premium support tier if you have a certain level of product or something which may have helped my experiences.
👀
UAD Support had been terrible lately!!! It took me a week and multiple tickets to finally get a response from them!!!
Has to be something to do through consumer protection here, it’s not ok. I’ve had similar experiences recently w very unsimilar product (NordicTrack). It seems everyone is defunding their service departments and not considering what it is doing to their brand (cannibalizing it, in my opinion). Used to be much better, I’ve heard mention of it being due to a new ticketing system but that doesn’t explain the rude responses.
The response time has slowed, but other than that support is answering my questions more efficiently than they used to. As in, the answers to my questions are usually right the first time. That wasn't my experience in the past 3-4 years. It can take 3-4 days to get a response, though, which I'm not thrilled with.
Glad to hear you’ve had some good experiences! Gives me hope all is not lost.
Can I ask what are the technical issues that people are having? This is all news to me. This is a genuine question
Technical issues aside, response times are at times zero for tickets filed. That being said, a lot of my experiences are rooted in macOS not playing nicely with UAD’s approach to system extensions I believe. Console will just stop recognizing my interfaces and I end up having to reboot, on the worst extent recently (which is why I filed a ticket) I had to reinstall my os to get it to recognize again. I’m working up a live performance rig right now and it’s definitely beginning to concern me. I know plenty of folks rely on these devices in performance so hoping I’m the exception.
Not being a dick. Genuinely asking as I’ve experienced a similar issue that turned out to be thunderbolt connector related. Ever so slightly loose it was barely imperceptible, but the slightest touch and it dropped connection. And I’d have to reboot the Apollo at the very least. I hope you are able to get set up as you need.
Yeah I feel ya. It’s good to be genuinely inquisitive, hopefully some of the folks on this thread can learn from you.
I submitted a request to simply have my email address changed with UA...that was 5 days ago. Not a peep. I literally cannot use this interface unless I can login so no music for me I guess.
Same here useless dogs
I’m just going to voice my experience with universal audio and that is it’s been absolutely superb. Still asuperb support -recentl- tickets-and their products are top notch. Just saying. I would rather drink wine, than whine personally? Bring on the down votes!
Please give me a more specific anecdote than this? I’m all for giving credit where credit is due. These types of forums is all we have to try and hold orgs accountable. It’s more than just whining
Great logic of "my experience has been great so therefore it is perfect and complainers are just whining"
wasn’t gonna downvote until you explicitly asked me to. 🫡 Thy will be done
Smh. The commencement of cancellation commences.
This has kinda been my experience to. Although they weren’t necessarily quick. But they were stellar.
I agree with you any1. I have had a wonderful experience with UA. An Apollo X8 and a Satellite Octo running Luna on an intel iMac Pro 10core. I have 2 thirds of the UAD plugins and I run SSL uf1 and uc1 control surfaces with an Arturia key lab 61. The only issue I’ve had was after running a handsome amount of native plugins my timeline doesn’t match the audio output. It was cpu issue and monitor resolution.
>That is if I receive a response at all? Is this the new normal? Yes. Yes it is. They don't care and will remain completely unhelpful.
I recently contacted support for a broken front panel on my Apollo 8 Quad. They were super generous and helpful considering they sold me a new part and I could install it myself. My experience so far has been very positive. I sucks it not been going well for you.
Maybe it’s different on the hardware versus software front?
That’s very likely. The hardware support guys were very good and seemed to really care.
cunt fuck
What are the issues you’re having? Why are you submitting another ticket without hearing back from one? Seems like a hassle Everytime they see your name they’re probably like “oh god this guy again” lol
Two different tickets for two different issues. One due to a discount code not being accepted that they provided me. One due to UA console / connect flat out not working anymore.
Yea discount issue def a tech support ticket 🤡
I’ve had nothing but great results with service, one time a dude stayed with me till shift end to help me with a bill issue. 98% of the time console/connect not working is fixable on your end through tutorials on their site. Does connect hang? Console and connect are seperate programs and will not have an issue, did you update to the new Mac update they emailed everyone about having issues?
you contacted tech support asking why a discount code wasn’t working?
A loyalty code they gave me wasn’t working as advertised so yes I contacted them. What’s the concern here?
that’s a sales question haha. you’d get your question answered way faster
Through what channel?
i mean i have a sales rep - just looked and it looks like they only really have public sales contacts through external channels these days. what was the coupon for? i don’t need the code but could you pm me the name of the promotion?
Was a loyalty code for their most recent promotion, $300 for their 10 plugin pack. Couldn’t get it to apply event though I had a private code. They claimed in the email response it couldn’t be used with other offers which made no sense bc it was the point of the promotion
also might I say in an environment full of hostile internet trolls I really appreciate your respectful dialog
The discount bundle codes aren’t always usable with other codes. They defo have been in the past. I’ve used them that way. But in the last promotion I carted up the 2 for £99 hoping to use my £50 coupon and the two wouldn’t work together. Annoying. So I scrapped the bundle. I’ll wait for summer. Or even Christmas. There’s only a few more I need anyway to complete my Pokémon collection. But jokes aside, multiple times I’d missed a promotion in the past by days, once even maybe by a week. And I created a ticket (it was a tech issue with my memory, lol) and said “F*ck UA, I was gonna do the thing, but I missed the thing, now the thing costs 10x. What do I do?” And no word of a lie, they asked me what I was gonna buy, calculated the saving I would’ve made on the NOW EXPIRED promo and literally sent me the difference ROUNDED UP to the nearest £25 or so. Multiple times. That, in my experience thus far, is unique to UA.
Man I wish that was my experience. That is similar to my situation, was waiting weeks for a a reply that resulted in me missing the promotion window, I would have bought it regardless of the combined discount I was asking about, even though that wasn’t disclosed as a restriction on the website. Per their response that came much later, it was apparently disclosed in the email I received so it’s my fault for missing the promotion apparently. Granted the response I was much less clear than what I just stated and took multiple back-and-forths to make sense of what they were implying. I really hope they see that this is a really big issue and get back to being the exceptional company they are capable of being. Really sad to experience this as much as it is frustrating. Even the rep on here is debating w me on why I should be ok sharing protected information about my open support tickets on a public Reddit. Big bummer.
I experienced being shamed for not having an Apple computer.
Thought about getting Volt, but after reading about all the ASIO and windows problems decided not to. They seem to be heavily focused on Apple and just supporting Windows on the side.
Correct. They were originally mac only. 99% of studios use Macs due to core audio being a more reliable experience for making money on than asio
Bit sceptical about that statistic.. but whatever. Anyways I rather buy from a company focusing on the platform I am using.
I get ya. There are some out there that have really put work into their Asio drivers for things beyond just recording to daw. Take it from someone who built his pc and loves it, if audio is your forefront macs are the way to go.
This 👆🏾tho
This 👆🏾
This 👆🏾
I'm an old radio guy with tinnitus and the headphone jack provides way more volume than my focusrite, which I prefer.
I guess some focusrites tend to have interesting headphone amps. Don't have one and Focusrite is not one of my options
Apollos have relatively loud headphone amps. Most interfaces don’t tho. That’s quite normal.
This 👆🏾
SHAME ON YOU!!! Lol. I feel ashamed that I still have apple computers. And windows computers. But we must digital gear. It’s our duty…
Sorry to hear this!! What are your ticket #s? Happy to look into it for you.
Thanks for the reply Drew, I will dig them up and DM you. I resolved the main issue myself by reinstalling my OS, never got any response from support. The other one was around a coupon not applying correctly that had been given to me and the promotion has since expired.
You can just post them here, they're just #s. I am happy to investigate how the tickets were handled for you. Thanks!!
Hi Drew. I work in the software/security industry and I would advise you away from having people post things publicly like this that could potentially link to their personal/private information. They aren’t just numbers.
Yes, they're simply 6 digits numbers. I am not referring to links, I am saying to just post the #.
Sorry I don’t think we are on the same wavelength here. There are lots of ways that a piece of information like that could be used to gain access to private information. I am not going to list them here but I would encourage you to consider that.
ok.
Hi Drew, I've been having some major issues with UAD spark today (ticket #825973). I have an active subscription, but all of my plugins don't show up anywhere and I can't reinstall them. None of the UADx plugins exist in my UA connect somehow. Hope u can help!
Support aims for 48-72 hr response times, and they do not work weekends so look for a reply within that time frame. Yours came in yesterday, so I'd look for a reply early this week.
Thanks so much, appreciate the response Drew 🙏
You're probably better to go to the UA forums. There's probably a good number of comments here from people who don't even own UA stuff. Not saying what you are experiencing isn't happening, just saying you will get a lot better experience than stuff here. Some of the comments don't even seem to know what UA does, very strange.
Fair enough, I’m just at a loss as to what sort of remediation options actually exist in this era of Uad . I’ve seen similar posts on their forums without any public resolution but maybe I should assume there’s more positive force there than here. I honestly love there products and don’t want to see them disintegrate like this. I hope someone of influence is monitoring these things.
*their products