So I've been looking at dipping my toes into the world Acustica and had originally just thought I'd dive into the latest and greatest version of Nebula, but once on the Acustica site I saw that they're now also selling single emulations under the Acqua moniker. I've seen the names of these plugs thrown around forums for awhile now but had always assumed that they were new additions to the Nebula library and not their own separate things.

So now I'm a bit confused as to the best route to take into Acustica plugins. In theory I like the idea of Nebula coming with so many libraries right off the bat, and also being able to source and use other 3rd party libraries . . . the possibilities seem limitless. But now that I see these Acqua plugins I'm wondering if that is the direction the company is going in, if all their future hardware emulation sampling is going to be focused on these single plugins, and if Nebula is eventually going to be the forgotten child. Do these single Acqua plugins sound that much better than the comparable units modelled in the Nebula3 libraries to justify that a single one costs almost as much (or more!) than the entire Nebula3 Server Ultimate system and 8GB of libraries?

I'm sure a few of you out there have extensive experience with the Acustica world so a few words of experience, opinion and advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Last edited: Dec 5, 2016

This is a question I'd like to see answered by the always kind Nebula users.

 

To keep it short and sweet. Nebula is the foundation of all acquas. Nebula 4 is coming out soon around xmas. Basically all acquas are nebula samples tidied into a nice looking package. Now with that being said let's take a new like their massive passive Aqua, those samples are interweaved to form one of the knobs on the plugins. With nebula you get a single band and you create your knobs by loading different bands. Now here is where the community divides I myself fall into the realm the nebula will always be superior because what you lose when you interweave those samples like the massive passive acqua vs the Alex b massive passive. It's just take a certain technique to really get into nebula. Acquas are more user friendly where is nebula is more tweakable.

 

I'd like to see a guide to installation and settings, and best library recommendations to anyone who works with this stuff extensively

 

I only use nebula with Henry olonga, Alex b and Tim p libraries. I love cup wise and Gemini audio just don't use theirs as much. With that being said Im gonna start making my own libraries soon. I repair amazing gear all the time for different studios and places and I'm gonna start sampling them as I repair them. Been talking to different people to learn different techniques. Also I've stopped using certain gear because nebula is more friendly for my travels. I haven't fired up my 1608 in a while since I've been using Alex b 1608. And I might sell my replica gate sta levels cus Tim p sta level is impeccable.

 

There's different guides for different libraries. Alex b compressors must have a ahead time of 5.4ms to closely emulate the gear. Tim p doesn't have restrictions most of the time. Henry olonga recommends changing certain settings to get the best sound then there is timed mode vs freqd mode. Timed mode always better but more cpu usage. There's tons of guides out there but I use nebula setups to have each library with the best settings for each one. A lot of tweaking but so worth it

 

There's also the video tutorials I have them all I think their on the sister site somewhere

 

Thank you so much @sideshowtmc for the detailed explanation.

If I was getting much better sound quality with the Acqua plugs I'd at least consider the much higher cost, but if all I would really paying for is "more user friendly" I'll go the Nebula route. Awesome sound and super-tweakable is cool with me even if it does require some patience and a steep initial learning curve.

 

Think about your workflow. If you're a guy that likes to have one/two "go-to" channel strips to mix with that are VERY GOOD for exactly what you'll use them for, then the Acquas are probably your best bet right now. You get the pretty GUI, superior sound (esp. compressors), and they ARE the current forefront of the tech. Cutting edge stuff in those, right now.

But if you're more into tinkering by yourself, love to have hundreds of different "analog colors" at your fingertips to shape the sound exactly how you want, then Nebula Ultimate has your name on it, that's what you'll want to begin with. This is where you get all the 3rd party libraries to play with as well. The included "bundle" library is kinda impressive if you're coming from plugin mixing, but it doesn't hold a candle to some of the stuff you'll have available from third party devs to you, often for peanut money.

Acustica is hard at work developing the breakthrough technologies for Nebula4, some of which is now available to buy as part of certain newer Acquas. Looks like they sell them as a way to support themselves and their growing appetite for engineers, graphic artists etc. They are great products in their own right, but if you want to go the experimentalist custom-everything way, it's always going to be Nebula for you, not the Acquas.

Another thing to consider is that once new Nebula4 libraries start coming out, the plan was that they'll probably be priced a bit higher than the Nebula3 ones available now to reflect some of the new more indepth sampling techniques or whatever, but still much much lower than the respective standalone Acquas. These are some of the plans I heard the devs voicing/considering from my time on the forums. Hope that clarifies the situation!

Acustica are a tech-first type hacker outfit and known for being confusing as hell, at times. Scratch that, I thought about it more, and they been confusing for years, maybe a decade now or more! Fortunately the sound makes up for it. It's like a GF who isn't the best looking and when she starts talking you don't always know what the hell this woman is on about. But she gives you regular bjs, cute backrubs, cooks up a mean steak, has the voice of an angel, never nags, and gets along with your analog mother no prob. No brainer for some us.

 

Acqua plugin are basicly the same technology as Nebula (NAT) BUT optimised for performane, accuracy and stability.
When you use Nebula, its not very rare that you encounter a weird plugin bug or some random digital artefact when you load a library preset.
And that of course depend on your setup.
Just keep in mind that all acustica are extremely demanding resssource wise.
Now imagine the benefit of optimisation on a pultec EQ for example.
Also, imagine that you want to use the tone of the pultec but you have to go through a Nebula library to load ( every single time ) one preset for each of the low freq on a EQP-1a. ( so a different library loaded for each of the 20-30-60-100 hz) that can kill a work flow seriously when you dont know what you want to do exactly before hand.
Now imagine all of them included under a pretty wave interface but with the real thing in it.
Those are the biggest difference between Acqua vs Nebula vs the rest of the world.
If youre a plugin junkie, get yourself nebula.
If you have a personality as a mixing engineer, get yourself the proper acqua tools.

 

Being a newbie in Acusticaland I'll shre my findings anyway. Probably I've got some of the details wrong, so don't hesitate to correct me:

I've tried Nebula 2 some years ago but had problems integrating it into my workflow. Then I tried the free Acqua plugins and liked them, evaluated their commercial demos and bought a basic set of them. The jury is out, if I'm just a victim of their hype, but I like their sound and mixing with them feels "natural". What I'm not so comfortable with is that they have developed their basic Nebula tech now and throw some new emulated hardware on the market each month, telling us it was the latest-and-greatest we couldn't live without.
Other plugin manufacturers may for example provide you with a channel strip you can switch from Neve to API to SSL characteristics. With Acusticas sample approach you have to buy every single variant. I believe they try to market their stuff as hardware replacement, which is reflected in their price policy, charging approx. 3% of the hardware price for one license.
Be prepared to pay another 3% to provide the computing power needed to run an instance. No big deal for me, I still remember the 90's techniques using hungry plugins on weak processors and freeze and "render in place" goes a long way.

I understand they want or need to make Acqua plugins core of their business, they work, they're comfortable, but I'm still not sure they're right for me. I never liked ROMplayers, back in the 90's I spent all my money on an Ensoniq ASR-10, not the comfortable-but-boring TS-10 sister model with its prepared samples. Acqua certainly reduces complexity and as a non-technician songwriter I like that, but feel restricted at the same time.

If I understand correctly Nebula 4 will be a multi-instance variant of N3 and be available very soon. It's supposed to load N3 programs. so it will be the next thing I'll try. Afaik Acustica have changed their license model, demanding some share from 3rd party developers, if they want to use newer features. But otoh they promised that current 3rd party developers could still offer their creations according to the old license.

Acustica obviously feels that for Nebula there's too much quality stuff available cheap from self-exploiting 3rd parties. They started as a hobby project giving away their platform freely to build a community. When they got commercial they could not force that community to play along.
They will need to sort out their business model for sure.

Personally I like their approach (and their bad English btw., reminds me on mine)

 

Last edited: Dec 6, 2016

Yeah, I think the owner is from Italy but (i'm not 100% sure about this one...or maybe he moved there, I dont remember ) I think he works with some guy/guys from eastern europe ( I dont remember the country and dont quote me on that)for their Acqua series plugin.
My english suck aswell but his english sucks to another level. He could use a ''fiver'' translation ''professional'' and that wouldn't hurt him.

As for the other emulators company, to me, they are never even close to what Acustica achieve ( even some of the 3rd party ) when they capture the real thing and the reason seems obvious to me when we know how each side ''build'' their products.
Also, I know that you know that its physically impossible to have a Neve API SSL consol....So to me it seems normal to at least do 2-3 click to change my consol emulation haha , do you understand my point ? I mean, you cannot have a ''close to'' SSL color and then a ''close to'' Neve color if you are really doing some serious capture of the hardware.....well at least, thats the evidence that we have now. I mean, Waves or Slates are sad knock off stories to me at least. You tried the Acustica stuff yourself....you heard it !....you know what I mean.....

As for their Business approach, I'm a big zero in marketing and I'm not interested at all in this aspect of material life so I'll take your word on that....i've never paid attention to it and I'm not planning on paying attention neither.

As for their Acqua ''next big thing'' way of selling stuff....you actually need to head off to their forum to know what model and mods were sampled and what type of coloration to hope for when you buy one fo their Acqua plugin. I think that if they would want to put it up ( the real hardware name) on their official page, they would need to pay the companies some serious fees....but again, im just assuming thats how plugin market work.

 

Just the fact that there's a Nebula4 coming gives me faith to go that route rather than the Acqua plugs. From what I was seeing on the website it looked very much like Nebula was being left behind in favor of the Acqua approach. If they're still working on Nebula I'll go that route and check out all the 3rd party libraries.

 

As I remember, I have read on gearslutz that nebula 3 was based on their core 5 technology, and nebula 4 will be on latest core 9, so it means more accurate emulations, hugely improved, fixed, and better performance and stability, and many more other advantages. Compressors should be more close emulated, and must work flawlessly. And nebula 4 will be improved as a plugin as well.

 

Of course with the new Nebula 4 there will be no chance to copy and share the new libraries as before.
The library protection will be the same of the new acqua plugs.
I really hope that the 3rd part developers will/can keep the prices around 30/50 euros/dollars.

 

BTW Nebula is irreplaceable for preamps, cabinet, tape and mojo/specific signal path programs.
Acqua is the same for EQ and COMP.
I really cannot use anymore any native plugin for realistic EQ and dynamic, just for accurate chirurgical EQ shaping and some "digital expected"/experimental/creative effects. Even UAD (that I own but I don't use it anymore if not for some Studer instances, EMT 140 reverb, or everything for secondary tracks in the mix, just to spare CPU power.
IE just changing the master buss with some acqua plugins like (pre and comp) SAND and White EQ, the mix changes from the nigt to day light.
IMO using the freeze option in your sequencer worth if the results will be like these!
If you imagine, if you had an external hardware the workflow will be the same: freezing each track, one by one.

 

Nebula users here in AS keep saying that the compression quality starting at Core 8 and 9 technology is the best ever. Is that so? Is it that Nebula compressors in the past were not so top-shelf? Or is it that they've made the best thing even better? What's your user experience with Nebula vs Acqua compressors?

 

Last edited: Dec 6, 2016

Be aware that not all 3rd party library developer are as accurate freak as let say Acustica itself.
I've tried some of the Henry Olonga and this guy created some very good one and sometime some pure B.S. libraries.
So be careful about that.

 

Stay away, Acustica sounds like crap. It's been in beta for a decade.

 

If you get Nebula3 Ultimate, this is a Core7 technology plugin with all the relevant performance/sound enhancements that this brings, and useable in the mix right now. Been very stable in my testing, runs all available libraries with high performance & nearly 0 load times. Plus they promise existing users a no-hassle "pay the difference" upgrade path to Nebula4 when that's out.

Good times for Nebula ahead.