That’s what I would call hardware accelerated vst(I).
For your info the UAD, TC Powercore and Creamware/Soniccore dsp platforms look like real vts’s but all have the same shortcoming when coming to audiop rendering namly that it has to be done in realtime, I guess your Virus TI cannot render faster hen realtime like the " native" vst(I) can. There is the difference, the processing of audio is done externally vs native vst(s) done by the CPU.
I have worked years and years with these hardware DSP platforms and I know they do not compare to native vst plugs!
Processing audio out of the box has serious limitations and the marketing quotes for such products are often misleading!
I agree that UAD have some excellent quality emulations of classic effect units. However, with the power of modern computers, native versions are very close behind. There are excellent sounding native emulations out there aswell.
Hardware accelerated VST/VSTi’s have one major drawback, though. With native plug-ins, you can work in non-realtime. With hardware accelerated ones you can’t. You must work in realtime!
With the native option, you can use instruments and processors who’s requirements far exceeds your computer’s power. This comes particularly evident when it comes time to do the final mix. With native plug-ins you can use as many as you like (far more than your computer can handle in realtime), exchange preview algorithms for high quality ones, etc. O.K. it might take 20 minutes to mix a 5 minute song, but it can easily be done.
With the accelerated option, on the other hand, you first need to transform all the hardware accelerated tracks to audio tracks in realtime, before you can mix in non-realtime.
It’s my opinion that all of UAD’s plug-ins could be converted to native formats, with no lowering of audio quality what so ever. The hardware is, in my mind, nothing more than a huge copy-protection dongle.
I was considering buying a UAD system. However, after looking at what’s out there and weighing the pros (minute sound quality improvement) and cons (cost and realtime operation restrictions), I’ve decided not to. The more powerful our computers become, the harder it becomes to justify the downsides of hardware accelerated solutions.
