I genuinely had no idea, I thought the excitement around this release was because they were top of the line. Anyway, crap or not, the last few pages here and the fallout to come - THIS is why R2R have cracked them!

 

They are top of the line imo. And i'd say that is why people are excited.
There's just a high ratio of Acustica hate around these parts for some reason. I'm guessing the CEO - who's quite active on some internet forums - has probably rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way over the years, and it has resulted in those people going sour towards Acustica

Bottom line is they are great plugins, but they're no the "best". They're a very particular use-case and philosophy. They're not for everyone. Acustica is more targeted towards audio nerds that lust and yearn over hardware (moreso than being targeted at pro's that value workflow). But their plugins come with a range of compromises.

I see Acustica plugins as the Pokemon of the audio world. Gotta collect 'em all!

^ That's the appeal, and that's what the Acustica marketing team is trying to foster: the sense that you're collecting special digital items. And tbh they do a pretty good job at marketing their plugins in a way that pushes those hardware lust buttons. Some people wake up out of the spell (me). Some people go balls deep into fandom, they will love every release regardless of how it sounds, because it's appealing to believe you've found the secret sauce to mixing success. The reality is you can make great mixes with free plugins if you know how

 

Last edited: Nov 20, 2023

Whatever security applies to anything, it is and has always been a state of mind.
If someone clever enough wants what is behind that security badly enough, no matter how stringent the security is, they will eventually find a way to get past it.

It matters not what people like only what the individual likes. Ultimately, it's their system that is using it. There has always been software developers who implement crypto-type security and watermarks. Something is only safe until it is superseded and this happens every year or two. Slagging and bagging the dev and cracker is wasted energy. It is what it is.
Telling the world you have watermarks and cryptography that detects is an invitation to an advanced hacker to break it. Some do it for malicious intent, but R2R seems to just do it because 'It is there"

 

Yes, but also their plugs are shit. Amber are shit, I just tested it. The same sound of digital shittiness that I remember.

 

Agreed, just tried Amber and I cant believe how crappy it is... seriously.
There surely must be SOME Acoustica plugins that are good if those "top" mixing engineers let their name be on their site...
I wonder which ones though?

Some EQ should be good, those are easy to capture. I don't trust them to do compressing.. they are just not acting like the real hardwares at all... not the ones I tried so far.

 

I mean, the entitlement of Jankcarlo is quite telling. Those salty tears! He's another one of those "genius" devs whose self-regard is based on how nobody could be bothered to crack his turdly lil plugs? Quite ridiculous, how there literally is a vst buried extraordinarily deep within the anti-piracy code, clogging up your memory, clock cycles and ssd! Thank the stars for the witches and their halloween pumpy magic! Mind-boggling how anyone could make steinbug and tone2 look pro consumer!

Spoiler

[cons]I think that there's a reason that acustica (fr)audio kept adding another encryption layer, dll, aio et al; they thought that there was prestige in having their plugs tank your daw in realtime? [/piracy theory]

 

Last edited: Nov 20, 2023

I have been waiting this moment for 10 years and think this is biggest event to happen for long time

I hope they work on windows 7

edit
I went and tried and the FirePump works on win7 great. Did the lazy way of framework installation, didint get it to work trying the method of doing system environment folder but maybe fault was at my end. Im pretty experienced window user though

 

Last edited: Nov 20, 2023

If I was a potential new customer for them, just logging into Aquarius and seeing how it works to search, download, and install anything would kill the deal. In fact, I did that exact thing when Aquarius was first released. And this is coming from someone who thinks iLok Web for UVI is great

 

not only, thousands of $$ into their software and reading the NFO had the biggest disappointment in my life, not that I'm not happy of the release, for me is okay, but to be revealed that I have 100Gb on my hard drive that could become 15 ...then performance wise, these plugins are nonsense, they are not optimized since its release, in fact they never cared to optimize their stuff, they had major changes almost every year but the performance of their stuff remained always the same, ALWAYS THE SAME! ...let me add another issue, that Aquarius software, man, in order to install a 6Gb plugin, it take me 1 DAY, LITERALLY! ...and I have great connection speed, the servers for download are all in Amurika ...and they are slow as F*** ...His latest plugins are very very ugly and not well thought out, the positions of the meters, are a thing that I hate, its not professional to have meters separated of I/O ...they must be close to see the change in gain !

I stopped buying stuff, especially new stuff, I was kinda receiving the same product in different pants, and NEVER optimized! I felt cheated but the thing it made me spent all those money on his stuff is that I always hoped to see a change in his products, aside from AIB, Dibiquadro and Primestudio that they have released full Nebula or tech support, stuff like TIMP, or AlexB, or CUPWISE or Henry Onologa ...these guys struggled with their half baked technology, because they were never been able to release great software because Giancarlo had fears that his stuff wouldn't sell as much, so he offered them the possibility to realize an eq in parts, one band at a time, like a slowly death, BUT THE GUYS ARE AMAZING ANYWAY! ...this is greediness, selfish marketing!...if you have a valid product you will sell as much as its possible, he should had focus on the good stuff and put those efforts in making his stuff better, not piracy!

I really appreciate R2R's releases, and hope to see them all released, maybe when he will focus on other stuff than piracy I will buy the rest! ...in the end the Universe always balance all the things, this is one of those moments!

 

Well, it's like being slapped in the face once a day is great; compared to having someone throw lego bricks under your bare feet, at random?

 

I don't use AA and I'm not even interested in using that piece of bloated junk but regardless we must understand that R2R isn't just providing a crack, R2R is sending a message and showing to the public all the crap that is installed along with the legit software. I hope this release reaches a lot of other developers and discourages them to adopt intrusive DRM methods, AA's CEO clearly showed that he won't change his mind and he's even willing to lie in order to convince people of his point but at least now users know the truth and have an alternative.

 

i tried the plugins. they are shit. latency issues (even their "zero latency" plugins have latency, lol), very fast distorting and of course the graphic user interfaces are trash too.

much ado about nothing,

even the trashy hornet plugins are better.

 

While I have some problem with company politics I actually like the sound of Acustica plugins. Never liked the skeurosomething interface, hated the hype, but tried a few free offers and their sound reminded me on the physical electric stuff I used before going all itb.
You don't really need that plugins, but they provide some charme...

btw.: I believe you can renew your 1-month demo with them several times, and they will reset it every few months, so they will provide their stuff for free most of the time anyway.

Acustica too paranoid? Sure!

 

older acustica plugins are not the best. There are some gems, but as a whole they were just ok. newest ones, that released in the last year or two are absolutely insane. They destroy UAD or any other competitor in sound quality. Especially their eqs. Demo Salt or cherry and you will think UAD sounds like a kids toy, "my first eq". Same with some of their recent compressors and the Ash clipper modules and Pumpkin / Jam saturators.

Regardless, R2R is legendary for this one for the sole fact of exposing the bloatware if nothing else.

 

you want a great italian individual plugin maker? go buy SKNOTE plugins, you will be AMAZED! then there are IKMultimedia ...

 

seems like you know what your talking about with ACUSTICA, can you list the good ones, why and all?

 

it's kinda difficult (lol), imagine being a dev, hard to admit some anonymous cracking group wrecked your piece of shit,
indeed it's only your fault shitting your customers for years, but now what to do, genuinely?
it won't take long some Pro-Tubers come up with totally-flawed benchmarks exposing your fuckery at full scale...sheeesh
afterall, if a reputable cracking group writes their cracked release loads/works faster and takes 1/10 of space, after years of engineering, they can't be totally wrong to begin with, you can be sure of it

"If it doesn't suit you, it makes sense to switch developers!" that is actually right, maybe he/they should be replaced

 

I think Overloud (GEMS, TH-U..) and Audio Modeling (SWAM) are italians too?

 

Yeah, Amber is one of their old plugins, it can be largely ignored.

Maybe I'll write up a list of my recommendations if enough people want it

Yeah similar experience over here. That Aquarius is suuuper slow in my country. We're talking dial up speeds from 2 decades ago. Clunky interface too. Slow to load pages, slow to download plugins. I'm building a new PC soon and I am NOT looking forward to having to unauthorize/uninstall and reauthorize/install every one of my plugins one by one. I'll be there all day!
That alone may push me to use the cracked stuff (which I'm undecided on at the moment)

A year or 2 ago I made a comment in the Acustica forum about how slow the Aquarius downloads are. The CEO told me it must be something wrong with my connection lol. It's 2023, I know for sure my internet doesn't usually run at dial up speeds

Mostly agreed with this, except Pumpkin. That's the only new plugin of theirs I didn't love. Sounds a bit sterile to me.
I haven't used UAD stuff so I can't comment on that, but the newer stuff is def top shelf. I have around 1,600 plugins and Salt will get used on every mix over here

 

Last edited: Nov 20, 2023