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When you record with all of these effects and post-processing going on, that can actually start introducing a tiny bit of latency into your chain. Leading me to another huge advantage to LUNA – it does not care about the sample rate of the files you import. In ARM mode, LUNA will actually offload what processing it can onto the DSP chips, freeing up your CPU to handle other latency-free processing while also recording with effects going into your signal chain. So much so that you can record at any time during the project latency-free using accelerated real-time monitoring or ARM mode. If you’re familiar at all with how Universal Audio’s interfaces and plugins work in a recording situation, you might be curious about how LUNA handles recording in real-time.Īs you might expect from Universal Audio, the whole experience of LUNA was designed from the ground up with their flagship feature taking center stage. It also retains all of the files you bring into the project, though this can really bloat the file size of the actual project. This database foundation also allows for essentially unlimited undo – all the way back to the very beginning of the project. While the old adage that all DAWs are more or less equal is mostly still true, LUNA operates in a slightly different way which brings a whole new set of advantages (and disadvantages).Īt its core, LUNA is built on top of a database and as such, there is no “save” feature as it automatically saves any changes made in the project. Especially if you record.Īll in all, I’d say that LUNA has one of the higher costs of entry than other DAWs once you take into account the hardware requirements and the extensions you’ll ultimately purchase – despite the fact that it’s free.
UNIVERSAL AUDIO PLUGINS MAGESY FULL
I’d say that if you were super determined to use LUNA and get the full experience, I’d grab at least a quad satellite to add to your system to help out with all that lifting. Yes, but since you won’t have that much DSP to lean on you’ll mostly be running third-party plugins over some of the Universal Audio options, which is totally fine. So, is there enough power in an entry model Apollo Solo to run LUNA? If your computer is beefy enough this will definitely get you excited, but if your computer is not quite up to date, it dissuades you from using the DAW/Recording System entirely. This means that instead of those admittedly intensive plug-ins being run on your Universal Audio Recording System, they are running on your CPU. Especially when it comes to using their extensions like the Neve Summing.Ĭertain plugins like the Ampex ATR-102 and all the other tape machine plugins – normally DSP hogs in any other DAW, are instead run natively in the LUNA Recording System. While that’s technically all you “need” to run it, it helps to have some good power on your machine.
UNIVERSAL AUDIO PLUGINS MAGESY FREE
LUNA is free to all Mac and Thunderbolt Apollo owners. (We compared the Apollo Twin side-by-side to the UAD Arrow – find out how they stack up!) How Much Does It Cost And What Do You Need to Run it? With a few not so crucial features still not available, I switched to using LUNA for “most” of my DAW needs. My key 3rd party plugins worked, and they had done a ton of work on the program – implementing user requests and fixing bugs. Later that same year I would be forced onto an M1 Mac where to my surprise, it was not the only thing working on the new operating system. Riddled with bugs like export errors and the program itself was pretty taxing to most systems that weren’t maxed out led many other users to complain of the issues and led to most people discounting it as a DAW – I mean “recording system.”
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Since I have been an Apollo user for roughly 7 years, I downloaded LUNA and like many other people, I did not think it was ready to compete with anything yet.
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It has been a little over a year since Universal Audio released the LUNA Recording System out into the wild.
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