Universal Audio’s UAD-1, a sound processing platform built on DSP hardware add-ons for your computer, has gotten a much-anticipated sequel this week. The UAD-1 was always a favorite choice for sound production, delivering tasty analog-emulating sound tools on a PCI card platform. The UAD-2, on PCI-express cards, offer up to “ten times” the processing power of the original — supposedly even the single-processor model delivers a greater-than-twofold performance gain. The DSP hardware is just the platform, though, and Universal’s main push here is its plug-in developers. Sure, these days your CPU is a plenty-powerful sonic number cruncher, so I think it’d be a stretch to say anyone needs DSP cards. But what the platform can mean is plug-in goodies not available anywhere else, with a no-nonsense approach to sound that may not be as practical in native plug-ins. (And with support from software like Ableton Live, Apple Logic, and Cakewalk SONAR, you can then drop these into your host of choice.)

Here’s a look from around the Web at what people are saying about the UAD-2.

Oliver Chesler at Wire to the Ear notes what could be a real “killer app” / highlight of the UAD-2: a Moog multimode filter.