It's a good plugin, but again given how AA tech works and the fact that major evolutions of the tech equals to better quality plugins mechanicaly (why do you think updates are free, in the days when the first acquas were released the tech wasn't mature at all and buying them or nebula was a bet on the future) it's your assessement of the silk eq having the best high end of all acquas that I opposed to. It does have smooth high end. You can get smoother for 40€ and free updates for life for a product that will not be discontinued and will constantly evolve for the better with the evolution of the tech.
That's all I'm saying, bro. sheesh.

 

The whole "Core" thing is a bit marketing in my humble opinion, no? and I've got quite few Acquas and n4, one thing for sure guys like TimP or AlexB use old nat3 while Acustica has nat4, the new software version they use to sample hardware. But TimP while using "old" nat3 most of the times sounds better then acquas, guess its not a core thing. Core is like a new fix or something like that.

For house music Gold is great, very fat, alive, natural and 3d sound also Sand for more clean forward sound, both combined sound v good indeed.
And for high shelfs the one suggested is one of the best for me too, for high boosts I normally would go with either Scarlet, Ivory or Green or TimP Dualtech, Surge, too many great options now a days.

 

Taupe was the biggest snake oil scam I ever bought into. I fucking hate that company.

 

I just bought it (without demo'ing it) and havent got around to installing it just yet. I'm curious as to why you think Taupe is scam'y snake oil. Mind elaborating a bit?

 

You should have gotten crimson, brutal distortion/saturation tool.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Dec 3, 2019

plus it's a due an update pretty damn soon

 

Magenta5 purchased.

 

What can you guys recommend as the "best" allround plugin from Acustica for eq/compression (and maybe also saturation) mainly for electronic / pop tracks? I use a lot of Plugin Alliance stuff and I am quite happy with it, but also heard good stuff about Acustica and might want to try something out from them.

 

Depressingly uninformed.Core and Nat are different things. Not that it matters.
Compressors didn't compress two years ago in acqua and Nebula. But yeah. Tech is irrelevant. Lol.
And crimson couldn't be created before the tech allowed it to come out of the ground. Etc, etc.
Why would you have N4 and a few acquas when you could have only silk from T.Petherick fro free from the sister site ? With your logic nothing beats it...Lol
Even with Gold1 and Sand1 there were notorious problems. They were fixed thanks to the tech evolution. It took gold3 to get rid of the echo bug. It's related to the tech.

 

Last edited: Dec 3, 2019

Probably Gold3 and maybe plus Crimson. Act quick, afaik they are still in sale for a very short time (not Gold since its a New Version, but all the other discounts should have ended yesterday.)

 

What you hate is a success that you can't comprehend, since your ears are so broken it can't hear simple saturation, and it scream "snake oil".
Run it in plugin Doctor and give us the screenshot of the snake oil.

 

Talmi you have to understand that people have different ideas of tape, warmth or saturation in mind, that goes for any plugin, they also hear it differently and aproach sound design and mixing differently, its just a tool.

 

I agree with you about the fact that people have different tastes on different topics. Then they should express their critics as a taste not as a fucking informed statement. Saying a fx is snake oil isn't saying it's not to your taste, it's saying that it doesnt do anything. Regarding Taupe or any nebula or acqua it's a retarded statement. This is not my taste, it's a simple statement.

Edit : Anyway AA has always drained controversies.
2 years ago or so (until a major step up in Core, just saying) until Pink 1 came out, you couldn't open a thread regarding Nebula or Acquas without having dozens of trolls coming out the wood to list the things the tech didn't do yet (no compression, no saturation, etc), all things that were right and known of the users who considered that what it didn't do it would do one day thanks to the tech, but what it did (recreation of the tone) it did uniquely. Those were ultimately choices based on taste and indeed needs in the prod/mix process and those two schools of thought diverged irrevocably, as subjective decisions always do.
Now a few cores later there isn't any more bases for a lot of the critics that arose before. But the controversies are still strong since the subjectivity has slided to other aspects of the problem : do we really need emulation ? can we work with freezing tracks ?
All of this is normal. Audio fanatics like us behave like any fanatics of any religion : we wage war for what we believe is right. Illusioned by the fact that we swim in highly technological waters, we wage our wars believing we are actually defending objectivity and Truth.
AA is almost holy territory unfortunately, it's a crusade land for all the audio fans, and now that it has success, now that our prophets generously sign and endorse AA offering, it's becoming an extremely crowed pilgrimage road, and well with massification and success come an entire new sets of problems and controversies.
Can't wait that other churches get their moment of glory.

https://www.acustica-audio.com/pages/acqua-cores

 

Last edited: Dec 3, 2019

two days more:
http://acustica-audio.com/store/marketplace

 

Damnit! I bought another one.
Been eyeballing Sand for awhile now. I really want to try the comps on my drum bus and the 2 bus as well. Went ahead and pulled the trigger on it as I'm mixing rock and metal at times. At $55, how can you pass it up?

 

I have been demoing some of the plugins today, but I am not sure. I just don`t really connect with them. I have never been really into this whole analogue modelling and don`t have a strong background in that. I am more like what sounds good, sounds good and I don`t care what it is Plus the latency they had, that really crazy cpu usage and that three plugins take over 7GB of space is kind of crazy. That latency makes it also impossible to play some midi and re-record stuff. From a first comparisson I am really not sure. I mean when I first used Soothe I immediately said wow, that is crazy. Or when I put Seventh Heaven on a vocal, it blew my mind. But with these plugins, they sound good, but are they really so much better, than the Plugin Alliance stuff for example? Or plugins like the Pulsar Mu that I think is great. I also don`t connect with the GUI at all.
So do I just need to give them a proper chance and will love them in the end?

 

It's quite subtle what they do really. With my tracks, it's the stacked instances that blew me away. For example, running a strip on a track and using the track preamp, maybe some corrective eqing, perhaps compression if needed. Then route that track to the master bus. On the master bus, another strip using the master bus as the preamp. EQ and compress there if needed. Also running an instance on the drum bus with the regular bus as the preamp. EQ and compress there if needed. And reverb busses, etc. In this way you have emulated the routing of an actual console, one which I could never afford. You should be able to hear their mojo at that point.
To my ears, Gold is much more discernible and characterful then Navy. That's due to what was sampled for sure. I had been chasing that elusive depth and dimension with outboard gear. Acustica brought it into the box.
All of this is totally dependent on the type of material you're working on, and the sound you're after. In my experience, things got clearer and mix decisions became easier. I mix mainly rock type material, so I'm looking for that "live" kind of feel. Electronic music might need something different.
So like you say, if it sounds good to you, it sounds good to you. Just another tool to get us to our destination.

 

Quite spot on. It's actually what sold me on Acustica, that's why I find them convincing at the recreation of what gears do. Many other brands don't actually do crap, but they overdo it, they add mojo on top of the mojo, which is all very impressive, but it's too much - specially when you start stacking, which you do on any decent sized projects - and it's not what hardware does unless pushed to the extreme. Very efficient at being impressive but not faithfull emulations.
There is nothing wrong with wanting an in your face mojo kind of vibe, but I don't feel that's what Acustica has to offer.

 

I was using other channel strip plugins prior to jumping on the Acustica train, and always felt they just didn't sound "real". They did improve things, though. Prior to using channel strips, I felt my mixes sounded sterile and flat compared to commercial tracks. Channel strips helped that.
Truthfully, I've never sat in front of one of these high dollar desks so I couldn't really comment on the "authenticity" of the sound compared to the real thing. But I have listened to commercial tracks pushed through these consoles, and the Acustica stuff just gets me there in a much more "real sounding" way.
I know it's definitely not snake oil. I've demoed tracks for just average listener types in my mix room, and they are astounded at the difference. (Wow, you really got better!) haha.

 

Is Crimson really that good? I can get it for like 25€ at current sale price.

Same with Lemon. Any of those worth getting? I already bought Cream and Ivory on this sale, dammit.

 

Last edited: Dec 4, 2019