What does Nebula\Acoustica do poorly?

[Nickerz]

I've seen people mention it does not do compression, distortion or saturation well. I'm wondering if anyone has an insight as to why that might be. I am mainly using it right now for the subtle thing it does very well, like EQ, but would like to be able to crank up the gain on a Zener Limiter and have it do that thing well.

But right now, I get the impression Softube might be a better option for straight distortion. Although the algos lack the sauce, they don't seem to have the same limits when it comes to generating distortion.

I also wonder how well Nebula is at sampling tube tone. Any help is appreciated!

[AtomOfScent]

1) Manage CPU efficiently. Things like an eco-mode for real-time, online/offline oversampling settings, auto-bypass on silence (thankfully Reaper added that natively). Lack of soft-bypass means even when using DAW automation to save CPU there are glitches when the plugins are enabled.

2) Listen to user feedback. They often take genuine constructive criticism from users wanting to improve the products defensively and personally (maybe it's a language barrier). Countless users asked for a simple mix knob for Gainstation and were ignored. Gainstation2 came out and still lacked this simplest of features.

3) Bloated interfaces that get worse over time. Yes, the skins look nice but waste a tonne of space and prioritize style over function.
For example this shows the GUI for Gold2EQ over top of Gold3EQ which has tripled in size! The added meters and preamp section each take up as much space as the actual EQ controls.


I did a simple mockup in MS Paint showing that all the new functionality could fit in the same GUI size.

Despite others agreeing and users requesting a separate version with a sensible GUI size so more than 1 EQ could fit on a screen Gold4 was the same bloated size. I haven't used it since v2.
In other cases plugins will have tiny hard to use controls while most of the GUI is useless filler.

4) The preamps are so subtle as to be nearly pointless. I don't understand having 75 different preamp models when none of them make much audible difference unless on every track in a mix which is impossible (see point #1). If you try driving the input like hardware they will sound nothing like it and just break up into a chirpy digital mess.

5) Create a decent website. i.e. Look how much wasted space and little information there is here. It's the same on the next page too. You have to click through 2 separate pages like this just to get any meaningful product information.
https://www.acustica-audio.com/store/t/acqua

[Nickerz]

I agree with all of this except the preamps. Put that on every track and freeze! #5 is the worst, there is just no excuse for the mess there. It's like a week long job to fix that!

[j[b++]]

Sorry to hijack this thread, but what do you consider as the best acustica product if it comes to preamps / coloring?

[Tj Shredder]

What is the worst in the industry is dealing with your resources. Its just a IR multisample machine which eats so much CPU and disk space that its banned from my system forever. I am glad they delivered those freebies, which showed the flaws of that concept clearly…

[AC222]

In a word compression. The programs don't react fast enough to control transients even with some custom settings using lookahead controls. More recent offerings react better than the past but still not quite there, especially for things such as an 1176. For slower optical compressors or using for bus compression, Nebula can do the job with compression and retains the depth and streo image better than algo compressors that tend to make the sound source smaller.

[Teksonik]

What is the worst in the industry is dealing with your resources. Its just a IR multisample machine which eats so much CPU and disk space that its banned from my system forever. I am glad they delivered those freebies, which showed the flaws of that concept clearly…

Well said......

I've tried a ton of Acustica stuff going all the way back to the purple Nebula thing they released on a Computer Music magazine disk what seems like a decade and a half ago.

None of their stuff I've tried has ever impressed me especially considering the CPU/Disk Space cost to performance ratio.

I've always felt that impulse response based plugins are nothing more than a gimmick but other people obviously disagree and that's what has kept them in business all these years.

[Leo1999]

AA plugins are cpu hogs, so you need a powerful machine.
Very often I hear AA plugins have an analog sound and 3D, whatever this means.
It's all about imagination, if you want them to sound analog, you might hear it, I have not discovered it yet, though.
But AA has fancy Guis and manuals, this could make your sound better, too, I mean if your imagination is strong enough.
Poor compressors and no saturation, what you would expect to be saturation.
Some EQs are nice.
And it's of course my opinion, expérience and my thoughts.
Find out yourself, you can demo their plugins

[plexuss]

AA plugins are cpu hogs, so you need a powerful machine.
Very often I hear AA plugins have an analog sound and 3D, whatever this means.
It's all about imagination, if you want them to sound analog, you might hear it, I have not discovered it yet, though.
But AA has fancy Guis and manuals, this could make your sound better, too, I mean if your imagination is strong enough.
Poor compressors and no saturation, what you would expect to be saturation.
Some EQs are nice.
And it's of course my opinion, expérience and my thoughts.
Find out yourself, you can demo their plugins

I'd love to hear one of your mixes!

[Frankie.T]

I think AA plugins sound very good, expecially their EQ. Some compressor work well, El Rey is just awesome on vocal, never heard a better one. Some other stuff it's a "fail" imo Smoke it's completly broken.
I would like them to wake up to support win 11, it's been out from a while and still no official support, this is a shame, expecially because it shoudn't be so hard to support it, cause usually windows it's pretty good with retrocompatibility.

If anyone know any EQ's that sound good as AA please let me know, cause i try a lot of plugins and i still didn't heard anything to soundgood and to work as expected like that, they have different flavors that allow me to make good and fast decisions on a lot of tracks.

What i don't love is ofc the cpu usage, it's too heavy and if you like to use their plugins ad i do, you will endup with no cpu power left, regardless your cpu. But a Ferrari use more fuel than a "normal" car. Anyway i still think they should put 50% of their workforce into improving the engine, to make it snappier and more cpu friendly. They release a lot of stuff, they should slowdown to redirect the workforce into enhancing imo.
Another things i don't like it's their support system. I found a bug in pensado eq, i reported, in the mean time the version 2 came out, and the same issue is still there (if you automate the filter it react with different timing everytime) i've made a video comparison, and the ticked saw and understood that there is an issue, they told me they will send this to devs, then after a while their automatic system close the ticket. I never saw a fix, i don't even know if they are working on it.

Nothing is perfect i know, like everything else AA have his pros and cons, i just hope in the case they read this topic, they will work to improve, what i (and you) said because usually companies tend to say their vision (sometime i call it excuse) to justify some decisions. This is perfectly understandable, cause no one can make everyone happy, but some behavior are just objective

[Leo1999]

I remember two or three YT videos where it was being shown that AA pre amps add more or less nothing. Unfortunately I forgot the channels name, but will post it in case I ll find.
You read manual or description or hear some hype and your brain and ears will perceive something that will make you think it's good. That's how our brain can get influenced.

[Frankie.T]

I remember two or three YT videos where it was being shown that AA pre amps add more or less nothing. Unfortunately I forgot the channels name, but will post it in case I ll find.
You read manual or description or hear some hype and your brain and ears will perceive something that will make you think it's good. That's how our brain can get influenced.

Some pres do nothing imho, others are very pleasant.
I know GUI trick humans and they know it too, otherwise we never see GUI's with 3/4 of useless stuff like spinning tapes, screw and stuff like that.
With that said, a capable engineer must be able to judge a plugin for his sound. Unfortunatly seems most out there (at least reading other forums) are not very objective with their listening skils.
Anyway a good GUI doesn't make a bad plugins as a good GUI doesn't make it good

[Leo1999]

Found one video comparing different AA pre amps


Really don't know what their pre amps are good for and I demoed quite a lot of AA plugins.
Sometimes I think they just change the gui with every plugin and use the same basic stuff maybe just some little eq variations?...

[AC222]

For what it's worth, I think Acustica has a terrific lineup for preamp and tape saturation. I have yet to find anything that approaches Nebula on this front.

I just don't think compression is it's strong suit. Also, I deeply respect Mr. Plexuss who is an OG and quite knowledgeable so would second his take on most things period and defer to his opinion on lots of things audio.

Respect

[plexuss]

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