The plugin in that example sounds Flat/dull. The Howie Weinberg Mastering Console sounds good to a point, it also seems to have same process delay issue when activating/deactivating features of earlier plugins from AA.

Listening to the demo of the Howie Weinberg Mastering Console, I could already imagine what plugin chain I would create to achieve a similar sonic experience. Would have to watch it again to give you a list before you ask...

 

Hardware is hardware.
Though you have to know that AA plugins can not be matched with hardware by numbers, you have to dial in with ears.
All pultec plugins i have tried for example are vastly different in calibration.
My hardware clone is more 3D, nicer lows and highs, less harsh and just more interesting, but you can get very close with purple, thought its more fiddling with the plugins, hardware is just easier to dial in, bigger sweet spot.
I could probably get even closer to his Maselec hardware with Ivory, with one or two additional tools.

I think Ivory is one of their best mastering plugins along with white and you can get seriously close with it.
A guy brought maselec MEA-2 eq home for testing and compared it with Ivory in the end he gave the hardware back and bought the plugin.
Ivory targets the bands with laser precision, clean, cuts are nice and boosts are very good even for AA.

Maselec comp costs 4k EUR and the EQ costs 7k EUR. You can get ivory for 60 EUR now, a total bargain, since you have an EQ, DYN EQ, Limiter, etc...

 

Purple is the best pultec emulation to date though, not even UAD sound this good...

 

You guys are all joking, Sausage Fattener is the pinnacle of DSP. Wonderful plugin, use anywhere

 

Nebula technology was special... but IMHO AA just has too many quirks and bugs in their Acqua tech today and they are so inconsistent with each release. The tech is fantastic for reverb, EQ's, and static preamps. I use their tools for what they work for and no longer support their half ass work. That said, if AA put in the necessary detailed work for each release, perfected their tech's serious limitations, stopped releasing the same product thing over and over, brought all their plugins up to spec without bugs, and muzzle their public speaking they would be a top company. Unfortunately once you see wizard behind the curtain you quickly realize the futility, lol. I absolutly love the tech but the company as is is very hard to support moving forward.

 

Yes.
Some plugins need some polishing or have some options added, i have no idea why they leave it out. Reminds of Cubase.
They could do it.

 

 

Last edited: Dec 7, 2021

I'll never understand this "sounds good" thing about an EQ. It's a goddam EQ, with knobs that, you know, can be adjusted. Except for linear phase eqs, those MFs sound really bad, I agree.

If you don't like how en eq sounds, adjust it until it sounds the way you want that track to sound. I won't flip over 10 EQ plugins just to find out the one that has the most appropriate curves for +1.4 dB at 200 Hz, I'll get a parametric and start tweaking until it sounds the way I want. If I need more grit, I saturate.

Unbelievable the level of fallacy and zealotry towards tools we witness nowdays.

 

There's a lot more to it than that, but you do you haha

 

My friend, this is not about your non-reciprocal love.
But if you like it that way ,welcome!... ^ ^

 

Fact is that AA half asses their tools, each release has issues teamed with their poor attitude it alienates the user base.

 

I agree, some reverb things could be the best at what they did.
but...10 years of "New Technologies" is a very sadistic love ....: "((

Way of development:
Need to crack => wait for fixes => crack again => wait again => crack again......

During breaks, we have to test everything we need and write Giancarlo's wishes on Facebook,
you also need to tie it up and spank it from time to time ...
Then everyone will be happy and AA will make a big profit!

 

Last edited by a moderator: Dec 7, 2021

AA is so "Pre-COVID"... Lets talk about Slate. god of perfection

 

No, no you do not understand. It's magic dude. All these cold hard math based circuit boards and steel cases do have to somehow hold some musical magical christmas dust no one can explain . You have to understand, if you buy a crystal ball for 30$ you eventually can see the future. But imagine what you could do with a 10.000$ crystal ball .

An entrepreneur I know once said something very important: "Due to the sheer high price of a product, you can get the feeling that you've bought something very valuable."

But seriously, no one can accuse someone in the believe that his expensive math based knob-machine can do something a relatively cheap math based software can not. Soundwise .
And in the end it really is not relevant.

And for the topic: What is this "new technology"?
Why does it sound so wonderful?

Magic dust?

 

Last edited: Dec 7, 2021

it seems Giancarlo has such a large fan base that is happy about everything that he releases so he can go on a world tour like a pop star (*´∀｀*)

 

I don't doubt the potential or quality of the plugins, something that has always peaked my interest was nebula, I even considered Purple as my "native" Pultec for when I run out of UAD DSP, and AA preamps have impressed me before, but they have not yet sold me into their ecosystem. In Blind Tests I was happy enough times with NoiseAsh RuleTec where I preferred to use that instead of dealing with the limitations of loading times, click cycling (because the plugin responds so much slower than expected) and over hyped sounds like the Warm Audio EQP1A. I have used that unit IRL and the frequency response is not as hyped as the Purple plugin makes it seem.

Another problem for me is the GUI, they are all ridiculous imo.. and the fact that the company doesn't care enough to pay a English translator on Fiver to fix their grammar and spelling just rubs me the wrong way. I dont care if you're in another country or if English is not your first language, if you're smart enough to release software with "groundbreaking" technology, you should be smart enough to know that people need to understand wtf you're saying about it.

TBH I think this company has the potential to be on top of the whole industry if they hired a few more people to deal with these big issues. Re-write plugins and audio engines for more CPU efficiency and lower latency. Re-design GUI's into practical/easy to understand interfaces with less clutter and codewords. And hire a translator to make their website & products manuals multi language friendly - with proper grammar. These are very basic necessities when it comes to a company providing a service or software of any kind, but AA doesn't care enough about it, which means they dont care enough about me as a potential customer. It seems that they're like one of those people who will only do things their way even if it's incorrect or worse, and refuses to pay anyone else to do things properly. So I refuse to pay someone for their software no matter how good it sounds until they invest into their company and fix these issues...

Hopefully this doesn't read like I'm ranting at you, because I'm not! I'm just making the points of why this company stays out of my sessions and what it'll take for me to reconsider in the future.

 

We have many people who speak English natively in the company. They have revised most of the user manuals and do it all the time.
If you have things to report that's fine.
We currently have at least two people actively proofreading all the manuals.
Then there's the fact that we're talking technical English, and it's needed to run the world. For example, we have difficulty in getting an American, a UK resident and an Australian to agree on a simple sentence.

 

@ JB2404 -
Everything is fine!
I understand you and why you say that. You don't rant for no reason, we all say what we want!

 

Last edited by a moderator: Dec 7, 2021

The peak of analogue audio was 1970-1985, when most of the people here were not even born. And one should be at least 15 already to start messing up with it.
So most of the people don't really know what analogue sound is.
Not to mention that to achieve 'analogue' sound in digital realm is in fact impossible.
The chase for analogue is just a fashion, invented by manufacturers for the youngsters market.
If you read their ads carefully, they always offer just a speck of some murky 'analogue taste'.

 

And this is the secret.
Plugins 20 years ago had a better code. His aliasing goes full circle and turns into analog sweetness.