Universal Audio (UA) began shipping its new Duo and Quad FireWire DSP Accelerator called Satellite.

[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]This is big news for audio professionals and anyone that has wanted to use Universal Audio plug-ins, but couldn’t. Until now, if you wanted to use UA plug-ins you needed a caed installed on your Mac, but now, the market has opened up considerably.

For those of us that create music on a Mac Pro, installing and using a PCI card is not a big deal. Besides off-loading all of the plug-in processing to the card, you also get to use the best audio plug-ins on the market.

However, if you use an iMac, Mac mini or simply don’t want to take your computer apart to install the card, you were stuck. Now with the FireWire-based Satellite, you just plug into a port and you’re done.

The Satellite is compatible with Intel-based Macs running Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.4 (or higher). There are five models to choose from: DUO (Core); DUO Flexi (comes with a $500 Plug-In voucher); QUAD (Core), QUAD Flexi (comes with a $500 Plug-In Voucher), and QUAD Omni v5.7 (Comes with 50 UAD plug-ins).