Major bug warning for Acustica Acqua users

[trager]

This issue has been alluded to in the thread “Any suggestions regarding to Acustica Audio?”, but since it is quite important I thought it warranted a new thread.

A relatively serious bug has come to light concerning Acqua plugins. If you use them it might be worth your while to read through a few pages of the main Acqua thread on GS, starting with this post:

https://gearspace.com/board/showpost.ph ... ount=27744

To summarise as best I can, if you work at a sample rate higher than 44.1, depending on what DAW you use, there is a good chance upon project recall that your plugins will be loading the wrong settings, and doing so without giving any visual indication. I have confirmed that it is happening for me using VST2 in Reaper on Win 10 x64.

If I have this right, it is Acquas released before last summer and updated since last summer that are affected. In Reaper and some other DAWs, in sample rates above 44.1, the plugins are loading the wrong impulse response content upon project recall. They are loading the 44.1 content. This means, for example, that your EQ moves will not be at the right frequencies, but the only way you will know is if you can hear that things aren’t right. And even then you might just think you made bad choices last time you worked on the mix.

If you adjust a control it will trigger the loading of new samples, fixing the issue for that particular EQ band etc. You might go through your mix trying to get it the way you thought it sounded when you were done with it yesterday, and might in fact just toggle everything and put it back where it was, having accidentally solved the problem. But then tomorrow when you recall the project everything will be wrong again.

A fix is being rolled out soon, but in the meantime some of you may be having your workflow impacted quite severely. The implications when dealing with revisions are obvious.

I understand your best option at this moment in time is to roll back your Acquas, in Aquarius, to versions dated earlier than last summer, where necessary.

Incidentally, there has also been renewed discussion of the fact that Acquas do not support dynamic sample rate shifting. (If you change the sample rate of your DAW while working on a project you will generally have to reload all instances of your Acquas.) In principle this could be called a bug, but it has been a well known limitation of the software for some time now, and until this point Acustica have presented it simply as a matter of what is and is not supported. Crucially, it is a separate issue.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

there is a candidate solution for commercial plugins

[The Noodlist]

there is a candidate solution for commercial plugins

That's good to hear.
I wonder if Acqua plugins hosted in N4 have the same issues?

ps
Plain text, quick start manuals would be a nice additions. I realise the effort that goes into producing the current manuals but a more practical offering would be welcome.

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

no... but you miss an update N4 for loading new plugins. We'll update N4 soon
Ok for user manuals, we are trying to improve them too

[planetearth]

there is a candidate solution for commercial plugins

Does this mean the free plug-ins AA has given out won't get the update? I'm not sure I understand, since (I thought) the free versions were sometimes just beta versions of what would become "commercial" plug-ins. At least, this is what I seem to remember reading in an AA thread on GS.

Steve

[Zaphod (giancarlo)]

there is a candidate solution for commercial plugins

Does this mean the free plug-ins AA has given out won't get the update? I'm not sure I understand, since (I thought) the free versions were sometimes just beta versions of what would become "commercial" plug-ins. At least, this is what I seem to remember reading in an AA thread on GS.

Steve

"commercial releases" are everything but "trials". Trials were not updated yet, we'll do it

[The Noodlist]

no... but you miss an update N4 for loading new plugins. We'll update N4 soon
Ok for user manuals, we are trying to improve them too

All positive stuff, the wheels are turning.

[MogwaiBoy]

If you log into Aqaurius now you can see they are rolling out fix updates.

Well done and thank you to the person who discovered this, and to Acustica for getting onto it.

[The Noodlist]

If you log into Aqaurius now you can see they are rolling out fix updates.

Well done and thank you to the person who discovered this, and to Acustica for getting onto it.

+1

[10bd01]

I'd like to bump this post and bring attention to a portion of the GS thread in which Acustica admits to selling Ebony knowing it has a malfunction that they are intentionally not going to fix - ever, are not acknowledging or notifying their customers of the malfunction, and that this has been going on since January. Notice also how Will the Weirdo has an example that clearly shows how the plugin is creating an entirely artificial sine tone high in the spectrum in the reverberation:

https://gearspace.com/board/music-compu ... st15445936

Feel free to keep this thread pumping with issues as they arise. Potential customers should be aware of these issues - I was saved from spending hundreds of dollars on Ebony a few months back by Will the Weirdo's posts on it, I had no idea they STILL hadn't been fixed. Acustica had huge recall issues this weekend that are still affecting users and they have not yet notified them. As we speak people are mixing with malfunctioning plugins that AA knows are malfunctioning and which they have a solution for, but have not yet communicated even a peep to their customer base to prevent them from losing hours of work or producing bugged out mixes to their clients.

This is an unethical company, folks.

[plexuss]

We just got confirmation in the GS thread from AA that AA doesn't do comprehensive acceptance testing of its products, the up-shot is that they are ok with releasing broken software. Keep that in mind when you transfer your wealth to them.

[MogwaiBoy]

Seems like they have a large beta group but no one picked it up - so it's just one of those things (happens all the time in my job, graphic design - 12 people "review" the layout but no one sees the spelling mistake on the cover until it's published!).

Surely samplerate switching will now be part of their version release checklist. Live and learn IMO.

[plexuss]

I work with software dev teams directly. I provide creative assets that have technical constraints that I need to be accommodated for in my designs. I need to work directly with devs and provide over-sight to idenify any risks associated with changes to the design vision, from the dev process. Acceptance/QA testing that validates every feature and function against a complete list of use-cases includes edge-cases is a defacto best practice. I can't remember a dev team in my 30+ years that has not used such a process. I believe comp sci students are taught this in school. I suppose a software company can say this is optional, but then... oh... i guess, here we are... AA.

That's why it's a best practice: The risk of not doing it are bugs, upset customers and reduced revenue.

And just to point out: the word "Acceptance" as it relatest to testing is not the acceptance of the risk associated with a compromised test, but rather what would the customer would find acceptable. And then there is just the pride of doing a great job and releasing an amazing solid software product. No? I guess not... back to the grind...

[MogwaiBoy]

True. And testing environments and protocols can always be refined by devs. Surely AA have some automated testing they can push the code through and get data. Samplerate switching will hopefully now be added as a use case so this doesn't happen again.

Mixing at 48k, then bouncing at 96, like you, is something I should probably get into

[10bd01]

Surely AA have some automated testing they can push the code through and get data. Samplerate switching will hopefully now be added as a use case so this doesn't happen again.

"Hopefully" is the word for it, I'm not so sure about "surely". I've surely lost that hope.