Acustica Audio Plugins are killing my computer.

[wuworld]

These plugins are good, but damn my computer is screaming for help lol. For my desktop I have a i7 64 GB of RAM, and my new laptop i7 32 gb of ram 2 ssd drives. After trying many of their plugins, they crash the most, and take up the most cpu.

How do you guys work with these? I'm seeing people switch to Reaper just to use them. So far I work fine with Slate's bundle, Black Rooster, Soundtoys, Plugin Alliance bundle, and more. Would like to make it work, but I could just stick with what I have.

Acustica your plugins are good, but you are going to miss out on a big chunk of the market because many users can't handle your plugins.

Lastly, Sienna or Slate VSX? Thanks.

[plexuss]

These plugins are good, but damn my computer is screaming for help lol. For my desktop I have a i7 64 GB of RAM, and my new laptop i7 32 gb of ram 2 ssd drives. After trying many of their plugins, they crash the most, and take up the most cpu.

How do you guys work with these?

I use a faster computer: 2010 mac pro 12-core Xeon whatever 3GHz, 32G. You need processing power for the most part. i7's are nice but are not going to get you very far with Acquas.

I was running Logic but now run Reaper under macPOS - Reaper is more efficient and runs Acquas smoother than Logic, so there may efficiencies to be had with the specific DAW. Also as someone will mention, buffer and other audio system parameters can also be optimized - there are often guidelines on this posted to the net if you search. There is a lot you can do with Reaper to get more optimization out of it, but of course in all cases only to a point. Then you have to consider a faster CPU or system.

Of course AA knows a lot about the performance of their products. At the moment, the only way to get the sound quality Acquas are capable of, they (apparently) have to consume a lot of CPU. This is cost of leading edge audio technology - more capability, more CPU.

[The Noodlist]

Have you tried different buffer sizes when you start running into issues?
I've noticed, sometimes a buffer size of 512 has better CPU usage than at 4096 in Studio One AMD 8350. CPU usage seems to stabilized at 512. You could also bounce. YMMV.

4096.png

512.png

I wonder if Jbridge can improve efficiency.

It makes me wonder if they outsourced to a company like Kiive Audio who's oversampling is highly efficient, I know it's a different platform, algorithmic. But they might be able to tweak things.

[bmanic]

Lastly, Sienna or Slate VSX? Thanks.

For me it's Slate VSX but the good thing with Acustica Audio Sienna is that you can actually try it right away and get it working with almost any pro/semi-pro headphones. Slate VSX is extremely hard to get hold of at the moment and is pretty much impossible to "demo" unless you have a friend or a shop around you that has a pair. Also a quick "demo" is quite useless as you'd need some time with them to get the full benefit.

[ghettosynth]

These plugins are good, but damn my computer is screaming for help lol. For my desktop I have a i7 64 GB of RAM, and my new laptop i7 32 gb of ram 2 ssd drives. After trying many of their plugins, they crash the most, and take up the most cpu.

How do you guys work with these?

I use a faster computer: 2010 mac pro 12-core Xeon whatever 3GHz, 32G. You need processing power for the most part. i7's are nice but are not going to get you very far with Acquas.

It's not that it's an "i7", it's that it's a mobile chip. My office had a server/workstation that was shared that used probably the same two chips that you're talking about and my hex core i7 was faster with most processor bound workloads comparing single user to single user. Obviously if you have tasks that can use more than six cores at a time, this gave some edge to the Xeons, but what they lost in single core performance by comparison made it still largely a draw.

Modern desktop parts are going to smoke your decade old xeons.

Mobile parts, on the other hand, are always going to be thermally throttled in some way and are "i7s" in name and not much else.

[plexuss]

Modern desktop parts are going to smoke your decade old xeons.

Duh.... Ya, well, my penis is larger than yours. Are we really going to do this?

[ghettosynth]

Modern desktop parts are going to smoke your decade old xeons.

Duh.... Ya, well, my penis is larger than yours. Are we really going to do this?

I'm sure that's true. I sold mine to get a faster processor. I wasn't using it much anyway. I'm just thankful that they pay by the inch.

[MogwaiBoy]

I drank the AA Kool-Aid and I do think their plugins are as close as it gets to analog in the digital realm.

But yes, they tax your CPU like crazy and have other quirks like they don't like being automated / have esoteric GUIs and generally work slower. My typical method is to use higher buffers if possible, ignore the 'Zero Latency' versions, freeze tracks if I need to, and use sparingly.

There are dudes on the Facebook group using Magentas on every channel of a mix etc - honestly, I don't know how that's possible. I heard Reaper runs Aqcuas more efficiently though, and there is a thing now called 'Audio Gridder' where you can use a remote server to take the CPU load.

Otherwise, I'm in the same boat as you (6 core i7 3.2gHz and still struggling). It's like their plugins are made for CPU's of the future...

[The Noodlist]

My typical method is to use higher buffers if possible, ignore the 'Zero Latency' versions, freeze tracks if I need to, and use sparingly...

I always assumed the highest buffer would yield the best results for mixing, but my previous post revealed otherwise.

[legendCNCD]

Lastly, Sienna or Slate VSX? Thanks.

VSX - when they are available again, should be soon..

[escalona]

I'll say two things:
1. Besides an occasional headache with a bug here and there (and do not bother with customer service, just make noise in facebook) which eventually (mostly but not always) they fix, the sound quality I get from AA plugins is above any other developer without a question.
2. There is something very positive I got out of this CPU intensive "issue" (I decided that it's just a characteristic of AA plugins, and not a problem): I am now on a conscious quest for minimalism when it comes to plugins, and overall, this has made my music way more pleasant sounding. When I listen to some of my old stuff I can hear the processing so blatantly it's almost shameful (I can picture those 7 plugins per track I used to have).

Having said this, at this point after upgrading to a new i9 with 64Gb of RAM and top components in general, I use as many AA plugins as I feel I need. But if you are one of those whose sessions are 250+ tracks, 90+ soft synths and a dozen plugins on each track, then forget it.

[idoru97214]

I own VSX and Sienna which I run through Audeze LCD-2. I greatly prefer Sienna, in fact my VSX are for sale. Sienna is much more flexible, with more rooms/speakers available to audition. My ears did not adjust well to VSX ever... very weird verb and phase to me which Sienna does not have. But the real issue I have with VSX is the hardware is honestly not made well. The sound is good, but the phones are cheap plastic that left me absolutely crestfallen when I unpacked them. I have Sony headphones that cost $75 that were built better. Look on the GS VSX thread at the number of people who have developed cracks in the headband. I have an add to sell my VSX here on KVR! They have not cracked maybe because I never use them after one month of trying. lol.

[bmanic]

Sienna definitely doesn't have that "room" feeling at all, agreed.. at least going by the "free demo version" that I've used.

It is also why any mixes I tried doing on Sienna translated much worse than with VSX. Sienna is extremely close to my previous Toneboosters + Goodhertz CanOpener combination. I had to work a lot harder with that combination to get solid mix translation and it was very rarely 100% spot on first try. I still had to go to the studio to fix the mix. Especially stereo placement and levels are much more difficult to do in Sienna than in VSX, in my opinion.

This has not been the case with VSX. When I get a mix working perfectly in VSX, so that it translates there in many of the various "rooms", the mix translates extremely well to the outside world.

VSX also took the ability to hear compression and dynamics in general to a whole other level in comparison to my previous setup. I can now hear just a fraction of a dB compression on VSX, exactly as I can at the studio on my full range Genelec setup.

But yeah, I guess if you never got the illusion of VSX to work, then it would be a bad thing. As for the headphones breaking, I'm pretty sure Slate is being honest with his assessment of a single batch being affected by a manufacturing defect. Considering that the first batch was several thousand headphones.. about 20 breaking (as counted on gearslutz and other forums) isn't all that worrying. I've got two pairs myself and one of them has been used extensively since July 2020.. at least a few hours per day. Some days up to 12 hours. Not a scratch on them.. still good as new. So yeah, cheaply built they are not. Very spartan and basic design with simple materials does not equal bad quality.

I much prefer them to the Audeze headphones which I never took to (LCD-X in my case) as they simply weight way too much and are extremely uncomfortable in extended use.

[idoru97214]

I like Sienna, you like VSX. That's cool

[Tj Shredder]

After testing the first freebie from Acustica some time ago it was immediately obvious that their technology isn’t really usable. They achieve their result with a mass of impulse responses which eat both CPU and disk space…
There are enough good sounding tools around as alternative. I would rather get the real hardware than using those impulse sample packs, in case I would need that specific sound… (thanks god I don’t…)