Nothing for apple silicon though right? ...

Yeah, I haven't tried their stuff of late...

 

Something can be overrated but still have a small userbase. Look at the other Acustica plugins to illustrate this. They can be expensive, bloated, use way too much resources, etc. Yet there are comments from users tripping over themselves to say how great a 5gb clipper plugin is... while those not falling for that may pick a plugin that is under 100mb in size, is 1/4 the price, and delivers better results.

Giving something too high marks or praise is overrating something. The amount of users convinced by the hype something gets is not directly correlated to that.

 

theres a choice few UAD plugins i think are good, and the Distressor is one of them. The API is decent, but its not my fav, I also have access to the actual compressor. I prefer acustica's Pultec suite, Purple, but UAD's is amongst the best out there for pultec style emulations

 

Their clipper is insane tho. some of their plugins are not worth it, but Ash is one that is def worth it!

 

Nebula and Acustica users are like some kind of online forum cult.
Anytime somebody has a differing opinion about an Acustica plugin, the cult becomes real defensive as if they are the only ones that know anything about audio processing.

I saw the same cult-like behaviour on gearpsace where people were getting cursed for not liking one of the Cupwise libraries!
What's up with this arrogant cult-ish behaviour?

Conversely, I still think the Nebula Ax102 sounds more polished than the UAD ATR-102.

 

Last edited: Jul 24, 2024

i have a real distressor and havent used the UAD one BUT all I've ever heard are great things about it

 

you can not like them being bloated, use too much resources, whatever.....but the point is that it delivers the quality. so it cant be overrated if it does so. "delivers better results" isnt the point as what one person considers great, another can consider useless.

 

the uad emulation is 99% close to the real shit... with literally same sets (not that slate digital calibration bs)

 

It really does get kinda MAGA on that shit.

 

This is the case if lots of people or no-one knows about it; or can figure out how to use it or not. Obscurity is not a measurement of "Quality".
People may argue about anything on here, but usually they do not take on the dictionary. It never works out.

 

I always chime in not because im defensive, i could care less what anybody else does with their money / time, but because i feel its a shame if people write it off without trying. They are excellent plugins, bloat or whatever aside, many of their plugins have an extra 5% life to them, and that stacks up across a mix.

But yah, the cult is real. Theres a funny argument going on right now in the gearspace nebula thread regarding alexb newest AI eq. lots of insults and angry back and forths. tis pretty entertaining.

 

Blind tests helped me a lot with Acustica. Using one of their plugins instead another one i'd regularly use also helped. There are plugins from them i hate, ones that are cool but not worth the money or ones that i can't live without.

See, MJUC or Kazrog True Dynamics are great tube compressors, and they are versatile tools with great processing capabilities. But i prefer El Rey over both. Why? The sound, which i was unable to find on another plugin from the same category. The same thing with Amethyst. I tested ZILLIONS of summing amp plugins and none of them delivered the sound that i get from this plugin.

With Nebula, the things tend to be easier, it's hard to find a famous 3rd party lib that sounds bad or are snake oil. And no, there's no algo that sounds like Nebula, even with 32x oversampling because of the processing path they choose for the tech. You may not need it, but they NOT sound bad.

 

As someone who has used a real Ampex ATR 102 extensively, as well as used, and sampled stuff for Nebula I can tell you the UA version is way more accurate. The compression fingerprint sounds pretty much like a well calibrated machine. The problem with the Nebula stuff is the inability to go much beyond 10 harmonics, and if pushed it completely falls apart (yes, I get it that's not what you do with a 102) also the Cupwise 'Dynamics' portion of the N4 offering behaves not even a bit like a real 102. Sorry to burst a bubble but do not let placebo dictate what is and what is not. It IS a great sounding Nebula library that definitely has its use, but the UA offering is far more accurate. My 0.00000001 c

 

I wouldnt add my 0,000000001 as well until reading the first reasonable comment

UAD and Nebula emu are both amazing, the difference is UAD is deeply tweakable the Nebula is "put it and luckily it's magic"
so we dont have to be a bunch of fanboyz/girlz, we just judge with our taste and situations we have (music genre, vintage flavour, digital flavour and so on so forth)

"there's nothing absolute in music"

I know your approach and your spirit, Riddim, thats why I suggest: give a try to that UAD ATR if you can, and if you have enough time

but I add to everyone that it is a VERY VERY complex plugin to test or to understand. I bet nobody can judge it after a bunch of testings, unless he-she's a genius specialist of those old machines

all the parameters ARE SO linked that if you change something the whole behaviour of the plugin changes as well, so it needs a DEEP STUDY OF THE MANUAL and of its possibilities

I demoed that plugin for 2 years before buying it (very cheap 30 euros). I had the chance thanks to the UAD (not native) demo system, which is great. I think that with Spark you can only try it 15 days and then it's gone

Many times I trashed the plugin thinking "oh it unuseful", other times I thought "DAMN its amazing", thats becase
1 you have to know what to tweak
2 in modern music production a tape machine on the Stereo Buss cant work every time

I suggest to start with this article
How a Workhorse Tape Machine Plug-in Preset Came to Be | Universal Audio (uaudio.com)

richard dodd's presets are something to be studied THEN....MAYBE we can tweak the machine to our needs

here's also
Stephen Smith's Ampex ATR-102 Mastering Presets | Universal Audio (uaudio.com)
another bunch of presets that wont work on the fly but HAVE TO BE STUDIED before put on your stuff

I envy people that can tell its crap after 20 minutes

 

oh well yeah of course the UAD one is more accurate, with regards to faithfulness and authenticity to the original unit's behavior, noise, curves, touch of dynamics etc. It was made by Universal Audio, one of the biggest audio production companies in the world, while the Ax102 was just made by two dudes. And Nebula is always going to have it's limitations. But I think what i like about the cupwise one is that it feels more like something i would use in a wide array of situations or uses, with a lot more possibilities, as opposed to JUST as a master or mixbus tape machine. So more accurate? UAD. Better sounding (in my opinion)? Cupwise, by far.

 

Okay that's fair that's fair i see your point

 

Sorry i misspoke. N4.5 works great on Monterey ARM

 

im not measuring quality by obscurity. im measuring quality by how it sounds. how it actually does its job. idk where you guys come up with this stuff.

 

Thanks for that info, I'm in Sonoma land, and haven't spent much time going down the hole yet on AA/N, and not sure if I will, or possible right now.. but renewed curiosity sometimes gets the better of me.

 

I bought it yesterday and today I receive a mail from UA saying that I can claim it for free, open UA Connect blah blah... Is it a mistake from them, do they do this kind of freebies for time to time (never happened before)?