UAD Luna Recording System

ANALOG SOUND AT THE SPEED OF LIGHT

UAD had a small surprise at NAMM this year with the announcement of the Luna Recording System. It's designed to be like a DAW and works with their Apollo and Arrow Thunderbolt interfaces. It looks to integrate UA’s interfaces and plug-ins further into workflow seamlessly. The routing and setup with UAD plug-ins are quick and easy for frontend recording— and it’s essentially latency-free, thanks to Accelerated Real-time Monitoring. There’s analog tape emulation on every track which they call ‘Oxide’, the result of which is the classic tape warmth and “glue” that engineers have described for years. If you want to expand your tape options, you can add the optional Studer A800 Tape Recorder extension (available separately). As a good combo to the tape emulation, they offer Classic Neve summing. So inside Luna, you’ll find emulated summing circuitry from the revered Neve 80-series console. These boards were staples in the ’60s and ’70s and famous for thick, punchy recordings. With built-in Neve 1272 summing onboard, you can take your mix from squeaky clean to big and beefy, right inside LUNA. To top it all off there’s a list of exclusive virtual instruments including the Minimoog, a model of the Steinway Model B grand piano at ocean way studios and a collection of VIs, with vintage

keys, drums/percussion, guitar/bass, orchestral content, and real-time synthesis. These sounds are culled from Spitfire Audio, Orange Tree Samples, Loops de la Creme, and more. We’ll have to wait to see how well this plays out in terms of people using it and finding it to be an integral part of their workflow. But the initial impressions seem pretty good!