Very problematic with the CPU on both MAC & PC but TRUST me the COFFEE plugin did wonders on my new Produced
album for Frontiers Records on the Mastering stage.. No other plugin could do what it did... that was the moment
where I was so happy to spent my money on that.. Other plugins ? still testing..not all sounds as great as Coffee for me yet..

 

To engineers I would say: "Great, GO for it".

As a music producer, I say: "Too much CPU, too much latency. Can I make music here, please?!"

 

Pretty much what everyone pointed out so far. Rubbish GUI, clunky workflow, not too bad on CPU.

BUT. Ash Ultra is the best clipper I've ever tried so far. Space Control is very interesting and I may add it to my regular workflow. I'll see if I can report back with more.

 

Crap, i don't even want them.

 

he is very upset he was found out his products are over bloated with so much protection in the files by R2R
let him Giancarlo vent it out he sees his future income stream going to vanish if he does not take heed to R2R recommendations and change his ways

 

Last edited: Nov 25, 2023

Have a listen to the uad one (not the standard) it is also excellent
haven't had time to run them so far
Gainstation is nice
Amber is very nice, reminiscent of Clariphonic but different
Salt is Dope
Diamond(s) look interesting

cursory glance.... Black is a failure imo, maybe interesting for mastering
but as a "first (in line) plugin" tooo heavy
Colin MCDSPs, actual, first plugin did it better in the 90´eees

 

Damn, Bob Katz never told me my stuff sounds like garage band, what do I do??

 

Anyone know where the manuals for these things are?

It would go a long way to being able to make better evaluations of these things since ya can't really tell what the hell they even are from the naming convention used.

 

hahaha if i would be him i wouldnt help people to crack it on mac hahah :D but your post made me laugh nevertheless :D

 

Giancarlo thought he was untouchable , well Giancarlo you were very wrong R2R have you in there sights now forever. bend your fxckin knee and bow your head

 

Manuals are on the webpage of each product, it's a sheet paper icon thing right next to the add to cart button. There's also some description of what they do on the same page but if you're looking for what hardware they're amulating, you won't find any official info about that other than "we emulated a famous eq from the 60s" or stuff like that.

Unoficially, there's this:
https://justpaste.it/acusticaaudioacquamasterlist

 

How about upgrading you computer.
I can use many instances.

 

Don't overlook Nebula. This track (not mine) was produced with AlexB, Cupwise & Tim Petherick Nebula libraries.

 

N4 is not working with this new release from R2R... They don't recall the settings properlly. Sad, because i loved AlexB consoles.

 

Layering some drums, pads, repetitive bass patterns and female voices needs plugins?

 

jet has a lightning bolt in its name

 

I went out using UAD's pultec on my group busses and Acustica Purple on stereo buss,
I think there's nothing better than this combination actually (and these are all 'old' plugins)

I am testing it, at the moment I think that UAD 737 is better, even if emulating different models the EQs should be similar, and the high band on UAD wins for me

instead i think that it could work as first in line because I can render the audio and apply it as offline processing directly on the wave file, then tweak if sometimes needed (Cubase's offline processing works flawlessly)

 

I'd rather have brainworx plugins than this.

 

IMO, they have distinctive sound, especially the older Acqua plugins. They don't sound a lot like other vintage emulation plugins out there. My guess is the dynamic convolution method they've used that among other things change the response of the frequency and harmonic generated by the plugins over time and responding to what it is fed nicely. Think of it as it's modulating, but it's not, it just reacting to the different source track frequency and amplitude over time. The changes in frequency can't be seen under the analyzer because the test tone are mostly static and not full frequency range. The harmonics changes however can be seen under the usual sweep or maybe Hammerstein test. What made it seems more like a placebo is this is super hard to hear, impossible to hear for someone that's new, impossible to hear for someone that never been exposed to expensive hardware gears in real life, add bad monitoring system to the mix, you wont hear it at all, even worse you hear something else that wasn't even there at all. lol. I think this is what made a lot of people saying AA plugins made everything sound "alive" compared to other plugins which all have static harmonic generation pattern and static frequency response. This is just what I found by testing the plugin. I could be wrong but I've tested close to 6000-7000 plugins or so (sadly UAD isn't in the list), but never seen such behavior. Nor any plugin that sound character-wise doing the same thing.

How big is this difference, if compared to other dev vintage emulation plugins ? Let's just say it's equal to the year 2020 Fender Stratocaster vs 60's Stratocaster. Really good and experienced player can tell in a sec, but a newb like me probably cant tell in a blind test consistently even when I have a pretty good idea what a 60s strat should sounds like, the riff that is played matter too! Some riffs just killed it with the 60s and some only make sense with 2000s, if you understand what im trying to say. Even if that is the case, 100% Stratocaster player would stay united and agree that the 60s has more a little extra something on it and none of them can prove it with something that makes sense, maybe only in a fist fight. Ask a Warlock guitar owner about it, "they are just bunch of crazy old farts". Is it huge difference ? is the small difference ? that's up for one to judge, heavily influenced by their own ability and skills at the time. We all hear things differently, good sounds has different meaning to all of us and it's normal for one musician to think of everyone around him being shitty musician and not even close to him ability wise. That's just how it is.

One of the biggest, most ignored part of AA plugins is, it doesn't work like most plugins out there where you can just slap it in, tweak until it sound good to you and move on. 80-90% of the time you wont get a good result from it especially when you picked the wrong one, wrong as in not suitable for the job. While you are doing all the EQing, compression, in the same time you have to tweak it until it sounds like a hardware it modeled, gain stage wise, the way they are EQed/compressed well as good as you can remember them. How would you explain to someone that said he likes the CLA76 better because it slams harder than the AA Amber Compressor that is an emulation of an Opto that at best suppose to sound like it doesnt even compressing ? Or someone saying an accurate Neve emulation plugin is shite because he couldnt get a good high end boost with it ? not knowing the EQ's effective frequency range is only up to 16kHz. If they know, they know. That's the super tricky part. Let's just say 90% percent high gain guitar player I've met none of them know how to set a Fender amps, let alone get the best sound out of it, they dont understand it's breaking point, how hard to push, how the passive tone stack works. They just don't know how a Fender amp should sound at its best. For them, Fender = clean tone. After 10 minutes, they'll be like "Fender amp sucks" and go back to the usual 5150. Same if you throw a VH4 to the blues and jazz player. It's new territory, unless you've been there before. You can see from the demo of product for good amp sim maker like Nembrini and IR maker like ML Sound Lab when it comes to Fender related amp and IR, it's a joke demo. It's not wrong to use the 2500 on feedforward settings on the masterbus of a acoustic singer songwriter song, but there's like 1 million other better options that will give way way more better result, or maybe just simply switch it to feedback mode because that's more sensible way and how it's used in studios if one have to use the 2500 on the masterbus, it's a totally different story if it's the drum bus.

Does it matter though ?

IMO for electronic, sample based stuff where all the sounds are super baked and crushed, even a synthesized sound, it wont do much of difference. If you're doing some "bro, I found this fire sample", I bet my grandma on it, all the vintage emulation wont do anything that matter much to you that other plugin cant. Most of time it will only add more mud to an already heavily processed samples. What do you expect to get from compressing an already compressed and processed loop ? Maybe the newer generation of AA plugins are way more suitable. The Luca Pretolesi stuff, Josh Gudwin signature should do good if used correctly.

I think the older Acqua AA plugin (mostly the vintage emulation) shines in helping home, small studios recorded stuff with low to medium cost gears stand up a bit. Most experienced people that used to work for years in studios with consoles and stuff, listened to thousands of good sounding records, they have an idea how stuff should sound like and we can see from comments of all the experienced people here that they used to need 8-10 plugins to get things to sound right, but somehow can get the sound they want with 1-2 AA plugin. They are willing to endure everything because that's the money for them, working faster, getting good result.

Does the disk space justify it ?

No. Hate it to death, fucking stupid inefficient ancient bad tech that was developing tooo slow. This has to change! it's almost 2024.

How bout CPU ?

for now it doesn't causing me much problem with my workflow, tweak, happy, print. I think it's a problem, should be better to not do it that way and just leave the plugin on the track for future tweaking.

EDIT - just tested the new Midnight plugin from AA that is way more efficient in space and CPU power needed. My first impression.. it sounds like Waves Puigchild... but with a lot of knobs. ha ha ha wtf is happening.


P/S: apologies for too much guitar analogy. it's the most famous instrument, so I thought it will be easier to relate.

 

Last edited: Nov 26, 2023

that old fart?? he wouldnt be able to tell, his ears are shot. Best advice i can give you is to buy acustica salt eq and delete fabfilter toddler eq.