Universal Audio has launched UAD Explore FREE, a bundle of eight UAD plugins and the LUNA DAW available at no cost and with no UA hardware required.
If you’ve been following UA’s promotional giveaways in our news section over the past few years, most of these plugins will look familiar.
The 1176 was free for Valentine’s Day, the 610 was given away at NAMM, Pure Plate and Showtime ’64 have both had their turn.
What’s different now is that they’re all in one package and permanently free. It’s the same software, but without a limited time window and no scrambling to grab them before a deadline.
I think this is a fantastic starting point for new producers who are just building their plugin setup. You get a fully functional mixing and recording toolkit in a single download.
And if you’ve been curious about Universal Audio’s plugins but never pulled the trigger on a purchase or Spark subscription, this is an easy way to find out what the fuss is about.
The bundle’s heavy hitters are the 1176 Classic FET Compressor and the Teletronix LA-2A Tube Compressor.
The 1176 is one of the most recognized compressor designs in recording history, and UA’s emulation is widely considered the best plugin version out there. It’s fast, punchy, and works on practically everything, from vocals to drums to bass.
The LA-2A takes the opposite approach with slow, smooth optical compression that’s hard to mess up. You get two knobs to work with, and it makes vocals sit in a mix beautifully.
Also, running a 1176 into an LA-2A is one of the oldest tricks in the book, and now you can do it for free in your DAW with this bundle.
The UA 610 Tube Preamp & EQ Collection adds tube saturation and a musical EQ to the front of your chain. It adds body and warmth without making things sound obviously processed, and I love using it for added flavor on the drum bus.
Pure Plate Reverb is one of the better plate reverbs I’ve used in plugin form. It’s simple, sounds great, and doesn’t require ten minutes of tweaking to get a good result.
For guitar players, the Showtime ’64 Tube Amp is modeled after the 1964 Fender Showman. It’s a clean amp with enormous headroom, so it works best as a platform for pedals or for surf, blues, and indie tones. If you need high-gain crunch, look elsewhere, but for cleans, it’s hard to beat.
The Vibe Analog Machines Essentials plugin gives you four “machines” that range from subtle sweetening to heavy vintage coloring. It’s a quick way to add character to drums, vocals, or synth buses without stacking multiple saturation plugins.
The Century Tube Channel Strip rolls a tube preamp, three-band EQ, and an LA-2A-style one-knob compressor into a single plugin. It’s a solid tracking strip if you want to sculpt your sound with a single plugin.
Rounding things out is PolyMAX Synth, an eight-voice polyphonic synth inspired by the Prophets, Oberheims, and Jupiters of the ’80s. It has a lovely analog character with some nice bonuses like FM, hard sync, and waveshaping oscillators, plus built-in effects.
It’s not a replacement for a dedicated synth suite, but it’s a capable sound design tool that works well for pads and leads.
The bundle also includes the LUNA DAW, UA’s free recording environment. LUNA is best suited for tracking and mixing workflows, especially if you’re using Apollo hardware, though it works without it. Just keep in mind that its MIDI capabilities are limited compared to more established DAWs.
UAD Explore FREE is available for macOS and Windows. All plugins run natively and require the UA Connect app for installation.
Download: UAD Explore FREE (FREE)
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