Universal Audio is the fifth and final studio album by Scottish rock band the Delgados, released 20 September 2004 through Chemikal Underground.

While touring in support of their fourth studio album Hate (2004), the band members felt disconnected from the live shows due to bringing extra musicians with them.

[4][5] They followed it up with a trek to the United States in April 2003, and another UK tour the following month, leading up to the benefit event Concern Concert for Africa.

[11][12][13] Universal Audio has been compared to Skylarking (1986) by XTC, Songs from Northern Britain (1997) by Teenage Fanclub, and Final Straw (2003) by Snow Patrol.

pairs an acoustic guitar and harmonica (played by Stevie Jackson of Belle and Sebastian) with a trumpet section, and sees Woodward wanted to make a symphony.

[7] "Bits of Bone" features handclaps and channels the sound of XTC; "The City Consumes Us" highlights the love-hate relationship that musicians have with their hometowns.

[7] The album closes out with "Now and Forever", which sees both Woodward and Pollack sing in ascending falsettos against an bagpipe-enhanced orchestral rock sound.

[20] "Everybody Come Down" was released as the album's lead single on 6 September 2004, with "Don't Leave Clean" and "I See Secrets" as the B-sides.

[11] Cokemachineglow editor Dom Sinacola found that despite the album's stripped-down direction, it was "just as intricate and meticulously constructed as its sweetly headfucking predecessors".

[12] Timothy Gunatilaka of Entertainment Weekly said that though it seems that the band swapped their "lush campfire symphonies for a generic indie groove [...], halfway through, the harmonious majesty of previous records like The Great Eastern returns on Universal Audio".

[30] The Guardian's David Peschek saw the album as a representation of "four people playing together in a band," lacing the "lavish orchestrations and over-production that occasionally overpowered the songs on Hate".

[31] Now writer Dylan Young suggest that fans that liked the previous two releases would find Universal Audio "hard to swallow" as the "stripped-down treatment of the songs" gave the band their "most nuanced effort to date".

[32] PopMatters' Jason MacNail stated that the "dichotomy of having two lead singers just as comfortable in front as they are supporting the other is one of the band's greatest assets".