UAD Luna

I received an offer to get LUNA free. Is anyone using Luna now that has any feedback on it?

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Hi @DemoGirl Amy, and welcome to IRD! I have an ancient UAD solo PCi card with a few UAD plugins on it, but I haven’t really kept up with the UAD ecosystem of late.

If I recall correctly, Luna is available for free to anyone who has a UAD interface. It seems like a pretty interesting option for that platform. I know there is at least one active member here who has a UAD interface, but I haven’t heard any feedback as to how well it works…

I know my UAD plugins have been extremely reliable, so I could imagine their bespoke DAW being similarly stable.

In any case, sorry I can’t be of anymore help… Please feel free to avail yourself of the “Introduce Yourself” section of the forum, and let us know a little bit about your musical endeavours.

Another very cool aspect of IRD is the “Bash This Recording” section, where you can get independent, honest and helpful feedback and critique of your mixes and productions.

Nice to have you here!

Hi Amy and welcome!

I am not a Luna user but I have been intrigued by this program after seeing several reviews that were very positive about it. What are you currently using? If it’s free I guess it wouldn’t hurt to try but if you’re perfectly happy with what you are using now that might not be essential either.

Sorry I can’t help more. :wink:

I just came across this today:

Hi @DemoGirl! Good to have you here - And welcome!

I’ve spent a lot of time with different daw - have worked with just about all of them. Mainly because clients would send over sessions or need edits done on a wide range of daw platforms.

I don’t actually have it (haven’t needed it yet), but work several producers that do, and have been observing it in action over the last few months. Did you have any particular questions about it? Were you just looking for peoples thoughts (likes/dislikes) in general?

My overall impression is that its very very early in development, but from a company that REALLY understands what musicians do when they open up their recording software. The popularity of it comes down to price and user community, and it’s still too soon to see if the overall market is going to embrace it or say ‘no thanks, we don’t need it’. But I can’t imagine another free daw being anywhere near as good.

As far as I can tell, it’s main competitor in the price range is Garageband, and it absolutely blows it out of the water. The editing features are just light years beyond what Garageband offers. And it’s not a real comparison to compare it to stuff like Ableton live Lite because those aren’t full DAWs, LUNA is. The downside in general is that its still super early in its development phase. While all the necessary features are there, things the like Midi editor will take the software developers some time to build up the features. Though all the essential functionality is there, there are some areas its rough around the edges, but if you invest your time into learning it and stick with it, given UAD’s reputation for develping VERY GOOD software, i think it’ll pay off for you in the long run.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with what it does. I personally won’t ditch Pro Tools to start using it (for a number of reasons), but I’m excited to see what becomes of this DAW in the near future. Let me know if there are any specific questions you have about it. I can’t speak into the actual technical end of it, but I can compare certain aspects of it to what I know about other DAWs.

I agree - I’m completely making an assumption here, but if I had to guess, her question is likely probing to feel out if others think its worth investing time into exploring.

For what it’s worth, they review it in Tape Op magazine this month. In general, they say it is very promising, but as everyone here has mentioned, in its infancy. If I owned their interface I’m sure I would check it out, but that’s an expensive “if” for the privilege of a free DAW. Trying to keep up to any degree with Reaper right now is challenging enough for me.

They may be entering the market too late to make a difference, but knowing UAD, they probably did some heavy market research before deciding to build this thing. It must have taken an ARMY of people to put this together.

I don’t know many people that will switch, but more so because of the sheer amount of effort it takes to become comfortable in a new DAW. But I’d definitely recommend it to anyone who’s just starting to get into recording. -Afterall - you can’t beat the price lol.