I was rewatching a whole bunch of pro mixdowns and courses that i have here, and for my surprise, there are only few AA audio plugins on their sessions, and almost always, a plugin that was made by a friend of them (like the Studio DMI things, PensadoEQ, or Greg Wells El Rey). I didn't find for now a single rockstar engineer that uses a lot of Acusticas on their sessions, even with Nasa Computers that can handle the hit. They are mostly using UAD and/or basic plugins that all people have like Waves, Soundtoys and Fabfilter. If you know some people that is really relevant to the audio preach and teaching that's using a lot of Acusticas and are not endorsed or supporting a friend, please, show me this person. And before anyone says: yes, i do value the knowledge of people that made it big, sound and market wise. And i pay attention to the little gems they are using to get A sound. No AA on their gems pack.

 

Is it possible to download the manual for AA audio plugins from somewhere? Sometimes I don't know what the parameters represent, especially if it's a complex plugin. Some also seem to be missing presets. Presets are useful for understanding functionality.

 

People will like it and find them useful, or they will not. rarely is any plugin much different to one of two options. Perhaps they "might" use it here or there for some people, but basically it's useful or it isn't.
Crapping on anything seems to be the way and so unnecessary if a product is simply not to everyone's taste rather than being bad.
One of the most accurate statements about the Internet I heard recently - "People do not go online onto anything social thinking that today they are going to say really nice things to everyone".

....As you were....

 

agreed. look at this pro engineer

its mostly fabfilter, UAD, soundtoys, etc. 0 Acustica

 

well, pro engineers often have a limit amount of time on one mix. Surely, they not gonna spend years on tweaking buggy knobs and glitchy GUI. As far as the sound, the advantage of using AA only comes when you put multiple AA plugins (eg channel strip, preamps) on multiple tracks. When you put as many AA plugins as you can, the overall harmonics makes the realistic sound just like youre working on an actual console. But, like I just said, pro engineers dont have a whole day tweaking buggy knobs xd.

 

Are you trying to explain Non-Linear summing? Because this sounds like more Snake Oil the way have you written it. I'm not totally convinced yet, but I am leaning towards this Mr. Acustica guy sold his customers nothing but a bill of goods. That is what is hiding under all the protection. Not the coding, but the math.

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Volterra_and_Wiener_series

 

Last edited: Nov 25, 2023

No way man. People won't spend their money on crap and then gaslight themselves into believing it's not a crap. That just never happens, especially in the professional audio community.
It's just as Giancarlo said: by "de-bloating" their plugins, R2R slowed their loading down, so then you switch to a higher samplerate, a cracked plugin just can't load the sound fast enough to keep up.

 

what i trying to say was pro engineers dont have that much time dealing with AA glitchy GUI and strangely-functioning knobs. Of course, AA sounds extremely authentic to the actual hardware. But, we all have alternatives that work more effectively and less time-consuming such as UAD, waves, PA, etc.. The reason why pro engineers dont use AA that often might simply be AA plugins slow down their workflow.

 

I'm not sure how plugins slow down your workflow, once you know how they work and have used them a bit. Once you build a nice chain, you can even save it in something like Patchwork or Chains so you can move it around, or just in your DAW. There are quite a few utility wrapper plugins made for that task.

If the functions of a plugin are as that unresponsive and not smooth, i have no idea why someone would buy them. Unless there was some serious math going on inside there, all black box style. Especially math that the developer doesn't understand himself. That would begin to sound like the "pros" are not using a product they know is using deceptive marketing or outright fraud, hidden under layers and layers of protection. Makes me wonder why the included video clip with one shows a simple PA plugin in use, and how closely you have to look at the screen to notice. Are there no AA little utility programs?

 

we'll never know since it didn't make it to the "industry standard" plugin list that is safe to left in the mix before sending the project file to another people. They treat it like hardware, bounce it right away. Thousands of other plugins that we never see get the same treatment, except the usual UAD, Soundtoys yada yaya because those are the must have one to be in the circle of major label people or else nobody wants to work with you because you cant open the project files. So when it's time to do the usual PureMix MWTM video 5 years later, only those common one are left and newbs go crazy "see this mixer only use UAD, Soundtoys etc" lol.

Just take Pensado, bro is crazy about plugins and use all sort of fancy plugins whatever, we know mostly that he did the video the moment they are being mixed, not after. No way he's not a fan of Acustica if AA even make his signature plugin. Is it wrong to learn from Pensado, gotta have to ask Jaycen Joshua about that.

 

Last edited: Nov 25, 2023

All this discussion after testing, reading the opinions and searching for people that i reference myself with i'm starting to think that Acustica is more an audiophile thing than properly a professional tool. You kinda feel this vibe when you see the amount of obscure gear that he sampled and were kinda forgoten in the past and there's no superior sound quality than the modern tools we have today (i'm not talking about classics like EMI, Fairchild, RCA etc. I'm talking about some strange broadcast gear or studio gear that no one cares and it's sold as a high quality stuff on their website). If you go and search for the gear he sampled on some plugins, you will discorver that on the late 70's to 80's were all replaced by API's and SSL's on major studios for obvious reasons. So why bringing all this stuff back, plus, adding nothing new to it but glitches and CPU spikes? If you're gonna bring this stuff to the digital world, better bring something more than the 1:1 replication of a hardware that was discontinued. That's why i liked SALT.

PA just started selling the Bettermaker Comp, and despite being an swiss knife on bus compression, they did further and emulated the THD from the Bettermaker Limiter with lots of sidechain and balistics option. That thing is about taking something from the analog world and making something NEW and USABLE. And we are talking about BETTERMAKER which is a modern company and colaborated with PA to build something that doesn't exist on the analog world. And the CPU hit is a charm. I can load 20 easily on a session that's already busy.

And the best scene from all the courses i watched was Tony Maserati picking up the legendary E-TUBE TAPE from NOMAD FACTORY and saying "i'm not using this to get a real tape sound, but to give the sound a tape effect(compression + distortion)".

So, as i said, if youre aiming something to give you what you want, when you want, maybe AA is not for you. But if you want a hardware sound in the box for any reason that motivates you for that, then it may be good for you. It sounds good.

 

It's hard to trust a guy that changes his 2buss more often than his clothes...

 

After a few tests here's my impressions.

First some random thoughts.

I once was in a studio operating a large console (a not too shabby one, I should add) and I went about turning the EQ knobs of a particular channel for quite a while, carefully judging the sound and making some adjustments until I noticed the EQ was actually turned off, at which point I proceeded to turn it on without alerting anyone to it of course.

I once had this big shot mid level music producer beside me in a studio ask me insistently for an hour how I managed to record such fine sounding drums. I then explained that they just gelled together when I used this drummer I knew called EZ. He procedeed to ask me for his phone number.

I once spoke to this guy who described to me his excitment about the release of this SSL plugin and how this SSL plugin was different from some other dozen of SSL plugins we had in the market at that point. I proceeded to ask if he had ever used an SSL in his life. He then excused himself and said he suddenly got this feeling that a relative of his was dying and thus was in a rush. We never again spoke about SSL, which was good as I never used one so if you sold me a wav file processed through a broken out of phase Behringer Eurorak I would probably would have said "SSL has come a long way, mate! What a sound! I got to find a cash machine right now!"

I once met the maestro Giancarlo on a internet forum and when I asked him why I really couldn't discern much impact on my audio using the then Nebula preamps that were taking 1GB or so of my HDD (at the time quite a lot of space) and that the reverbs weren't at all anything like his marketing and countless forum posts had made out to be, and that I really wasn't feeling any "analog" and "vintage" vibes, he proceeded to let me know I was a loser and a fuck up (amongst other things) and that the Nebula demo wasn't anything like the real deal, that the full Nebula others had already bought, yes, that was the grail. I then asked if so, then why offer a quality crippled demo then? Radio silence... Back then they did not have the "hyper-realistic engine", probably just the super or the mega so I guess I couldn't really grasp it's greatness, thus I didn't buy it.

Fast forward to 2023.

Did some testing. I guess my ears still can't grasp the "hyper-realistic engine filled with analog goodness". It sounds better than any switched off console EQ I have ever heard, that's a given...

Jokes aside (all true stories), going into the nitty gritty, here's some observations and how I tested it, and some settings and plugins I used. Could get roughly more or less the same sound 90% there in roughly 5 minutes. And if I can, anyone else can.

Ultramarine 4

drums >> Superior Drummer 3 with MIDI from pack EzDrummer Modern/Vintage Uptempo Straight 4/4 Motown 155bpm Verse 02

Guitar >> just record some strumming 2 chords

VERIDICT: Virtually indistinguishable.

Settings here:

https://ibb.co/CmHN2tn
https://ibb.co/XpLnFyc

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Ultramarine 4 REV

drums >> Superior Drummer 3 with MIDI from pack EzDrummer Modern/Vintage Uptempo Straight 4/4 Motown 155bpm Verse 02

Guitar >> just record some strumming 2 chords

VERIDICT: Try as I may turning knobs clicking all types best I could do was a boxy hallway type of reverb. Honestly, I don't think I tested a worse reverb and I've been testing them since the likes of x32 glaceverb and similar. The UI yes that's very analogue or whatever but that's all there is to it, and even then Arturia does it better, even with their 1000s of pngs. Straight into the bin. Jesus, I'd be slashing my wrists if I had paid one pound for this...

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Taupe

drums >> Superior Drummer 3 with MIDI from pack EzDrummer Modern/Vintage Uptempo Straight 4/4 Motown 155bpm Verse 02

Guitar >> just record some strumming 2 chords

VERIDICT: Both Softube TAPE and IK Multimedia 440 tape get pretty close. The remaining 10% is just a dash of EQ and presto, virtually indistinguishable.


If you factor in the microscopic GUIs and the fact that everything works (more or less) with gigantic amounts of latency, CPU utilization and 1 or 2 seconds of lag when pressing buttons and turning knobs...and to top it the ridiculous amounts of HDD space, even in the trimmed versions, well, it's a complete and utter no no.

https://ibb.co/qCkL4qz
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Salt

drums >> Superior Drummer 3 with MIDI from pack EzDrummer Modern/Vintage Uptempo Straight 4/4 Motown 155bpm Verse 02

Guitar >> just record some strumming 2 chords

Veridict: Same thing. Nice UI and turning knobs does things. But between this and the free (Patreon supported) Analog Obsession BlendEQ the difference is almost indistinguishable. All weighted in, is this plugin worth it? IMO, no, not really.

https://ibb.co/KGh0X2B

So, in the end, it's a free world and anyone can use whatever they like or want. I have literally zero use for this. Just thought I'd share and thank you to our dear friends that made testing possible. Cheers!

Btw, images are here if you 'd like to test for yourselves. Tried to edit everything correctly, bit dislexic so apologies for typos.

 

Last edited: Nov 25, 2023

agreed, brother. Acustica Audio is one of the biggest Snake Oil in the plugin industry. Your observations pretty much match my reviews in the comments of the individual releases.

 

I strongly recommend use this https://hofa-plugins.de/en/plugins/4u/ to compare any plugins

 

I tested two compressors Ultramarine and IK's 670, they are so close.

 

It is -> https://www.acustica-audio.com/plugins-overview

 

You say that, but we're currently on page 17 of the thread. I think that, whatever OP was aiming for (generating discussion), he has succeeded and then some.

 

An update from AA, it seems R2R did good

Could someone compare the sizes now?

 

Last edited: Nov 25, 2023

Some threads, however, make me nostalgic for the old days (yes, I'm old...) when crackers released the crack with .NFO with only: name, ASCI drawing and 'how to install'.
And the leakers would download, install and mostly shut up (also because with Twilight DVDs there was no way to post shit on social... they simply didn't exist)
And everyone seemed happier.

Now unfortunately the crackers write long .NFOs of fucking details as if the burglars who just burgled your house were taking the piss that you put in 25cm thick steel doors but they still got in and fucked up your silverware and that if you didn't put these heavy doors your family would get into the house in 1 second instead of 30.

And as a consequence endless threads are then opened, kept alive by 10-15 kids who evidently have no work to do except to infamy for personal dislike this or that manufacturer. Amongst other things, evaluating the products quality by taking completely open and rebuilt software from people with no age or name.
And reading here, I also suspect that these are people who don't have the money to buy a plugin, but not even for a decent PC and a listening system that can really show the real quality of these products.
Because, guys, beyond the weight and the bloat of protection, all I know is that before to make a decent sound I used to put in like 8-10 plugins and still couldn't do it, now with 1-2 I've hit the nail on the head. And, again in my experience, I can place now a tape or an 11-tubes compressor without having to do absurd routing, dump or calibrate & maintain 50-year-old machines... which believe me 'weighs' much more than a few gigs of HDD.
Download, people, enjoy your fucking plugins, finally free , and above all shut up