Isn't it great to have a lot of plugins to add a huge palette to your sound processing suite? Too bad that with the multitude of tasks your laptop runs, you just can't use them all at once, as they'll just eat up resources. Processing your audio in a destructive manner doesn't offer that instantaneous "wet" monitoring you want while recording and mixing your tracks. . . but fret no more. Introduced at Winter NAMM 2009, the Universal Audio UAD-2 SOLO/Laptop is now shipping, and after that six-month wait you can now have your hands on one.

The UAD-2 SOLO/Laptop provides the laptop musician with all of Universal Audio's award-winning plugins into a single unit that plugs directly to your laptop's ExpressCard socket. Being equipped with a UAD-2 SOLO/Laptop is like having a rack full of vintage gear that fits in your pocket. The UAD-2 SOLO/Laptop was designed to make use of resources independent from your laptop thus allowing you to allocate more resources towards your other music applications. Examples of plugins included in the UAD-2 SOLO/Laptop are the famed 1176SE Compressor/Limiter, Pultec EQP-1A Program Equalizer, RealVerb Pro Room Modeler, and CS-1 Channel Strip. More than that, the UAD-2 SOLO/Laptop also gives you access to UAís full Powered Plugins library online, including authentic emulations from Neve, Roland, SPL, Moog, Harrison, Little Labs, Empirical Labs, and more.

This excellent plugin package is both Mac and Windows compatible with support for VST, Audio Units, and RTAS. Purchasing a unit also entitles you to a $50 voucher, which is good for purchasing additional plugins from Universal Audio. Universal Audio is now shipping out units of UAD-2 SOLO/Laptop for a list price of $649.00.