Waves UM225

When mixing movies today, the biggest thing that people seem to be paying attention to, besides the overall remaster of the video, is the sound. Converting stereo to surround sound can be quite a challenge, and it doesn't always work that well. Waves tries to help you with the UM225 and UM226 plugins. The UM225 is the 5.0 version of this, where as the UM226 is the 5.1 version. Both are great, but I don't see the real need for the 225 version considering the 226 version is that much more versatile, and most sound systems today are a minimum of 5.1. Explaining all the controls in here would take awhile, but it's mainly just knobs and sliders per channel. To use this, simply enable it on whatever you want to convert from stereo to surround sound. The master buss is where this usually goes. I've never read the manual, so I can't comment as to how well it written, but Waves is usually pretty good regarding that stuff.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

Waves plugins are some of the best out there, bar none. For one, they're cross platform. For a Mac user, that means the world. I'm always trying to support companies that support Mac, and Waves has been pretty good about that since the whole Intel switch. I've used these in Logic without any problems. Although they're 32 bit plugins, Logic will add a bridge to allow you to use them in a 64 bit environment as to not limit you to the amount of ram you can utilize. On top of that, these things are rock solid. I've never had a crash with Waves plugins at all.

OVERALL OPINION

The main difference between the UM225 and UM226 is that the UM226 has one extra channel for the sub. Why they made these into two different plugins, I'm not entirely sure. Everything I can do on 225 I can do on 226. It's a solid plugin, there's no doubt about that. I just find that if I'm going to do this kind of work, I reach for 226 almost all of the time.