10000th-R2R

You didn't take one thing into consideration: UAD is powered by a very slow processor that could be emulated and run possibly 100s of UAD plugins on our modern processors. However, I don't think UAD plugins will be cracked, and frankly, I worked them and they're nothing that special any more.

But R2R love challenges, like any crackers or hackers do, so who knows... ;)

Thank you for your advice, funny that what you say is exactly the opposite of what I've red about these DSPs...

But, even if I don't know you, I think your advice is 100% based on facts, and on the realities of the market and those of the scene, so I trust you more than those (too much) enthusiastic articles!

Agree, and most of them are coded by Brainworx anyway

Yes, but...
Don't forget uad are still using the same cheap&slow sharc dsps from +10 years ago.
Those dsps probably cost less than 20 or 10 bucks, 10 years ago.
Today, they probably pay less than 5 bucks, for 1 unit.

I wouldn't be surprised if 1 or 2 cores from a modern ryzen 5xxx were far more powerful than a quad..or even a octo core...
Those dsps are so slow, that 1 stereo instance of some plugins can max out a solo card, at 44/16.. let alone 96/24.
Yes, slow. No plugin, no matter how analog and fantastic it sounds, should be able to max out one entire solo card !

But of course, even with the source code, emulating the hardware would be almost impossible

I suppose they have someway protected their DSP, isn't it?

Is it possible for UAD to obfuscate their Processor? Or to implement inside it a form of encryption, in the goal to hide / cipher the code that is exchanged with the plugin?

I said that because I red that if you wanna emulate an CPU / SOC / DSP, you have to spy every single data that enter and come out of every one of its numerous connections.

BUT what if everything is encrypted / obfuscated / ciphered? Imagine you are R2R, what you could do?

(Just an idea: Perhaps the protection is someway responsible for the slowness of these DSPs?)

(I realize that my questions could very well have no real answer in fact... It was just childish and enthusiast curiosity, I read a lot of technical articles about electronics that obviously I don't always understand...)

(...But I always have my soldering iron ready, in any case...)