I’ve seen posts on the “museum” about something called Nebula since there are libraries for it, what even is it and how does it work? Is it like some hardware or plugin you can make effects algorithms for or is it just presets for existing parts of Nebula? And if it is a plugin, was it even put up in the museum and when? Wondering in case it’s a crazy deep iceberg I haven’t directly observed and only know about its existence from third party extensions…

 

its some plugin that... i tried it without sucess in 2013 i remember.. i never got to try it with the extension libraries

i think its just a plugin that loads different effects into it

 

It's top secret and best to keep it quiet!

 

https://gearspace.com/board/music-computers/566552-nebula-must-have.html

 

A plugin that loads snapshots of gear. They use advanced convolution techniques to capture the gear. Many of the libraries offered by the third party dev's are incredible. It can be a pain in the ass to setup, but its worth it, at least to me it is. Yes, it was released at some point on sister site.

 

You think wrong, it works, so operator error.

 

Is Google closed for holidays, or you prefer misinformation?

 

It's shit for nerds who don't have a gf.

Because it is for nerds, it's kinda complicated. So nothing for people who can't even use Google properly.

 

it is obviously one of these "must have"s which nobody has because nobody knows what it is.

a quick search for a.a. ended up with a list of REQs.

 

It's the characteristics audio response of someone's personal hardware translated into the format of VST, AU, AAX plugin.

 

I googled it and got an answer right away because I'm the polar opposite of a nerd. They look like giant eyeballs in space, but can that really be? It turns out that they are most certainly not at all.

"A nebula is a giant cloud of dust and gas in space. Some nebulae (more than one nebula) come from the gas and dust thrown out by the explosion of a dying star, such as a supernova. Other nebulae are regions where new stars are beginning to form".

So, when ported to a software plugin a nebula gives one the power of an exploding star in your DAW. My guess is that gain staging is important to understand because you don't want to blow up your headphones, monitors or your fragile ears. Something like that could get really, really loud.

 

Lois Lane.Take a bow.

 

Googling Nebula...

 

I'd say it's a nerd cult

Edited. Jokes aside, it's what @shinyzen says:

 

Last edited: Jan 1, 2026 at 12:35 PM

Acustica Audio Nebula is a plugin/software used to profile hardware EQs, preamps, compressors etc using a non-linear convolution technology, kind of like a predecessor to machine learning software today like Neural Amp Modeler and TONEX. Like you probably know, regular impulse responses captured with conventional convolution methods are strictly linear models (i.e only frequency/phase response, no saturation or dynamics). Acustica figured out a way to capture impulse responses that also recreates the harmonic distortion and dynamics of non-linear hardware processors (based on previously published research AFAIK). This is what their Aqua plugins also used to use. Nebula just gave users a way to capture their own hardware and load captures/libraries that other people have made.

Nebula and that kind of DSP is quickly becoming obsolete now that machine learning has entered the scene though. Acustica Audio themselves have already pivoted into making algorithmic plugins and other developers are figuring out how to use Neural Amp Modeler (which is open-source and free for developers to use in their own software) to capture EQs, mic preamps, tape machines and possibly even compressors to make fully parametric models out of them. There are still a lot of people who use the old Acustica Aqua plugins and Nebula though. Some of the Aqua plugins and Nebula libraries from third-party developers like Tim Petherick, AlexB and Cupwise sound really damn good. The only downside is that they are usually quite CPU intensive and can have somewhat sluggish and unresponsive GUIs.

 

Want this one so bad! R2R!!! - plzzzzzzz!!1

 

Something that is entirely too hard to set up and figure out if you aren't a computer nerd or a programmer/rev engineerer lol. Atleast for me, I'm not l337 enough anymore in my older age. I doubt you know what Python is?