And it's awesome...So the Amethyst is an emulation of the Amek M2500 console equalizer + Amek 9098 compressor (well and now also eq apparently). It's a Rupert Neve designed gear but outside of his Neve ventures, so semi R.Neve, or something of the sort (he did consulting for Amek, this great gear came from it).I really like this one (well A2 so far), I find it spakles less then other designs, I would call it more "sober", but it's there, and very nicely there. If you had Amethyst 2, the upgrade is free, and if you didn't there is 10% off (so 90$, a great deal), so it's a bundle that comes relatively cheap for a great emulation.
For this one, on a side note, there hasn't been a new sampling session (beside for the new part), so that part isn't improved, but the separated plugs is a big plus, new eq, new controls. It's all very nice.

The details from AA website :

Amethyst3 available! PRE-ORDER (10%OFF)




http://www.acustica-audio.com/index.php ... Itemid=189

What's Amethyst's novelty?

Amethyst3 is a new upgraded high performance channel-strip released by Acustica. We offer a plugin of the highest quality and excellence with a very affordable price!

First at all, the plug-in has been updated to CORE X, so the compression times have been greatly improved and faithfully reproducing those of the original machine.
We've added controls that are now included in all of our famous Acqua plug-ins (SHMODE - INSANE - DRY / WET - INPUT TRIM).
The filter section is finally complete (A-B mode), the EQ section includes, in addition to the previous EQ (A), a new emulation (B) that derived directly from the same series that the compressor is part of.
This new emulation is characterized by new CONTROLS: GLOWY fo LF section and SHINY for HF section, to change the curve shape to provide warmth (GLOWY) or in alternative balance (SHINY) of your signal to alter the overall sound withou without changing its character.
The result of this GLOWY/SHINY modes is very and it can be very musical.
EQ B is a faithfully emulation of an high performance equalizer and preamplifier designed to originate microphone signals of the highest quality and to process signals generally in terms of frequency response.
The circuitry was based on the research by the most famous british engineer put into the emulated console.

"Amethyst3 Standalone modules" consisting of:

AMETHYST3 EQ
AMETHYST3 COMP
AMETHYST3 PRE




To help unleash the incredible potential of our AMETHYST3’s modules, we have created a BUNDLE including each individual module of Amethyst, enabling sound engineers to use each component separately, with a significant saving in terms of CPU.

More details in Amethyst3 user's manual:
https://app.box.com/shared/static/0uw6f ... yunwuz.pdf

 

Last edited: May 11, 2017

Demoed Amethyst 2 a few months ago and it was amazing, Amethyst 3 now includes standalone modules, briliant.
Great post.

 

Yeah, I love it, the funny thing I got it almost as a "bonus", since I took the mixing bundle from AA (sand, pink strip, amethyst, my first AA purchase), mostly for Sand and Pink, with the discount it makes Amethyst free, so I thought why not ? I really took a nice smack on that one, great complement to the two others. The only thing, was the strip wasn't available in separated elements and it was a bit clumsy to use, a bit unresponsive, as it was already a bit older in term of tech (I think core7, before that one). All that is fixed, and the load of the strip is the same as with A2, but it's much more responsive and usable. I'm not even talking about those separated elements, I'm gonna use those pres a lot. The new eq is very nice, I've just tried it on dry acc guitars, I think it's a bit brighter then the other one. And the "shiny" control adds shinyness but in a subtil way I find, it's really good. The separate eq unit is very pretty, on a side note (nice gui). Really nice one indeed!

 

I love Acustica products, but they're out of my price range (considering how many would I like to have).
Actually they're the only current company I would actually pay (a reasonably priced) monthly subscription to, if they had one.

 

I predicted that next Core will be called X.
Because Logic Pro X, Sonar X3, Samplitude Pro X Suite, MacOS X..

Let's wait for Ableton Live X, and Apple IPhone X, Access Virus X :D

 

Yeah I hear you. I mean individualy they are actually reasonably priced (and this one is a great deal IMHO), but there are so many, it's a golden paved road to my own bankrupcy. .
I try to buy at pre-sale price anytime I can but lately they release so many, they also have sales (black friday last time), a few bundles, and they offer loyalty discount once you start having a minmum amount spent in their products. It goes from 10% (I think) up to 45%, there is the precise grid on their website. You get there quick, even by buying once in a while. It's a work of patience indeed and probably also selecting the emulated gear you absolutely want.

Edit : about that for those who want to know what emulates what before trying/buying, here a list that was kindly done by Doom64 on Gearslutz (thanks for his work).


https://www.gearslutz.com/board/12277860-post5355.html
Updated Unofficial Acustica Master List for November 2016. Thanks SameOh for the Lime additions.

Amethyst - Amek M2500 console equalizer + Amek 9098 compressor (and now EQ with A3). Rupert Neve designed gear. 9098 has a 33609 flavor.
Amber - Avalon AD2055 equalizer
Aquamarine - Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor (formerly the Murano)
Blue - Chandler Germanium Tone Control
Coral - A hybrid mastering strip featuring an elliptical filter, transparent equalizer and a soft clipping compressor.
Green - George Massenburg Labs Model 8200 equalizer

Emerald - Custom built hardware, loosely inspired by the Klein & Hummel UE 1000 equalizer. The curves practically have the same unique slope as the UE-1000, but the center frequencies are different and the active part of the circuit is more modern/cleaner
Ivory IAE-2 - Maselec MEA-2 equalizer
Honey - 1970s era Harrison 32C equalizer + Harrison console preamp
Lime - A combination of modern AMS Neve gear. A = VR B = 88RS. C/D = 8051 5.1 Surround Compressor/Limiter E = F-J-V Series Channel Strip
Magenta - Manley Labs Massive Passive equalizer
Murano - Shadow Hills Mastering Compressor (now called Aquamarine)

Navy - Neve console line input/1081 EQ circuit. Neve 1081 equalizer and unknown (probably Neve 80 series) console line outputs.
Ochre - Acustica Audio homebrew equalizer, inspired by the Scientific Audio Electronics (SAE) 2800 equalizer.
Orange - Orban 672A
Pearl - Siemens ELA 75-15 Universal Equalizer. Limited edition, only 100 Pearl software copies were sold so it's no longer for sale. Less than 20 physical hardware units were sold. The closest plugin to this that is still for sale is the Emerald, as this was Siemens' response to the UE100/UE1000 mastering equalizers.
Pink - API 512c preamp. modified API 550A/550B equalizers with API 2500 compressor (no Thrust [pink female gender button] variables)
Pink2412 - API 2500 compressor with modifications

Purple P-1 - Pultec EQP-1A
Purple M-5 - Pultec MEQ-5
Red - Joemeek VC5 Meequalizer
Sand - Solid State Logic 4000 (Ea, black knob)/5000 (Eb, brown knob) equalizer + SSL G-Master Buss compressors (2 flavors)
Scarlet MHE-400 - Homebrew Sontec 432 inspired (close to the original, cleaner sounding)

Tan - IGS Audio Multicore Compressor (one band)
Titanium - Tube-Tech SMC 2B Multiband Compressor
Ultramarine - Fairchild 670
Versatile - A hybrid between Amber and Green
White - White Sound Mastering WSM PEQ-2.0 (solid state equalizer inspired by the Pultec EQP-1A)


I probably made a few mistakes. Feel free to copy/paste and correct! The vast majority of these are user speculation and have never officially been verified by Acustica Audio.



To that list can be added Gold (Neve Emu circa 1975, the precise list is on Will the Weirdo video presentation https://audiosex.pro/threads/acustica-audio-gold.29973/page-2 on AS thread about AA gold), and Diamond (I'm not sure there are a few speculations about that one on AA forum, it seems like a mix between two different hardware eq, one for lows, one for highs).

 

Last edited: May 11, 2017

Hi Will, good narrative style, nothing Weirdo.

Great to see the hw reference,
can`t think of any ordinary mortal belted with it in the living room.

I hope more to come ...

 

This is where I am right now. Trying to demo Amethyst, Diamond, Sand and Gold before it's pre-sale ends. I don't want to become the guy who buys EVERY Acustica release. Just a few carefully chosen ones....
That's said, if they were as cheap as Nebula libraries, I'd probably have every one!

How do you rate Gold vs Amethyst?
Amethyst seems much smoother and more subtle, sonically and the work flow feels more solid with those parametric EQs.

 

Try contacting @SoundForSoul as he usually has discount codes. He helped me as well but unfortunately my laptop was not up to the mark so ended up not buying any plugin.

 

Yeah I agree Amethyst is smoother less colorfull which makes it very precious if you aim at correction or slight coloring while still getting very interesting tones, Gold is both unique and incredible but it's also very spectacular. To that I also agree that Amethyst is imo better for workflow (I think it's the best Acqua for that with Coral, who is also very precise for the eq), because it's one of the rare acqua they kept with continuous control regarding the eq freq selection, which is why it's still pretty hard on the cpu because of that apparently. Since now the tech is smoother and you can hear the results of your tweaks almost as you do them (that was not the case with Amethyst 2, it had more latency as you used it at least on my setup, which was a bummer for working with it), but here you work with a lot more precision. In gold frequency are locked and they vary between the models you pick, I'll use those more for coloring and to get that sound (which is fantastic, so). The Pres in Amethyst3 are also in that realm, they bring the magic while still being transparent I find (the 9098 more then the 2500, who brings slightly more colors).
Amethyst for those reasons was already one of the acquas I use most, but it was replaced a lot lately by Coral who had already the separated components which for me is a big plus, and now makes Amethyst 3 a really complete and versatile tool.
Here are a couple of screenshots to illustrate how both eqs work differently.

 

Another great one from AA i purchased the first one an love the filters an EQ \m/

 

Don't leave out AudioSeX!

@Talmi, awesome, awesome, awesome list! That will help keep me from asking "what was sampled?" on every Acustica thread that gets posted.
@SoundForSoul, or anyone who has a discount code, I'm very close to buying Gold so if you have any discount codes for it, please share!

 

Gold is better as a tracking tool providing great tone, while Amethyst 3 is a smooth but clean mixing tool.