Any suggestions regarding to Acustica Audio?

[Najimad]

I sold Nebula, because due to high latency I could not track. I dislike plugins that make me look for an issue and having to find them in a project and then having to deactivate them, maybe just because I want to add or record some audio.
Maybe Nebula could be fine for final mix or mastering, but truly speaking I would not use Acustica for final mixing, I just do not trust AA, there is aliasing and some other issues I noticed especially on high end.
But everyone could find out by himself if AA is good for sound and if it fits to someone's workflow. Good thing is you can demo their plugins. But unfortunately you can not demo full versions of third party Nebula devs plugins, most plugins you can't demo at all, I won't buy a plugin, I can't demo before.
AA quality still is simply too sloppy and not user friendly imo
Also they release too many new plugins instead of improving what they already have.
Especially some of the many recent releases brought nothing new, I wondered if they just made some new gui each time...

[The Noodlist]

I have been demoing all AA plugins and that's my thoughts:
The amount of acustica plugins and the prices on ebay or knobcloud show me how little AA is valued. Saw Amethyst for 25 only.

There was a sale with something like 70%off, plus user discounts and Amethyst came in at €20 -€30 with my 15% discount code, (which I no longer receive) I demoed it and passed.

I like Cream's compressor and preamps, one of the better Acquas IMO. I snagged it for $9 here on KVR.

[dark water]

I sold Nebula, because due to high latency I could not track. I dislike plugins that make me look for an issue and having to find them in a project and then having to deactivate them, maybe just because I want to add or record some audio.
Maybe Nebula could be fine for final mix or mastering, but truly speaking I would not use Acustica for final mixing, I just do not trust AA, there is aliasing and some other issues I noticed especially on high end.
But everyone could find out by himself if AA is good for sound and if it fits to someone's workflow. Good thing is you can demo their plugins. But unfortunately you can not demo full versions of third party Nebula devs plugins, most plugins you can't demo at all, I won't buy a plugin, I can't demo before.
AA quality still is simply too sloppy and not user friendly imo
Also they release too many new plugins instead of improving what they already have.
Especially some of the many recent releases brought nothing new, I wondered if they just made some new gui each time...

Latency is certainly an issue and I wouldn't advise tracking (especially more than one instrument at a time) through Nebula or Acqua plugins.
CPU hit is also a major annoyance (as many of us have written previously in this thread) with AA's plugins. However, this can be reduced considerably in Reaper (perhaps bizarrely).
It will also be interesting to see what further advantages can be accrued when using Audiogridder (I'm yet to purchase it).

However, for the record, there are no aliasing concerns with Tim Petherick and Cupwise's nebula libraries (and they have also got rid of the 'ripple effect' associated with some other Nebula libraries).

Ultimately, it is clear that you won't be using Acustica Audio products.
However, as per the OP's thread title, my suggestion for anyone still open-minded / curious about possibly buying Acustica Audio products is to get (only) Nebula and also a couple of libraries by the 3rd party developers that I have mentioned previously.
I would stay away from Acustica-Audio's acqua products unless you want to buy them mainly for 'tone-box colouring duties' (and there are arguably better, and certainly much easier, algo plugins to use instead for these duties).

Still, it's all just opinions in the end.
I'll keep on enjoying using the brilliant Nebula libraries by the 2 Tims, and you won't

[Najimad]

Of course, the world even should be colorful with different opinions
But I want to stress once again that you can not demo 3rd party Nebula plugins.
I would call devs that do not give you a demo stupid.
I would never buy a plugin without having demoed it before, never

[Roodillon]

Nebula 4 immediately crashes Reaper if I try to use it. And I have experience because I bought Nebula 1, 2, 3 and 4. And they were all buggy. Maybe N5 will be the one, if they keep developing it that is.

[_leras]

As a UAD user these AA plugs just don't appeal. Were way too clunky when I tried them (admitedly quite some time back). If there are any benefits in sound, I think these would also be minimal.

UAD saves cpu usage leaving my PC free to run many other heavy plug ins, AA appears to be a major cpu user. UAD rock solid. AA seems flaky.

I think their concept of 'dynamic convolution' is a really good one. it's really a shame they never seems to have been able to get on board the right engineers to really build a decent product with all that entails e.g running smoothly on all apps, good install and update mechanisms, support.

I think it might have a use case if I were a mastering engineer, potentially they have a few models that could help on a more limited 2 bus. Not for me in a mixing situation though...

[The_Ogre]

Latency is certainly an issue and I wouldn't advise tracking (especially more than one instrument at a time) through Nebula or Acqua plugins.
CPU hit is also a major annoyance (as many of us have written previously in this thread) with AA's plugins. However, this can be reduced considerably in Reaper (perhaps bizarrely).
It will also be interesting to see what further advantages can be accrued when using Audiogridder (I'm yet to purchase it).

However, for the record, there are no aliasing concerns with Tim Petherick and Cupwise's nebula libraries (and they have also got rid of the 'ripple effect' associated with some other Nebula libraries).

Ultimately, it is clear that you won't be using Acustica Audio products.
However, as per the OP's thread title, my suggestion for anyone still open-minded / curious about possibly buying Acustica Audio products is to get (only) Nebula and also a couple of libraries by the 3rd party developers that I have mentioned previously.
I would stay away from Acustica-Audio's acqua products unless you want to buy them mainly for 'tone-box colouring duties' (and there are arguably better, and certainly much easier, algo plugins to use instead for these duties).

Still, it's all just opinions in the end.
I'll keep on enjoying using the brilliant Nebula libraries by the 2 Tims, and you won't

I'm a user of both Acquas and Nebulas libraries (official and unoffical ones), and I can't complain. I don't have a fancy CPU, but I'm able to run a bunch of them in my projects, during processing, mixing and mastering. For tracking, it's a bit more complicated, even using the Zero Latency instances, as they're heavy as hell.

But, of course, I don't use AA exclusively, as I'd need a quantic CPU for that, but I use them as much as I can and really like what they can do, and not only for colour/tone boxes (but for that intent too).

Nebula 4 immediately crashes Reaper if I try to use it. And I have experience because I bought Nebula 1, 2, 3 and 4. And they were all buggy. Maybe N5 will be the one, if they keep developing it that is.

I don't have troubles with crashes using Nebula on my system (Reaper user here too), the last with official and unofficial libraries. And I'm waiting for an update to N4 too, hoping that they could bring some improvements on the interface, sound or whatever more they could improve.

However, as I'm not a long time user of AA, and I've been following the specific topic about Nebula there on GS, a post that was posted there a few days ago, replicating a post by Giancarlo from Acustica (zaphod) made on Facebook, let me a bit suspicious with the future of Nebula - specialy concerning the unofficial 3rd party libraries.

Well, if I wanted to have only the official 3rd party releases (which I already have some, by the way - London Acoustics offerings are awesome), I'd stick with N4 Player, which is free. I bought N4 (commercial) exactly because of the possibility to use 'unofficial' 3rd party libraries too.

[briefcasemanx]

Okay what are the 3rd party libraries I should check out? I think lots of people have said get Cupwise and Tim P stuff, but which libraries of theirs exactly?

[plexuss]

Okay what are the 3rd party libraries I should check out? I think lots of people have said get Cupwise and Tim P stuff, but which libraries of theirs exactly?

You can try my approach: Cupwise, TimP, AlexB - buy all of them.

[The_Ogre]

Okay what are the 3rd party libraries I should check out? I think lots of people have said get Cupwise and Tim P stuff, but which libraries of theirs exactly?

You can try my approach: Cupwise, TimP, AlexB - buy all of them.

I second that. In the case of AlexB's ones, specialy the GE ones!

[MogwaiBoy]

For tracking, it's a bit more complicated, even using the Zero Latency instances, as they're heavy as hell.

The Zero Latency versions are even heavier on CPU than the regular versions.

Tracking through AA would be tricky for larger projects (ie: a rock band playing live in the studio), but if you're just recording a single guitar or something very basic then AA ZL versions are fine for maybe a pre-amp/EQ sweetening on the way in. Everything else (compression etc) can be done in the mix.

[briefcasemanx]

I'm definitely not buying all of them. I might just say screw it and buy none of them though. I don't care to do a ton of research with all these libraries to figure out what ones I might want. If there's some suggestions for a few libraries that are among the highest regarded among nebula users I'll do a small amount of research on that small subset of libraries to figure out if there are a few I might want to buy to test the waters.

[The_Ogre]

I'm definitely not buying all of them. I might just say screw it and buy none of them though. I don't care to do a ton of research with all these libraries to figure out what ones I might want. If there's some suggestions for a few libraries that are among the highest regarded among nebula users I'll do a small amount of research on that small subset of libraries to figure out if there are a few I might want to buy to test the waters.

I have the following ones, and they're all top notch:
Cupwise: CupTones (preamp/color boxes), Flucti-Mew (comp), Lunchpail (comp), Raybon & Wyte (filters) and YouRei (filters)
TimP: Blue 1102 v2 (EQ), L-Bus v2 (comp) and Opto 32 (comp)

And I'm planning to buy others, like the MFC GE Modern Flagship Console (console emulation from ALexB).

In the end, it all depends on what are you looking for. A good bus comp? A mastering comp? A vari-mu? I can recommend any of the above but the ALexB console (which I still don't have).

[briefcasemanx]

I'm definitely not buying all of them. I might just say screw it and buy none of them though. I don't care to do a ton of research with all these libraries to figure out what ones I might want. If there's some suggestions for a few libraries that are among the highest regarded among nebula users I'll do a small amount of research on that small subset of libraries to figure out if there are a few I might want to buy to test the waters.

I have the following ones, and they're all top notch:
Cupwise: CupTones (preamp/color boxes), Flucti-Mew (comp), Lunchpail (comp), Raybon & Wyte (filters) and YouRei (filters)
TimP: Blue 1102 v2 (EQ), L-Bus v2 (comp) and Opto 32 (comp)

And I'm planning to buy others, like the MFC GE Modern Flagship Console (console emulation from ALexB).

In the end, it all depends on what are you looking for. A good bus comp? A mastering comp? A vari-mu? I can recommend any of the above but the ALexB console (which I still don't have).

Cool thanks!

[Leo1999]

They have Black Friday sales now, they had better sales prices in the past, though