Universal AudioReviews of uaudio.com

You said goodbye to the old cards, so I have to say goodbye to you. Sold everything

Nonexistent customer service. They spam you with advertising emails that you cannot unsubscribe from. You can click the unsubscribe-link in their emails and it takes you to a form that does absolutely nothing, no matter how many times you use it to unsubscribe. You can't manage your email notifications in your account settings. You also can't manually delete your account. I've requested deletion well over a week ago using their dedicated deletion request form, but I've yet to hear back from them and I doubt I ever will. All I wanted to do was try out the free version of LUNA. To do that I had to go through quite an arduous installation process using their UA Connect installation manager. The free software requires you to use iLok as well, to install the free license, if you can believe that.

Had to jump through a lot of hoops to get my Arrow installed on Mac. Installing the drivers is a pain because you have to lower your security on MacOS first. I thought it was because the device might have been developed for 'Windows first'.. only to find out I cannot get it to work properly on Windows at all. After installing it just freezes my computer for half a second every few seconds. Looked online and it's all very common. The hardware might be nice.. but the software (and especially the drivers) are absolutely awful. Would never recommend anyone to buy UA hardware. The problems have been going on for years and they have yet to fix it. You cannot trust this company with reliable drivers/software.

2 stars ONLY because my Apollo drags the UAD customer experience rating out of the toilet. Seriously, CS at this company is a joke. I am not even going into specifics but query response wait time is laughable. It's as though they have, like, 3 reps to field hundreds of queries a day or something. One would figure paying a premium for their great equipment might ensure a decent if not exemplary care for their customers. Not so. It's as though they figured a major price drop (during sales) in their plugins would suffice. This "Let them eat cake" attitude is surely biting them on the *ss as so many are complaining. They really ought to get this part of their game in order.

I was super excited to try out my new Apollo Twin MKII interface from uaudio, but that quickly turned to frustration after having connectivity issues. After paying $800 for a piece of equipment you would think they put everything you need in the box. You need a thunderbolt 2 cable which is outdated, they aren’t being produced anymore so you have to search far and wide to find one…they also look identical to a mini display port which isn’t compatible so you have to be very specific. With all that being said my production will suffer an entire month in total. SN: that very specific piece of information you have to find on the website

The offer of a really nicely designed audio-interface, the 176 VOLT, as promoted by one of their stockists, for a very reasonable price and with an apparently industry-standard compressor and free software was too great a bundle to go elsewhere. The software includes a DAW called Ableton Live Lite, which, although free, doesn't come with a decent de-esser and which you have to pay over-amounts for should you decide to purchase a plug-in as an alternative solution; and it only comes with eight recording tracks. If you are a vocalist who performs with much sibilance then this bundle is not for you. The compressor on the interface turned out to be so hissy (ground-floor noise) that it was unusable and the replacement had a faulty power-port. The stockist suggested that the model was made for the price rather than to a standard and I couldn't agree more. I own an M-Audio Firewire 410, bought over ten years ago, and it has never developed a fault (it can't be used because its connections and drivers are old). Those who work for Universal Audio are polite and helpful and reply to emails in quick time; this is all very well, however, when the equipment itself is of a poor quality.

Was very excited at first. Until I had a problem. Awful customer support which I interpret to mean they don't take their customers professionalism seriously. I need my recording studio to work dependably. If I do have an issue, I need professional help and I need it fast. With this company there support is incredibly poor. Your basically on you own 95% of the time. They want you to trouble shoot your problem with their answer bot and when that doesn't work wait around for an email that could show up at anytime or never. Their other solution is to go online to their support page, So basically read a book. Any product is only as good as its support. Probably going back to Pro Tools.

I love UAD plugins, but having to spend £50 on an iLok and having to use up another USB port on my laptop just to use the plugins offline is crazy. I use UAD plugins on most of my projects, but can't even use them without internet connection. Get rid of iLok !!!