Acustica Taupe - Hype Or The Real Deal?

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I'm not much of a fan of Acustica because it's too much hype and has an odd cultish following.

Stepped release curves, "so-called" echo bug, the latest lasers, sampled harmonics somehow having artifacts that don't exist in hardware or in your standard digital plugin. It's been messy.

But Taupe sounded promising. I got the demo and I do like how responsive they've gotten their plugins now. But my experience went like this. Load Taupe, that sounds nice. Loaded Satin, that sounds better. Uninstalled Taupe the same night I downloaded it. And Acustica put a file in my system32 folder, that was kind of odd.

Satin just always sounded better.

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wagtunes wrote: Thu Nov 08, 2018 4:06 pm Personally, I don't know anything about the company. Never even heard of them before today. Are they considered one of the elite, like a U-he or Native Instruments or (pick your top company whoever) or are they some fly by night?
The guys behind the company have always left a somewhat amateurish feeling. The website / downloads when they started with "Nebula" was pretty bad. Maybe one reason why they did not really become a big and well-known plugin developer. Especially since the old "Nebula" had high latency, the GUI was bad and the CPU consumption very high.

Nevertheless, the sample/convolution based idea (they name it Volterra Kernel based sampling) has a lot of potential and the results are not bad.
Whether hype or not and assuming the current plugins working better and they have learned their lesson, certainly "Taupe" would be worth a try. I don't think it's the worst plugin, compared to the already existing algorithmic emulations.

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sleepcircle wrote: Sat Nov 10, 2018 6:39 pm yeah. but this wasn't a GOOD distortion. it was a stuffy, clogging-up of the higher register which the sound didn't "float on" as much as "slog through." i can only assume it was some kind of aliasing issue, because i've learned recently that Waves is very lax when it comes to that sort of thing.
I kinda second this experience. Strange it only reared its head on a snare after using it for over a year, but yeah... the saturation just doesn't sound good at times. I found myself trying to chase down some sh*t distortion in a full mix & Kramer ended up being the culprit.

I stopped and played around with Kramer's settings (I keep my signals gainstaged @ 0db VU), toying with the linked controls, and even putting Blue Cats gain before/after (inverse link) so I could hear the full range of the plugin, from ample headroom to driven. To me, Kramer just distorts in a really unpleasant way, I wouldn't even call it saturation. Perhaps Kramer can be a bit more source dependent- I moved on through.

Anyway- Im in the UAD ecosystem, and without *opining* on those plugins, I can comfortably say that Satin is the most realistic/tweakable this side of UAD's Ampex.

Note to OP- try the 'Big Fat Drum Buss' preset in Satin on your favorite test loop. Satin can be downright nasty, but in a much more 'fk yeah' way. Also- the presets on Satin are awesome. You even get the Dolby 'trick' under the hood!

For the price point you really can't go wrong with having Toneboosters Reelbus (& Ferox, if still available). In some situations I prefer Reelbus on the master.

No experience with Taupe so pardon being slightly OT.

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Hype...ask them if they can compare and show us a proof any of their plugins matching the real ones they sampled like Slate did it with his Distressor emu...
Maybe doable with their new El Gey but old ones does not stand a chance ;)
We want science and we want proofs not some grandma fairy tales...

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In between the question of hype and/or real (useable) quality
is a buffer of a fully working 4 weeks demo.

What I`m missing in general on KVR topics is the approach to first collect unprejudiced infos,
then using the demo (and time) and then writing a conclusion (of this very product)
which always is and represents an individual experience.

Why should I care if something is cult when it delivers something I could need?
Are this sideshow talks all about being entertained?

What was your basic experience with the entire process of demo?
Which settings did you use and liked/disliked the best?
What is your impression of a now core 13 plugin?
What part of the chain triggered you and what part not?
What final result brought you to the point of buying or pass?

Where is your meat after all?
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Omkar wrote: Tue Nov 27, 2018 4:21 pm In between the question of hype and/or real (useable) quality
is a buffer of a fully working 4 weeks demo.

What I`m missing in general on KVR topics is the approach to first collect unprejudiced infos,
then using the demo (and time) and then writing a conclusion (of this very product)
which always is and represents an individual experience.

Why should I care if something is cult when it delivers something I could need?
Are this sideshow talks all about being entertained?

What was your basic experience with the entire process of demo?
Which settings did you use and liked/disliked the best?
What is your impression of a now core 13 plugin?
What part of the chain triggered you and what part not?
What final result brought you to the point of buying or pass?

Where is your meat after all?
I didn't buy it because of the lack of control over the tape emulation part of it. It's that simple. Basically it's just another channel strip (have plenty of those) with a few tape deck presets. I don't want that. I want a full blown tape emulation that will give me wide range of editable parameters. This does not.

As a channel strip, it's great. Just don't need it.

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wagtunes wrote: Tue Nov 27, 2018 4:25 pm
Omkar wrote: Tue Nov 27, 2018 4:21 pm In between the question of hype and/or real (useable) quality
is a buffer of a fully working 4 weeks demo.

What I`m missing in general on KVR topics is the approach to first collect unprejudiced infos,
then using the demo (and time) and then writing a conclusion (of this very product)
which always is and represents an individual experience.

Why should I care if something is cult when it delivers something I could need?
Are this sideshow talks all about being entertained?

What was your basic experience with the entire process of demo?
Which settings did you use and liked/disliked the best?
What is your impression of a now core 13 plugin?
What part of the chain triggered you and what part not?
What final result brought you to the point of buying or pass?

Where is your meat after all?
I didn't buy it because of the lack of control over the tape emulation part of it. It's that simple. Basically it's just another channel strip (have plenty of those) with a few tape deck presets. I don't want that. I want a full blown tape emulation that will give me wide range of editable parameters. This does not.

As a channel strip, it's great. Just don't need it.
You made your point wag, it`s cool and comprehensible, that`s your meat.
When I say "you" I don`t mean the op or a single person, I mean "you guys/girls" talking here.
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Btw. Taupe gave me the same bad experience I already had with Nebula. I've installed the trial with over 2 GB of content and see only that Cubase starts to go crazy (blinking GUI elements, no audio, project not working). A bug, a problem with the GUI or the CPU usage is too high?
As a plugin I see a handful of cryptic names like "taupetapeq". I must open all of this plugins to see the plugin GUI and get some idea for what they are good for.
The good thing: they have now a own installer/downloader (but no option for uninstalling Taupe?).
Ok, manually removed Taupe and uninstalled this Aquarius thingy :borg:

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4damind wrote: Tue Nov 27, 2018 5:41 pm Btw. Taupe gave me the same bad experience I already had with Nebula. I've installed the trial with over 2 GB of content and see only that Cubase starts to go crazy (blinking GUI elements, no audio, project not working). A bug, a problem with the GUI or the CPU usage is too high?
As a plugin I see a handful of cryptic names like "taupetapeq". I must open all of this plugins to see the plugin GUI and get some idea for what they are good for.
The good thing: they have now a own installer/downloader (but no option for uninstalling Taupe?).
Ok, manually removed Taupe and uninstalled this Aquarius thingy :borg:
I get your point now Frank,
maybe a Cubase user can chime in and guide you
as daws tend to have their own little or bigger flaws.

The "Aquarius thingy" needs a wait to be upgraded (it indicates when done)
in case of an older version is running.
One then can define via settings (right top) where downloads and vst should go.
It doesn`t do any other than downloading desired unit including (trial-) license.
Means any downloaded content simply can be deleted if no longer wanted,
then finally the interface Aquarius uninstalled if wished so.

I decided to use the last quarter of this year to give S1.4 a further reflection
and S1 in general is commonly known not to be a performance master per se.
So, AA is a good candidate to check where we are.

Nothing caused me to run into some sort of headache,
neither Nebula3 Pro- nor Acqua incarnations.

My overall feeling is the core13 units (i.e. Taupe) do run smooth and seamless
while units with older cores don`t run very well on my pc.

My feedback I can give in this case is, Taupe should work
as tested on a less performant daw.

My go to fixer always is a demo of Reaper
in case of quirks on plugin initialization etc.
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4damind wrote: Tue Nov 27, 2018 5:41 pm As a plugin I see a handful of cryptic names like "taupetapeq". I must open all of this plugins to see the plugin GUI and get some idea for what they are good for.
The names aren't that cryptic once you get the naming convention. The all CAPS doesn't help though.

TAUPE = Full Channel Strip
TAUPEZL = Full Channel Strip Zero Latency (more CPU)
TAUPECOMP = Compression/limiter section only
TAUPECOMPZL = Compression/limiter section only, Zero Latency (more CPU)
TAUPEEQ = EQ section only
TAUPEEQZL = EQ section only, Zero Latency (more CPU)
TAUPETAPE = Tape section only
TAUPETAPEZL = Tape section only, Zero Latency (more CPU)

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bmanic wrote: Mon Nov 12, 2018 7:21 am
I suspect WowCTRL + Taupe may be a really interesting combination. TAUPE has that "je ne sais quoi" thing about it that no other tape plugin quite nails (having said that, my Telefunken M15 doesn't have it either! It's much cleaner and closer to the source than TAUPE at any setting) so combining that with WowCTRL might actually give the source a really nice low-fi vibe with sugar on top.
This is exactly what I've been using to to tame some fizzy electric guitars at the moment. Really practical and fun all at once.

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I'm officially in on Acustica plugins. Taupe is exactly what I was looking for and it sounds excellent. I actually don't mind the GUI at all, it actually works for me. I tried it on a Master buss and it glued my mix and brought out the character that I would expect from a tape machine.

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wagtunes wrote: Sat Nov 10, 2018 3:24 pm Know what? Just saved myself a lot of money on both of these.

Satin? Forget it. Listened to a demo. Bypass and then on. Guy says "As you can hear, it's real subtle."

No, it's not subtle. There's no f**king difference.
I almost spit my coffee out. I remember thinking the same thing in the demo. If I wanted no difference, I would use Airwindows plugins (runs for cover).

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Is tape (dynamic) compression not a thing? All the tape emulations I've tried only saturate, but don't have any dynamic effect at all..? I can get the effect I'm after with some plugins, but not "dedicated" tape emus.

Fabfilter Saturn in warm tape mode, and playing with dynamic setting (works well on drums, especially with both drive and dynamics on 3' clock setting). Then I tend to use a lot of VintageWarmer, and the brief trial of McDSP Analog Channel seem to do the same "effect" as VW, but without the added color and whistles. None of the "dedicated" tape emus however, provide any of this dynamic action I've encountered with these plugins.

I'm not sure if the "dynamic compression" what I'm describing even is tape compression, but if it is, then there should not be excuse for tape emus to only "saturate", imo.

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