Acustica Audio – Amber (Presale)

[bmanic]

Will take a listen and see if I have time today.

[bmanic]

Don't underestimate the awesomeness of this Avalon modeled EQ.

It is just ridiculously good. Amber + Magenta EQ makes a seriously powerful combination. I could probably retire with just these two and a good compressor.

Acustica Audio have really stepped it up with their latest releases. You've never heard anything like this in software before.

Anybody want to post some high quality audio for me to mangle with it?

Hi there bmanic if the offer still on. I just finished a song using mostly all nebula eqs, comp, consoles, etc.. I want to buy Amber or Magenta soon to use on my masterbus and some busses on my next mixes (and revisit older ones). I plan more to get Magenta because its more colored. but more expansive. if you can eq this mix one with Amber and one with Magenta (if you have it) that would be very cool. The mix sounds already good by it self I think. I have nothing on the masterbus except Alexb Modern Flagship Console clean a bit driven. no comp or limiter. so it is a bit quiet will leave you good headroom. In my tastes I don't like too bright mixes. I like my music to be more warm and vintage (how original I know) . I would prefer you have fun with it eq wise and tell me after what you did. maybe boost some 100hertz narrow for some buddy and remove some mud around 400hertz and open some air lightly

you can download the short edited 32 bit wav file version here
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sm17uc0uodvn2 ... s.wav?dl=0

This is a soundcloud stream only version for quick listen
https://soundcloud.com/patrickpleausoun ... enta-tests

Okay, so I did a very very quick little session with this file. I used 4 instances of AMBER. Two in the actual master channel and one in each split part of the song (one for the chorus, to counter the built up mids around 1kHz and one for the part after the chorus to tidy up some mud in the bass). Only the last Amber in the main FX chain (nr 4 in the picture) has the preamp enabled. All other instances had the preamp turned off.

Here's a picture showing the exact settings.



And here is the audio file (note, I didn't really spend any time matching relative volume! Also note that I did this using headphones so don't expect super results. Can't use our main full range system right now as it's being used by my colleague):

Amber during mastering, quick example

Cheers!
bManic

[bmanic]

Btw, working on a Magenta example too.

[Plajia]

Hi there bmanic! thanks for that.cool example. I gotcha about the mid 1k build up in the chorus but the eq you did might be too extreme and the chorus did loose some of his self aware grit and texture. I don't blame Amber but might have cleaned up a bit too much and lost it appeal. maybe I'm wrong. verse 1 sounds better with amber in a way. I know you did quickly. Thanks for your time mate

Okay, so I did a very very quick little session with this file. I used 4 instances of AMBER. Two in the actual master channel and one in each split part of the song (one for the chorus, to counter the built up mids around 1kHz and one for the part after the chorus to tidy up some mud in the bass). Only the last Amber in the main FX chain (nr 4 in the picture) has the preamp enabled. All other instances had the preamp turned off.

Here's a picture showing the exact settings.



And here is the audio file (note, I didn't really spend any time matching relative volume! Also note that I did this using headphones so don't expect super results. Can't use our main full range system right now as it's being used by my colleague):

Amber during mastering, quick example

Cheers!
bManic[/quote]

[Plajia]

NICE!! cant wait for the Magenta demo
Do you think for the Magenta test a little boost at around 100hertz bell narrow to give some buddy but already bassy mix.also cut the mud at around 400h and maybe put some air?.

[bmanic]

Here's my Magenta settings. Used 4 instances again, same setup as before. The last Magenta is being driven a lot harder than all the other instances to give some nice added harmonics and to "condense" the mix a bit.



Magenta during mastering, quick example

Again, note that I used headphones to do this very quick little demo mastering (used about 5 minutes of my time for this.. most of the time was fooling around in Microsoft Paint to do that damn image ). Also note that I used a single instance of Pro-Q 2 to cut the annoying ringing frequency at around 2.3kHz. Magenta just can't do tight cuts at all (Amber is excellent for doing very tight cuts).

[bmanic]

NICE!! cant wait for the Magenta demo
Do you think for the Magenta test a little boost at around 100hertz bell narrow to give some buddy but already bassy mix.also cut the mud at around 400h and maybe put some air?.

You can see my settings. Boosting the mix at 100Hz is not a good idea, at least not to my headphones.. you already have a lot of energy there. Rather I'd move the bass energy a bit more down and cut the mud around 150 to 300Hz. But yeah.. you can look at my settings. The Magenta EQ is a very strange one, just like the hardware.. you just have to turn knobs and see what happens. It's more of a "sculpting" EQ which makes it not good for dealing with tight frequency problems. Rather you sculpt the mix into a certain direction and then use something else for the fine details.

Cheers!
bManic

[bmanic]

Decided to do a very interesting little experiment. Here is a version of the song where I EQ matched every part of the song with Pro-Q 2.0 using it's match EQ feature. Interesting to say the least!

Pro-Q 2.0 doing it's best to match the Magenta version

Cheers!
bManic

[Synthetic Wav]

Thanks bmanic for doing these samples files, with the comparaison with pro q i find the result not surprising.

[Tapehead]

Decided to do a very interesting little experiment. Here is a version of the song where I EQ matched every part of the song with Pro-Q 2.0 using it's match EQ feature. Interesting to say the least!

Pro-Q 2.0 doing it's best to match the Magenta version

Cheers!
bManic

Not bad. Kind of raises my suspicion… which makes me less willing to invest into Magneta. Also auditioning it in my headphones in less than ideal situation.

[bmanic]

Yeah I found it interesting how close it got. On my earbuds (crappy 20$ things) I hear almost no difference.. on my AKG K701 there's quite a clear difference (mainly the transients and overall "glue" of the track, most likely due to the highly varying harmonic distortion). I think on a pair of quality speakers the difference might be even larger but I've yet to have a chance to listen to it.

The thing is though, I arrived at these settings with Magenta very quickly.. something like 30 seconds of tweaking per instance. Like it has been said several times, the workflow of these hardware units is one of the main charms, not just the sound. Nebula captures this workflow and weirdness quite well (it's not as immediate though because it takes a split second for the core engine to load all the samples if you switch from say cut to boost, or peak to shelf).

But yeah, the differences are definitely there though.. but there's no denying that it's all quite subtle in this example. I did however only drive a single instance of Magenta and it was not all that heavily driven. If I'd drive all the instances and with a heavier hand then the difference would probably be even larger (but not necessarily better!).

I think it's also a testament to how well Pro-Q does the matching.. and it's so easy to use. Feed the sidechain, hit the "match" button and there ya go. Instant results.

[bmanic]

Add some Nebula compression (beta of the Titan compressor and one instance of AlexB MTD), an instance of Pro-Q to clear up some resonances.. run a couple of instances of Amber in mid/side mode (using Voxengo MSED) and slap on a pro-MB to control the highs (that I boosted previously with Magenta) and smash it all to bits with Elephant v4 and you have something that could be played on the radio.

Just for fun 16 bit master

I think it's pretty amazing what you can do with todays plugins.

EDIT: ok, so I might have over cooked it a tad with the bass and limiting..

Cheers!
bManic

[Synthetic Wav]

i listened on a great headphone ( hifiman he 560) and the difference was not small to me, it' s the kind of same difference that happen sometimes when comparing some software/hardware , the hardware can sound more like it's part of the sound , haven't been processed, hard to explain but you probably know what i mean. ( but it's not a abx test so to take with a grain of salt )

i was not suprised by this as you compare a clean eq to something that have colored path and nebula should capture this i know it can be close by some comparaison i did .

[bmanic]

Agreed. You described it exactly how I hear it too.. it's more natural somehow. It's actually one of the main strengths of the VVKT processing that Acustica Audio have developed. The results just sound "effortless".. like whatever process you use, be it EQ, compression or even some of the reverbs and modulation things, the results sound like part of the original sound.

Next year I'll be exploring sampling a lot more myself.. I have this theory that the sampling process is actually enhancing some things by leaving out noise and crosstalk. I have a sneaking suspicion that even low-end hardware that usually sounds quite nasty, like say the Alesis 3630 compressor (yeah I know some consider it a classic.. personally I think that's ridiculous) which makes almost any signal sound like crap might actually sound a lot better through Nebula. This way it may be possible to create some rather nice hybrid processes of some whacky hardware chains. It's unexplored territory.

Cheers!
bManic

[Synthetic Wav]

Really intresting about the sampling process ! sometimes i felt like nebula program sounded better than the hardware i m used at some setting to me (in some case it seems it can be ) . i m definlety intrested in sampling but i have no idea how it work, i will check it, or maybe i should wait next version of nebula? things will be more easier maybe?

on some gears transformer can sometims be too much colored ,like saturate too much with bass heavy source or even cut the sub deep low, i wonder if with the sampling process i could avoid this ? sometimes i don't want the transformer color. that would make the nebula program more suited than the actural gear for mastering for example ,but maybe there is some artifacts, i d'on t know it seems complicated.