I am very interested in the sonic capabilities of AA plug-ins. however, most of the available media I've found demonstrating their use incorporates source material that feels irrelevant to my genre. I'm not advanced or experienced enough to be able to predict what type of advantage or results their products will be able to provide. Also, the sheer quantity of products offered makes it complicated to discern what the right choices are.

My goal is to use AA Plug-Ins for Hardstyle production and sound design. Can anyone here endorse their viability specifically for this use or share any helpful information/advice in general regarding what I have written?

\m/

 

Maybe research what kind of equipment (hardware) popular Hardstyle producers tend to use, then see if Acustica makes an emulation of that.
If you've already got material available (tracks/projects), you could simply try the demos and see what colors you feel best suit your own material.
Also, some are strips which tend to include eq's, pre's, and compressors while others are specific types of gear.
Then you have Nebula itself which allows you to load different samples of gear to use.
Sorry, but I think you'll have to do your homework to get this answered. Please let us know what you choose.
If anyone works in this genre of one close to it, please join in the discussion.

 

Yeah, you'll have to demo them and see for yourself, but I have a hard time imagining you can't make Sand or Pink work for Hardstyle.... at the end of the day AA's plugs are just tools, learn the tool and you can do whatever you want with them.

 

Thanks y'all.

I didn't think you could demo. I contacted AA asking for consumer guidance and they did not mention the trial option; then, I read that you couldn't demo them, which led me to write this post.

The fact that you can makes this post less relevant.

Still, if anyone can recommend an AA plug in that is best suited for EDM and extreme sound design purposes, I would be excited to hear about it.

I have read that, based on the FIR, the softwar is more so designed for smooth sweet spot usage and not so much for "redlining" so to speak.

Does anyone have experience bringing out desireable artifacts and tones by hitting the plugs really hard?

I'm going to try this for myself if nothing else, if anyone rocks this way let me know!

Thanks everyone

 

With Nebula I can tell you that even comp won't make (really) obvious changes, got tons of "presets" for comp, pre, tape, eq etc and they won't hit hard on the signal. Actually, if you push too far (like trying to bypass this by gain staging before the plug, throwing huge rms into it), it will not sound good. Weird un-harmonic aliasing with funny tones start to appear, but not in a relevant way. At least Nebula (I think most of their stuff) is not meant for this, more for "smooth sweet spot usage" like you well said.

I know some AA tech or CM is watching and posting on AS, he will probably answer you better.

 

I'm not that experienced yet, but I can tell you one thing. The ... sound (fill the ellipsis with the adjective you want) is there. I've been testing my only real near-boutique piece of gear (my Universal Audio UA-4710D pre) against tracking with Amethyst3 straight though the ADC in my Apollo, and despite their different sonic imprint, they both add that hard-to-describe quality that no algorhythmic plugin has offered me before. That's why I'm sold to AA. However, once you wear out the high, you go back to reality. Acqua plugins sound as good you make them sound. Once you pass that initial high, that's it. Magic gone. You're back with yourself the next morning, so now all I've gotta do is learn Amethyst the way I've been learning the 4710. Record, listen back, get frustrated, tweak again, and so on until you learn the sweet spot that works for your music. One thing is for sure. Acqua plugins do behave as close as hardware gear as there is for the money.

That being said, It's very unlikely you'll break a mix with them, any style. They say Gold has a vintage Neve vibe while Sand is more modern SSL sound, but those are mostly starting points. Purchasing Amethyst 3, their cheapest channel strip is a good way to dip your toes without overthinking it. It seems to be a fair midpoint, with very subtle color to your sound. As long as you maintain a sensible workflow (for CPU saving) and well-planned gain staging, you can boost +10 on an EQ and you won't cringe from digital shrillness. That alone is awesome.

Edit: My ramblings are early-user impressions. I don't mean to sound like I know this craft. I've been on the workbench using Amethist for my second week now, and I'm getting to grips with it. It's the best money I've spent in a long time.

 

Last edited: Jun 1, 2017

Welcome to the party guys!

 

Thank you, guys.

I appreciate the intelligent and informative responses. All things considered, they seem to have a reputation for being definitively high quality products, which I'm sure will work synergistically with my needs.

let me know if anything else comes to mind in regards to AA and EDM. It doesn't have to relate to extreme usage; I would love to hear of the differences they have made in any regard.

 

Posts like these are frustrating. No style of music exists because a plugin exists. When hardstyle, or trance, or DnB, or ambient began, it began with what tools existed. House has 808/909/303 roots... they were developed waaayy before house music was a thing, one could easily say. the point is, LEARN and KNOW your tools. Be creative, go out of the box, learn structure and break that structure down, but mainly, KNOW YOUR TOOLS. Get a good DAW, use what that DAW offers and freeware. Learn the shit out of that. THEN try paying for new tools. Its that simple....

 

I apologize for including the ethos that plug-ins are genre specific in my post; although, perhaps you can imagine the onset of frustration that occurs when you become obsessed with a specific genre that is known for its advanced sound design and simultaneous lack of available instruction.

To be honest, my sound design improved greatly when I started using Sound Toys & Slate VMR, in a way that may not have otherwise been as forthcoming. This is partially why I am excited by AA, it is in the context of having experienced a perceived difference in sound design quality relative to other analogue emulations.

actually, though: in Hardstyle, Logic's clip distortion is widely revered as being arguably the single most important tool for kick design. Access Virus also has 'that' sound for Hardstyle, historically speaking. So there are correlations to be found.

I'm coming from a place of having read many glowing reviews for AA plug-ins, I can't help wondering what difference they make and how that difference could be applied to my specific needs - improving my sound design is the most exciting prospect in my life right now and the most optimal path to do so isn't entirely obvious all the time. Thought this might be a helpful step along the way.

Your reply seems kind of unnecesarily commanding.

 

I invite you to post a hard production of yours (with nothing on the master bus). I'll run it through a good AA Nebula treatment for you, maybe some guys with the latest Acquas will want to show off what they can do, too.

My personal verdict about AA stuff: it's very useful, and sometimes very unique.
You'll still need the "meat and potato" sound design tools you probably already have. Nebula won't replace those. The AA products are more like an expensive spice to sprinkle on top.

 

Regarding eqs and comps, you can now rely on the AA products. Weither it's N4 (and the libraries coming with the latest improvements in the tech, which is not the case of N3 libraries, as good as some may be) or latest Acquas, really not a problem. N3 was in the realm of adding mojos and spices, but now they are way past that, they are the whole deal(well there are still limitations to the tech, the distortion side of things is still absent). If you want those colors (and in acquas there is a lot of differnt things you can choose from), that's the real question, and it seems that's what you want : have the tones of some analogue hardware units inside modern productions. I think it can give modern production an extra edge and differenciate them in a good way, you can get unique results that you will never get with the classic algo tools present in every daw, and I think AA acquas does what it does better than other products who try to achieve that with other technologies (like Slate for instance), but that's bias and subjective.
The question is also the workflow. They take a lot of CPU, induce latency and you'll have to change the way you work now to be able to use them fully, specially if you want to make sound design with them. You can't perform with several chains of acquas in addition to your synths, so you have to do you sound design in your synth and think ahead the work you'll then make on those with your tools, and print your work to be able to work on stems.
But also yeah it comes in addition to the rest. In eqs now I only use dmg equilibrium or equality beside my acquas, and I'll always need those for some aspect of things. Same with compassion it brings features the acquas can't bring right now. I'm not even talking about gates/expanders, de-essers (we're getting close with Cobalt but it's not there yet for AA), distortion or other types of effects that still are in order and acquas or AA can't provide. But there are other great companies and tools for that. Cytomic, AirWindows (which delivers on all kind of things), dmg, izotope, cableguys...They can all go hands in hands and get along fine, bring each what they do best.
For which acquas you can test for your style, indeed sand and pink are good ideas, as well as amethyst and diamond (low on the cpu, extraordinary eq), and gold, cause well you can't go wrong with that one...

 

Last edited: Jun 2, 2017

This is true. We must know our tools.
Although, I vaguely remember a few older Nebula programs/Aquas didn't handle bass frequencies and transients particularly well or had what was known as the "echo bug". These quirks may not be an issue for rock and acoustic sounds but aren't desirable for modern, electronic styles which require more sub frequencies and punch. So I think the OPs post isn't completely without merit.


@Story
I think Diamond is perfect for modern, forward sounds with snappy transients. Sand and Pink will work well too IMO.
But the best thing to do is try them for yourself.

 

Hey first up it seems like you're on a mac using logic,if that's the case it better be really top spec,and then if your aim is production, then there's the workflow which includes a lot of rendering and bouncing and gain staging,which is not ideal for smooth production workflow.

So definitely check out the demos firstly for yourself.Good luck.

 

Thanks for sharing information with me, everyone. I appreciate that you've taken the time to reply.

I'm running an HP elitebook 8570p i7 (3740QM) with 16g RAM -

I'm excited to try these plug-ins. between AA and the UAD sale this month, one could assemble a near lethal arsenal.

 

This mix is 99% all Nebula 4 and Acqua's.

 

Now let's listen to the mix that is 100% "algo plugins"

 

Will, really liked your mix. But man, what is with that kickdrum they're using in that song? It's like they blended it with the singer's farts.

 

I can tell you a little bit of my story. I own sand, pink, amethyst, Titanium and ivory.

The thing about AA is: HAVE A LOT OF RAM AND CPU. I run them on a 2013 retina MBP which is an i7 Quad-Core machine with 16 GB ram. In EDM styles (I do anything from techno do progressive house), this plugins have a place for shaping the sound to a more analogue sound (lel). Forget modern Eq precise shenanigans and millimetric compression.

I don't think (unless you have a powerful machine) you'll be able to put an amethyst plugin in every channel or put a sand everything.

You have to know gain staging. Like someone said, they sweeten, they don't squash.

Titanium preamp just by itself gives a tridimensionality beyond belief.

Even setting a compressor feels way different than digital onea, like you have to adapt to it, as they have a weirdo set of rules.

If you want you can send me some tracks like stems or full mix (yes you can use all of these to compress ANYTHING - it'll sound beautiful anyway)

Cheers,
D.

 

Lol, what does that have to do with gain staging?