Just wondering 'cause WHEN they work they sure sound great, mostly...No request, just curious, any theories? They should have a big user base (and therefore potential suppliers) by now.

edit: and there's lots of stuff out, be it Acustica or third-parties...

 

Last edited: Sep 30, 2018

My understanding:

1) The encryption they are using is quite good and difficult to reverse engineer, or

2) People who are able to crack the plugins are not doing it because of some behind the scenes politics, which people can only speculate about at this point.

 

lol, point 1 could explain why the plugs are so slow and laggy, jus' kidding though

 

cause its not that expensive for what you get....the third party libs are dirt cheap...
for engine 3 is a lot out there....

this plugz need cpu yes....but their pretty good

 

There was for a short spirt, a ton of them on the sister site a few years ago. Maybe the links withered up and blew away in the wind of passing time. I had heard that they sounded so very analogue that after a few hundred hours of use users needed to change the virtual tubes and then recap virtual capacitors that dried up. They even were creating online university courses to help those interested in the new opportunities afforded by becoming virtual technicians in this new and exciting field.

 

Haha! I wish I'd thought of that.

 

"Nebula uses an alternative technique called dynamic convolution. Basic convolution, as used in most convolution reverbs, is carried out by sending a single impulse response through a piece of equipment or an acoustic space and capturing the results. As such, it assumes the same behaviour at all signal levels, so it’s not capable of capturing non-linear effects such as saturation. Dynamic convolution overcomes this limitation by making lots of measurements at different signal levels, and interpolating between them. You could draw an analogy with sampling: standard convolution is like taking a single sample of an instrument, while dynamic convolution is akin to multisampling at different velocity levels. Dynamic convolution conspicuously lacks the above-mentioned advantages of modelling. It places a heavy burden on the host computer’s CPU and memory resources, and as you multiply the number of different settings that need to be ‘sampled’ — for instance on a complex piece of equipment — the necessary library of impulse responses can grow to unwieldy proportions."

https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/acustica-audio-white

In general, most people don't need such plugins like Nebula - you can get "vintage sounds" with the help of SDRR and similar stuff. It's just not worth it to waste HD and CPU, I doubt that too many people like Nebula stuff outside of the old heads that want to recreate perfect replicas of old rock'n' roll tracks and similar.

 

Always wondered this myself. I purchased Gold, but if ever I saw it available, I'd jump on it simply due to their licensing system which I don't like dealing with. And Aquarius didn't help me because the music PC is offline.

And no, it's got nothing to do with trying to replicate old rock-n-roll tracks. In my case, nothing else gave me the same depth and dimension as Gold did. Just running through the channel strip or bus made all of the other mixing decisions easier.
To each their own, but don't knock it until you've put the effort into solidly trying it.

And running the Olonga MOJO Nebula presets after an emulation plugin such as Waves, T-Racks, etc. really makes the sound come alive as well.