I think it really depends on the material and workflow.
Yea as someone who owns several AA plugins i think nebula is sill the champ.
Was surprised recently that lindell te-100 eq had more mojo, more punch, yet sounded cleaner and had more glue vs coral2 eq on a mixbus.
Newer doesnt necesarily mean better.

 

@Diogenes , which DAW are you using?

 

Er...I'm an idiot. Sorry chaps, my initial ill-tempered opinion has changed somewhat. I've just installed the update they released today, and, more importantly, (d'oh!) I changed my soundcard latency to 1024 - it was previously set to 64! and now the plugin is a lot more responsive and sounds a lot better. Still takes ages to reload projects but my main gripes were all my own fault.
@digitaldragon Studio One with a Quantum.

 

Sounds like a great reason to try Reaper.

 

Samplitude is Multicore(up to 32 cores) too?!

 

but thats it then i believe ...but reaper is more efficient in the end...unbelvbl what counts of acustica plugs in 1 project milk has

 

is this 1024 the default setting for AA plugins?

will it affect anything else you do once changing latency to 1024?

 

Yep. Same here. I was able to help load times for Nebula by turning off preset scanning, but that won't affect Aquas.
They've improved responsiveness with the Core updates. Maybe they will start to look at load time streamlining at some point in the future.
Anxious to try the new EQ's on some vocal and guitar tracks.

 

Yeah I didn't talk about the latency earlier, mostly cause AA recommands a 1024 latency and I figured most people know. More latency = less stress on your CPU. In my example above I'm at a 256 latency, because I have instruments in the project so a big latency is problematic (there will then be a delay between the moment you play a note and the moment you hear it, it's annoying), it's not the mix stage yet where then I go to 1024, I usually then don't even have to freeze tracks with this high latency.
Indeed Samplitude is excellent for multicore functions too, but I don't produce in it, only mix. Reaper, Cubase and Samplitude are the best with Acquas in my setup, Bitwig does real good too. I haven't tested with Studio 1 lately but it used to be problematic. Live can't handle them. FLS, mehh for the acquas. Again that's on my setup with the way I've configured it, I'm sure those observations can vary in others contexts.
The loading time is important, that's surely true for me too. I go make my cup of coffee while projects load.
@Von_Steyr Navy is from R.Neve too, but it's a recreation of an 2000's board, so it's less colorfull but more precise then Gold. Amethyst is also that way (80's era this time, from the time Neve was working at Amek). I have use for all but imho they're very different.

 

Last edited: Nov 22, 2019

I guess the only way is to demo them all myself.

 

I just did a comparison of Acustica Gold 3 and Lindell 80 and they both sound great. Although the knobs are calibrated differently, I reckon somebody who knows what they're doing could get them sounding indistinguishable from each other. I'll probably use the Acustica one more as it cost so much but if they were both free I'd probably use the Lindell one more for the speed and convenience, as the sound difference is very small. I prefer the sound of the Lindell 80's preamp, and the "nuke" button on the compressor sounds great, but I prefer the sound (and variety) of the Acustica EQs. Here's a picture of the settings I used to get them roughly close, and a sample of the audio. (The "fast" button wasn't turned on in the audio file, just the picture)
(1: Before, 2: with Lindell 80, 3: with Acustica Gold 3)

 

Last edited by a moderator: Dec 7, 2019

Must say gold sounded better to me, fuller, deeper, nicer top and low mids/bass, wider, warmer.
Could be the difference in how the eq curves are applied between these plugins, in any case preferred gold in this case.
Both are cool plugins.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Dec 7, 2019

Yes, I agree. The differences are more apparent now in daylight through proper monitors instead of middle-of-the-night headphones. Of course, this wasn't a fair comparison - just guesswork and blunt bumbling.

 

Hello folks! I just finished mixing this new acoustic song using Gold3. hope you enjoy the vibe. take care

 

Did this shootout of Gold4 with Pink4 and NEOLD U73... Gold4 is still my favorite so good and fat/warm

 

I've started off loading all of my Acustica plugins to another computer via Audiogridder. CPU on my DAW is almost zero.

 

Thats very cool dude! im used to bounce each track with plugins nowdays.. it also discipline me to commit like the old days of tape

 

How's the stability of this very cool soft?

 

Very stable. Was difficult at first to set up, but I was assuming the instructions were too simple and so I complicated them up and nothing worked. Just need a crossover Ethernet connection, or a network switcher, load up any plugins you want to offload onto the other computer and that's it.

 

https://github.com/apohl79/audiogridder