New Music Gear Monday: Universal Audio LUNA Recording System

Perhaps the biggest buzz around the Winter NAMM show in years was the launch of Universal Audio’s LUNA, the company’s new recording environment. There’s been speculation for years that UA could give Avid a run for its money should it ever release it’s own DAW, and while LUNA may not be the Pro Tools killer that everyone expected, it’s still pretty cool.

LUNA is actually a total environment that tries to be as analog as possible, built around an Apollo or Arrow Thunderbolt interface, the LUNA extensions, application, and virtual interface. It contains 4 basic components.

The first is really a feature in that the software is now so tightly packaged around the hardware in that it now approaches zero latency when recording with plugins, good news for those that like to track with their plugs.

The second is that it has a built-in Neve console emulation as it emulates the harmonics of the famed 1272 summing amplifier.

Next comes the one that we’ve all been waiting for, and that’s the actual recording portion of the software. While this received the least amount of attention at the show, the demos revealed a DAW that looked a little like Logic that was a bit easier to use. Plus it was packed with built-in tape saturation emulation features that could be upgraded to Studer A800 specs if you wanted even more of that tape sound.

Finally came something unexpected, which was the inclusion of a new round of virtual instruments, starting with a beautifully modeled Steinway B piano called Revel, a 1971 Minimoog (in conjunction with Moog), and Shape, a toolkit with vintage keys, drums/percussion, guitar/bass, orchestral content, and realtime synthesis, courtesy of Universal Audio, Spitfire Audio,Orange Tree Samples, Loops de la Creme, and more

The good news is that LUNA will be available free of charge to Apollo and Arrow Thunderbolt users, but it won’t be available until Springtime. The bad news is that it won’t work on the older USB versions of Apollo, so now’s the time to do that upgrade you’ve been thinking about.

Here’s a video below from the UA NAMM presentation that doesn’t tell you much, but you can find out more on the LUNA page of the website.

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