What's the trick in this one?

 

just use the 2500 bus preamp on the mixbus. adds something magical.

 

Yep the JADE eq Air band is lovely, also the "sub" band sometimes works some magic!

BLACK (guru) has usually lot of vibe and colour, but sometimes that is masking the unwanted effect it might have on transients

 

Last edited: Jan 9, 2024

i agree, have to say that actually my drums chains (both busses and single tracks) are AA free, except that I am implementing RUBY 2 and SALT (all in Pink/API flavour) as parallel EQs on 2 different parallel bus-chains I have

I am using AA preamps extensively on lush synths or even on more aggressive synths, but I doubt I will get rid of my API 212L UAD emulation

this thing is on 100% of my kicks, snares, hats and percussions (sometimes I use Kush pres on percussions or secondary snares)

anyway I planned a session of tests of UAD against AA Pink as soon as I can

 

kush = ‪‪❤︎‬

 

It will smooth out transients (without loosing ANY punch) and do some holographic placement into the stereo field, in a way that the gain structure is taken to the next level in the sense of space and depth. It's my first insert on the 2buss, to simulate that the channels are being summed by the Amek master bus. Hard to replace.

PS: Never Clip this plugin on the 2buss because it will sound awful. It should be strictly 0VU max on the meter inside of the plugin. Without the right amount of gain you may not feel it right and if you overdo the gain it will become a real mess. On some plugins like Eminence, the hard cliping has tons of mojo even at the 2buss. Not on this one. Take care of how much you're feeding it. Too less is meh, and too much is crap.

 

I lined up all the AA mic pres that I like and the Ebony mice pres (Neumann) came out on top. I love them on female vocals. Especially when paired with the AlexB SP79 German Mastering Console (Neumann). What a pair. Tulip and honey sounded very good 2. Didn't try them all, but for now Ebony will do for me; together with its EMT plate reverb. For EQ'n female vocals, the honey (Harrison 32C) sounded killer. Add to that either Jade Air, Magenta Air, or Diamond Air, and we're rolling. For compression, I either use TIMP Vari-Level 2 (STA-Level), or AA El Rey (waiting to try out Tiger). I track vocals with different UAD comps (la2a, 1176, etc). For EQ cutting/fixing I love the new Scaler EQ, or just the old trusty Fabfilter Q3.

 

Thanks a lot for this, Stevie. R&B is mostly what I record and mix. I will try it out.

 

How do you load a preset with Pumpkin Pro? I don't see that upper toolbar for Load / Save like some other Acustica plugs.

edit: Presets not available in VST2.

 

Last edited: Jan 11, 2024

Sadly after three fantastic days, we once again lost the rhythm with Acustica releases

 

AlexB Neumann W493 (German Mastering Console) is out of words. I used to love the Overloud version of this unity, but after i discovered the Nebula version it was replaced without mercy Don't Sleep on his Massive Passive also. Didn't had a proper oportunity to test against Magenta, but for me it killed the Pulsar Audio one.

 

So I had overlooked TULIP because the EQ is quite boring, but yesterday I needed to blend some background orchestral part in a heavily-distorted-guitar track and I decided to overcompress them, I tried Tulip's brickwall 1 and it's quite a thing. It most definitely destroyed the part but in a cool, controlled way. No pumping at all, just some distortion that sounds kinda warm, not the usual harsh digital clipping.

Another recent discovery that may end up staying among my usual FX: WATER EQ for a deep brightening of the sound. The hi shelf is amazing in pluck and bell-like sounds, I tried it in celesta, glockenspiel and even some dulcimer parts and it revived them and made them stand out in a busy mix.

Also: I'm finding FROST useful as a bus compressor. I haven't tested it enough and maybe it's just the novelty, but the combination of 1-2 dB of compression + preamp + a little saturation seems to give some density to the mix without adding THAT old Acustica sound. The EQ is straight terrible, though.

 

Last edited: Jan 10, 2024

Is (are?) any of You sexy engineers trying Emerald ?
I remember noticing it often in the chain of various mastering guy not too long ago and I never tried it… but maybe some of you have…….?

 

It's in the appdata folder (C:\Users\<username>\AppData) look for the Acustica Audio or Aqua folder

 

Found my issue:

Preset toolbar limitations:

• The preset toolbar is not available in VST2 format on macOS and Windows.

Acqua Presets Types​

 

Hey guys, I found this on the difference between trials and full versions, stated by AA on Gearspace: 'they are exactly the same. Exactly. Same engine, same everything.
Also, nobody reported anything strange or different from the trial.

However the trial version usually does not natively implement 48 and 88kHz, but they are calculated at runtime instead of being processed accurately with a batch conversion.
The commercial version usually has LESS problems at 48 and 88, precisely because the interpolation problems are solved with careful debugging.'

Can someone smarter than me add his/their opinion? Thx.

 

And they add: 'Sometimes the trial is less updated.'

 

my "non technical" opinion is the same that I stated 1 month ago: this an unaccettable developer policy, deeply demoing the whole catalogue is vital for customers, and it's FAIR.

then I patiently wait for a more technical opinion

 

If you read this thread (lot of good info here) you would see there was a lot of bugs with the trial. Almost everything so far has been fixed as much as possible. I think one of the things that had no fix was Sierra Volume C 48kHz.

And to answer your questions

Read the posts on this page:

https://audiosex.pro/threads/r2r-20...orts-issues-fixes-megathread-win.73054/page-8

I assume in the case of 48k or 88k, the 96k files would be downsampled to your project rate, and most of the time it is ok. Generally it is fine for EQ but still might produce errors (like incorrect frequency on eq). As for PRE and Reverbs, do not mix/convert/downsample sample rates or you will get artifacts and the wrong sound.

 

Last edited: Jan 14, 2024

Fair enough. Running 2x OS should fix most of the problems. Ps. I love the Blond preamps!