Universal Audio UAD-2 Satellite Thunderbolt

It's all about latency and quality. This device runs all the plugins at very very low latency even at the highest sampling rate because they are running parallel across 4 dedicated DSP chips. Whereas you CPU has to run the operating system, the DAW, and the plugins across it's available cores. In fact the DSPs are also running all simulations at 192kHz internally no matter what your external sample rate is. So the effects are also of very high quality. Additionally, because this unit and the other units in the Apollo series are connected over the e-PCI channels on the Thunderbolt connector, the devices can communicate and route audio amongst themselves acting like one giant interface that gets bigger the more devices you add.

Agree with most of what you say, but the one thing people haven't mentioned here is latency. This will likely deliver far better latency, even over thunderbolt, and even if your cpu isn't being taxed. But... most people can likely get their latency low enough to be usable without it.

It runs UAD plugins, they can't run without a Universal Audio DSP Processor. For the price it's pretty crappy, from a guitarist's standpoint most of the amp sim plugins are available on the normal platforms (Softube amp rooms and the Plugin Alliance stuff). The plugins also cost more than their normal platform counter parts. So, for the price of more expensive plugins, only Mac support and it being locked down to only plugins by UA, the pricing is comparable to the price tag of the i7 5960X and the normal plugins. And the 5960X can probably run more plugins at the same time without breaking a sweat. I just checked, and the Quad UAD card can run 12 instances of the Softube Metal Amp Room while it takes 3-4 percent CPU on my computer which has a 4770K, which means it can run over 20 instances of it. So imagine how many a 5960X can. It's a different story if you're already invested in the UAD platform. But for a first UAD device I see zero reason to buy this unit.