Acustica Audio - Revisited

[martiu]

Sometimes i look in the "other forum" in the release threads just to shiver pleasntly

gearslut?

[UltraByte]

Sometimes i look in the "other forum" in the release threads just to shiver pleasntly

gearslut?

yes, the recent erin studio release for example was hilarious (pricing discussion) to read.

[billinder33]

Sometimes i look in the "other forum" in the release threads just to shiver pleasntly

Acustica has cultivated a cult-like following over there.

Same with Pulsar Modular.

[GusGranite]

Sometimes i look in the "other forum" in the release threads just to shiver pleasntly

Acustica has cultivated a cult-like following over there.

Same with Pulsar Modular.

As have FabFilter, as have TDR, as have ToneBoosters, etc.

I do agree that Acustica Audio are a real head scratcher though. I cannot understand their release strategy at all and Erin Studio is a good example of that. And yes their coding does not seem as stable or optimized as the others. But I guess you just have to demo to see if it’s worth it for the sound.

[dionenoid]

Love/hate relationship. Mostly love their sound, but hate their workings and policies.

Emulation-wise, they simply reign supreme. Anyone who actually owns/works with hi-end gear will agree.
Nebula is the real treasure btw. Nothing better itb.

But yeah. You have to put some effort in. If you expect the same way of working as with algo plugins, then AA is not for you. Their tech is simply different, so asks for a different approach. Unfortunately, their attitude is also very different, and often not in a good way.

For me personally, the positives often outweigh the negatives. So i use a lot of their stuff. But i always keep thinking about how much better things could be.

[nusound mind]

I tend to use one or 2 acustica plugs in a track. More than that turns into a glitch fest, just a touch of an eq on the masterbus can bring everything together and give it a subtle elevation. idk about slathering them all over a session, seems overkill to me. Not that I've tried doing that much.

Other than new synths I also have little to no interest in keeping up w/ their new releases. I wish I'd followed that philosophy with UAD tbh. I'd prob. be better off with 10% of the uad plugins I have, but I digress.

[billinder33]

Love/hate relationship. Mostly love their sound, but hate their workings and policies.

Emulation-wise, they simply reign supreme. Anyone who actually owns/works with hi-end gear will agree.
Nebula is the real treasure btw. Nothing better itb.

But yeah. You have to put some effort in. If you expect the same way of working as with algo plugins, then AA is not for you. Their tech is simply different, so asks for a different approach. Unfortunately, their attitude is also very different, and often not in a good way.

For me personally, the positives often outweigh the negatives. So i use a lot of their stuff. But i always keep thinking about how much better things could be.

Same for me. A few of them sound uniquely good, but the clunkiness is a real hassle. For that reason I really only use them on Busses. Though Mystic sounds uniquely great on vocals.

[dionenoid]

For anyone wanting to try AA stuff, remember that they're based on sampling/convolution tech, so they often won't load instantly, nor react instantly. Keep that in mind for when you want to do fast automations for example.

The bloat is not that bad, but you have to clean up things yourself. Unlike other brands, AA allows for much stuff to be deleted, and for unwanted plugins/versions to be deleted. The major disk-space saving thing is to delete unwanted samplerates. And ofcourse clean the 'stage area' regularly.

About cpu useage :
- Increase your buffer. Higher buffer settings are recommended anyway, working in real-time is pretty much impossible with AA (despite also offering ZL = zero latency versions).
- It's all sample-based so it's recommended to have plenty memory.
- Certain daw's handle AA plugins better than others ; Reaper or Cubase are known to work well.
- If everything else fails ; try using Audiogridder in Local mode to offload cpu : https://audiogridder.com/

Many AA releases consist of several plugins in one package. For example, a channelstrip, an eq, and a compressor. Plus, to make things even more confusing, within these individual plugins you often also have a choice for types : for example compressor type A, B, C. When demoing, always try all these variations as they can sound/behave really different. AA often samples other brands' hw clones also and includes them in their products.

Usually, many also offer various types of preamps. Don't expect these to be very obvious, or to be able to be driven much. They mostly are pretty subtle, adding only a bit of harmonics, a hint of color/vibe, just like the hw they are based on.

Everything can be demoed for a month, and these trial versions are fully working so you can save presets and render results. But very important : the demo versions are not backwards compatible with the paid versions. So if you made presets for trial versions, you'll have to copy the settings by hand.

Overall there's so much available that most ppl get lost in choice. So, here's some tips :

The classic (and afaik most popular) AA plugins are :
- Gold (Neve)
- Sand (SSL)
- Pink (API)

When looking for dedicated type plugins, here's some popular ones :
- Lemon / Fire The Delay (delay)
- Taupe (tape)
- Ash / Fire The Clip (clipper)
- El Rey (compressor)
- Silver (reverb) (requires individually sold reverb packages)
- Mahogany (filter)

Also, be sure to download the free Tan 2 which is a VCA compressor that beats most paid SSL-type compressors on the market. That one is imo a good introduction into the AA way of working, as you can choose various sampled models as well as change the attack behaviour, making it much more versatile than it looks at first.

There's an "unofficial list" of which hardware every AA plugin is based on : https://justpaste.it/AcusticaAudioAcquaMasterList/pdf


If you like what you hear, then the next step is getting Nebula. This allows you to load third party stuff (libraries) into Nebula, and often also create dedicated plugins from those 'libraries'. Some stuff is sold on the AA website, while well-know 3rd party developers are Tim P, Cupwise and Alex B. Plus ofcourse there's the legendary stuff by Henry Olonga.

Nebula is a whole universe of possibilities, for those who want the best possible emulations while also having lots of downsides (only few functions per instance, poor real-time operation, high cpu useage). It's a pretty expensive hobby also, as you need the paid Nebula for the good stuff. And many of the external libraries can't be demoed, unfortunately.


But remember : AA or Nebula stuff is not the same as using algorythmic plugins. So stop comparing them. They came a long way in improving their plugins, but it will always be based on having to load samples/vectors so there will always be certain downsides.

[Morty-C-137]

Sometimes i look in the "other forum" in the release threads just to shiver pleasntly

Acustica has cultivated a cult-like following over there.

Yeah.. it’s totally weird. Horses for courses I guess. But for me it’s too much of a faff with Acustica.. weird plugin system.. weird, trying too hard to look like hardware GUI’s and al the terrible UX that comes with..

[Uncle E]

But I have two Acustica plugins I use a ton: Fire the Clip and Fire the Delay. It makes sense that they both have extremely simplified interfaces. But they both sound great; Fire the Clip is the first clipper I reach for, as it usually gives me the results I hope for, and Fire the Delay has so many emulations/modes that it's easy to set up the delay I want and then flick through the different emulations until I find one I like.

+1

[Roberto Rafael]

Acustica Audio has tons of plugins that I consider essential, but the absolute best? For me, I couldn’t live without Magenta, Desert, ElRey, Cardinal, and Erin for mastering. Oh Brown!

[kritikon]

For anyone wanting to try AA stuff, remember that they're based on sampling/convolution tech, so they often won't load instantly, nor react instantly. Keep that in mind for when you want to do fast automations for example.

The bloat is not that bad, but you have to clean up things yourself. Unlike other brands, AA allows for much stuff to be deleted, and for unwanted plugins/versions to be deleted. The major disk-space saving thing is to delete unwanted samplerates. And ofcourse clean the 'stage area' regularly.

About cpu useage :
- Increase your buffer. Higher buffer settings are recommended anyway, working in real-time is pretty much impossible with AA (despite also offering ZL = zero latency versions).
- It's all sample-based so it's recommended to have plenty memory.
- Certain daw's handle AA plugins better than others ; Reaper or Cubase are known to work well.
- If everything else fails ; try using Audiogridder in Local mode to offload cpu : https://audiogridder.com/

Many AA releases consist of several plugins in one package. For example, a channelstrip, an eq, and a compressor. Plus, to make things even more confusing, within these individual plugins you often also have a choice for types : for example compressor type A, B, C. When demoing, always try all these variations as they can sound/behave really different. AA often samples other brands' hw clones also and includes them in their products.

Usually, many also offer various types of preamps. Don't expect these to be very obvious, or to be able to be driven much. They mostly are pretty subtle, adding only a bit of harmonics, a hint of color/vibe, just like the hw they are based on.

Everything can be demoed for a month, and these trial versions are fully working so you can save presets and render results. But very important : the demo versions are not backwards compatible with the paid versions. So if you made presets for trial versions, you'll have to copy the settings by hand.

Overall there's so much available that most ppl get lost in choice. So, here's some tips :

The classic (and afaik most popular) AA plugins are :
- Gold (Neve)
- Sand (SSL)
- Pink (API)

When looking for dedicated type plugins, here's some popular ones :
- Lemon / Fire The Delay (delay)
- Taupe (tape)
- Ash / Fire The Clip (clipper)
- El Rey (compressor)
- Silver (reverb) (requires individually sold reverb packages)
- Mahogany (filter)

Also, be sure to download the free Tan 2 which is a VCA compressor that beats most paid SSL-type compressors on the market. That one is imo a good introduction into the AA way of working, as you can choose various sampled models as well as change the attack behaviour, making it much more versatile than it looks at first.

There's an "unofficial list" of which hardware every AA plugin is based on : https://justpaste.it/AcusticaAudioAcquaMasterList/pdf


If you like what you hear, then the next step is getting Nebula. This allows you to load third party stuff (libraries) into Nebula, and often also create dedicated plugins from those 'libraries'. Some stuff is sold on the AA website, while well-know 3rd party developers are Tim P, Cupwise and Alex B. Plus ofcourse there's the legendary stuff by Henry Olonga.

Nebula is a whole universe of possibilities, for those who want the best possible emulations while also having lots of downsides (only few functions per instance, poor real-time operation, high cpu useage). It's a pretty expensive hobby also, as you need the paid Nebula for the good stuff. And many of the external libraries can't be demoed, unfortunately.


But remember : AA or Nebula stuff is not the same as using algorythmic plugins. So stop comparing them. They came a long way in improving their plugins, but it will always be based on having to load samples/vectors so there will always be certain downsides.

Thanks for that . I suspected most of it but didn't know for sure. I scrubbed anything I had from AA and all I remember is:
1. Every plugin seems to be around 1,379TB (possibly exaggerated just a wee bit )
2. Silly number of files/versions, 98% of which were irrelevant to me.
3. Not very usable on a midrange laptop for any kind of real-time use. Brought it to a standstill remarkably quickly. Had to render a lot.
4. Hated the "Fire the..." series. Impenetrable GUIs that actually were the opposite of quick and intuitive. Their oversampling was also crazy CPU intensive.

They had some sonic potential but seriously hobbled for your every day hobbyist. Maybe if I had a megacomputerDAW with infinite CPU/memory I'd appreciate them more. I guess I'm not their target audience.

[Uncle E]

That's a good point about the files/versions. I'd probably use them more if they allowed us to choose which get installed.

[DCrown]

They release too many new guis, I mean plugins instead of optimizing old ones.
Sold most of Aa, my projects feel a lot better now, it is like having got rid of a burden.

[DCrown]

It always makes me laugh when some users talk of some imaginery mojo AA amps add to a track, when all they add is latency and high cpu.

They release too many new guis, I mean plugins instead of optimizing old ones.
Sold most of Aa, my projects feel a lot better now, it is like having got rid of a burden.
Old is still gold, I prefer using Waves plugins snd Sonnox.