AFTER READING HERE - It is not really that difficult. AA's EQ's are fine. Kirchoff and FF's Q3 certainly are good enough, as are all the SSL's and Lindell's, as are Pulsar, Softube and more.
AA's plugins are good. The only decision anyone has to make is if they prefer them to what they have or not. I am sure some will be marginally better than others and vice-versa. Perpetual CPU throttling, no matter how good any plugin is, means a no-brainer, it should be discarded.
No point in hating something you do not use. Just move on... As you all were.

P.S. - If @No Avenger said publicly something like: "This is by far, the greatest EQ/Compressor etc etc... on the market..".. I would take it very seriously and test the crap out of it. He is the closest we have to Dan Worrall. He would have bench-tested and stress-tested the crap ot of it to consider saying something like that. As yet, he has never said anything like that other than something is very good or it is not.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Nov 28, 2023

I have to be honest: these Acustica Audio are among the strangest and most particular plugins I've ever tried. One thing is certain: R2R has made a masterpiece with these plugins making them usable. They are proper from R2R, but must be used exclusively at 44.1 KHz, they seem to be made only for that sample rate, even with 48K additional packs, after over a week of testing and making extensive comparison with legit AA. All credit goes to R2R. GOAT.

 

I think you are not correct, R2R are quite aware what files are trial ones, read this nfo for Diamond.Dynamic.Saturator:

Code:

One of the typical mistake of Acustica,
 is mixing retail files and trial files.
 Since retail and trial files are      
 protected by different licenses,      
 it can't be mixed. When they mix, the   █▓
 product will not work correctly (file
 decryption will be failed). It      
 crashes the host, or plugin will be
 muted.                            
 Sometime, issue happens only in  
 one sampling rate. It is because
 Acustica product does not use    
 same file. If you have problem with
 one rate, you can try another rates.  ▒░▓
 Their mistake tends to happen in       ▒▓
 48kHz and 88kHz.                        
                                           
 They should develop automatic file        
 verifier to test all files at one. R2R  
 actually developer it and it catches    
 many errors. We fixed many :)        

 

Maybe it sounds like an opinion of some random guy but in reality, it's V.R.

 

Sounds plausible, do you really know that or is it supposition??

 

Last edited: Nov 29, 2023

Sure, but you are talking about NEW products. Mine have been left behind in their finicky, near-handicapped state.

An interesting and telling metric would be the number of "early" users (lets put it at pre 2018) who invested in Acustica and, over a certain amount of time on the train, witnessing the explosion of new products, lack of development improving old products, great improvement in algo-based plugs, AND **general attitude** towards problems in general shown by boss in numerous arenas, have LOST TOTAL INTEREST in Acustica

I imagine we are in large number

Acustica's business model also tells me that this number is large, but that these people (and their products) are no longer a serious priority for the company

 

He is just trying to minimize the situation. Like those "funny" text message conversations "i'm dumping you. Me too. That was autocorrect!" " I didn't want anyone to pirate these" becomes "this is not a sophisticated attack vector crack" when it was Nebula.

The few I have checked so far have reminded me about a recent comment someone made to a graphics person about making some GUIs for some Airwindows plugins. I think that would be duplication of effort, because that's basically what these already are.

Some aspects of the whole scenario seem staged. Maybe we get an announcement he is going to pay r2r some money for programming help to fix these plugins and then everyone will be happy again. For me, my trashcan has not been this busy in a long time.

What I would really like to see is a Dan Worrall video about these plugins.

 

Imagine Dan Worrall opening the trial version, which he's using to evaluate the plugin on a 48Khz session and exposing to every one the flaws on the trial version... It would be so good to be true...

 

FL studio is a good one, but you are wrong about Audio Damage, when I mentioned them I put "Leaked" after cracked in parentheses because they dont have any protection. R2R dont touch them, because they don't have any bloat protection to crack. its not basic like FL studio, its even leaner & cleaner. they sell good plugins, at realistic prices (not "oh wow look at my new skeuomorphic GUI, it has boosted the ticket price to brostep producers by 200 dollars") That is the smartest idea, that is the future, even if cloud service salespeople cant get it into their simple robot heads aha

Smaller groups do release Audio Damage stuff sometimes, they/someone purchase it and simply leak the untouched installer

 

Yes a Dan Worrall video would be great. White Sea Studio has looked at the Viridian 2 with plugin doctor here

but he didnt turn on the preamp when looking at the EQ and compressor so he didnt see harmonic distortion on the EQ and compressor.
After White Sea Studio made the video, Acustica Audio diagnosed him with a personality disorder which is very unprofessional.

if you inspect with Plugin Doctor, Acustica Audio might say it is actually a bug with Plugin Doctor not their own plugins

 

Most Acustica plugins are based on around a preamp, compressor, and eq. That the underlying code is the same shouldn't surprise anybody.

The convoluted and complicated UIs are a major feature for Acustica as it convinces users that each Acqua is actually a very different product. The UI visually is also influenced by the hardware it represents. Again giving you the feeling that you are using a very different product than other acquas. Therefore you should pay $200+ for each one. (Or feel like you're getting a deal when they're $60.)

Acustica could have made it so there was one main UI and then you just pay a small fee to get different impulses of classic gear. This is what Nebula is. $20-30 for a nebula product is arguably still expensive but much fairer than acquas. Nebula was a fair way to make this product. Nebula could have evolved to allow more advanced features and combinations of different pres/comp/eqs in something like a "parent nebula" instance. That it didn't and won't is because acqua turned into a major cash cow.

One can say, "Well it takes time to model the compressors, etc." Sure but after you've done a few it becomes much much easier. In fact, the best compressors, that almost everyone agrees on, are Tim P's compressors for Nebula. His L-Bus (the SSL bus compressor) and the Opto32 (LA-2A and LA-3A). Tim P created these around 8+ years ago and they're still the best. All these claimed advances in Acqua and everybody points out most of the acqua compressors are still weird.

Giancarlo's genius was realizing that people would pay $200+ for a fancy UI on a common underlying technology. If somebody was to sell a convolution reverb line and every product impulse (Lex 480, Lex 224, Eventide) was a different UI and expensive product, people would say, "Wtf?!?! Are you kidding me?!?" Yet this is what Giancarlo managed to pull off with Acustica. I can't even call it a scam because he got people happily spending thousands of dollars on acquas and are satisfied with their purchases. From a business perspective, Acustica is fucking brilliant.

The completely opposite approach is DMG's trackcomp which is seven different modeled compressors in one UI for $100. He didn't create seven different UIs and sell each one for $60. Support that guy if you can. Dave Gamble is also very cool and helpful when you see him on the message boards.

The common base tech for Acustica is why they can push out products so quickly. They're just putting a new skin on some new impulses.
----
Some Acustica history is that in the early days of Acquas, when there were very few Acquas, an update in tech to one meant that the others would also eventually get updated. This is why you see the older plugins at things like Titanium 3, Sand 3, Coral 2. People were buying plugins even though performance may have sucked because they figured their acqua would eventually get the same advances as the other ones. For a while this was the case. Improvements were made across the line. Many older purchasers still think this is going to happen. You'll see on GS, "When are you going to upgrade this plugin?" Some can't or are unwilling to see the obvious. There are over 100 acquas. Your older acqua is probably never going to get any new tech. Why would Acustica spend time upgrading that old acqua (and giving an unprofitable free upgrade) when it can make a new acqua, generate hype, and get a chunk of cash?

Giancarlo claimed that one of the reasons to be a legit user is that you'll get upgrades. Sorry, buy for a lot of the products, you are not getting any upgrade. It's going to be in its current clunky, possibly buggy state for eternity. As R2R pointed out in an nfo, having over 100 products is crazy - even for huge companies.

 

Now that I'm starting to see Acustica as basically an fx version of Kontakt many things are making sense.

 

Acoustic Audio is good. Not fast to understand, not easy to operate if algo plugins are the usual tools for you, but good. It can really replace a chain of 4 analog emulations algos with one instance if used right. Can be a waste of time also, but if you wanna waste your time into something, at least waste it on something that has a forgiving sound. It's so sad that Coral doesn't have upgrades, because it's a cool suite. Brown's Federal sounds better for me than Fuse Audio one with almost the same CPU hit here. FAL Federal is one of their few plugins i don't really like. This is a good replacement. And big up for the Quad8's. It seems that the good stuff is comming right now for my taste. The first ones got me disappointed, expecially with tons of good API's, Neve, SSL algos. Sand sounds so outdated besides Brainworx SSL consoles... Same with Pink. In the end, it's really a falacy the stand of the dev that with legit you got upgrades. Depending on the plugin you bought, you can spend good money and never get a proper upgrade with their newer tech. They will sample another underground HW and you will keep waiting for that upgrade that will never come, afterall.

 

don't insult Kontakt

 

.

Thanks, I am checking it out. His first statement about it is exactly what i said. I did not test these plugins much because Aquarius was my first impression of the plugins too. I tried something free or trial, and it did not do a lot either. This video must be an older one, because now most of his reviews are pretty positive, or he just doesn't post bad ones. But he gave this plugin a more in-depth look than I would have.
You don't really need to use plugin doctor if you just bounce-in-place an audio channel to a new stem and visually compare the waveforms. At least, not when there isn't any difference.

 

he doesn't upgrade if he cant beat the algo. Vertigos official compressor has put crimson suite in a sleeper hold

 

They do still update older tech. In 2023 we saw Gold 5, Diamond Lift 4, El Rey 2, Water 3, Aquamarine 5, and Scarlet 5.

^ All of those plugins were free for customers who own the previous version. That's not bad.

Obviously they're gonna focus primarily on releasing new plugins because it's a business after all, but it's not ridiculous to remain hopeful of updates. It does happen multiple times per year.

 

Brostep producers are the last people on earth to be seduced by skeuomorphic gui.

 

Acustica keep pumping out new products every couple of weeks for the last year or so, and products that desperately need updated or to have serious performance issues addressed have gone completely ignored.
Zaphod's standard response is "We haven't received any support tickets about these issues." or "We cannot recreate these issues on our systems."
Meanwhile, users can recreate these issues on a wide variety of systems, operating systems, and CPU architectures.
Maybe Acustica are internally running the de-bloated versions and that is why they cannot recreate the issues?

They are a disrespectful company that does not care about their customers at all. It is clear to me as a paying customer, that once they have your money, you have served your purpose to them.

The revelations that the plugins are 90% bloat, and the sheer coping coming from Zaphod since this has been revealed is pathetic. Pathetic, and shameful. They literally crippled the performance of their plugins for their paying customers, in a futile attempt to prevent piracy.

There is a software zealotry in their user base that will keep them rushing to their defence and blindly buying and gushing over everything that they release, but the reality is that there are much better alternatives, that are much better supported, optimized, with better workflow, that sound just as good, if not better.

 

sorry for the ignorance, but whats Vertigo's compressor? from Plugin Alliance?