write to acustica support

 

I take it back - CPU usage is absurd, and the interface for some plugins (I'm looking at you Salt) is laggy as heck.

Its a shame cause some of the plugins do sound good indeed.

 

If I compare to my usual workflow where I often work with sonimus plugins all purchased
I personnaly think Sonimus plugs are nailing all of my mixes and they sound even better and at CPU spikes that are so low...

still not convince why to put more hors in a rackmount that lifts no mountain at all

music is like a mystical mountain... that must be otherwise it ain't music

 

Of the 14 favorite plugins chosen by Alex Smoke in 2020, one of them is Acustica Ultramarine vst.
https://alexsmoke.com/14-favourite-plugins-in-2020/

 

Hardware emulation is a pseudoscience.

 

Nebula is still my fav

 

"...4 plugins based on nearly impossible-to-find Italian-made hardware from the 1950s through the 1980s."

Schematic diagrams are all they seek; they have no need to see the actual hardware. They emulate hardware simply by studying its shadow on the wall.
Note: To maintain consistency with their drive for esoteric, they should also emulate 'near-impossible-to-find' hardware from Turkey, North Korea, Russia, the Balkans, and other regions.

 

Why do people actually believe this kind of thing is a good idea in the first place? Do I want the expensive rare 1950s Italian compressor that they only made 50 of before going out of business, or this "cheap" old regular production unit like a CL1B? Are we hunting down unappreciated genius or did they go out of business due to not-so-great units?

 

Haven't tested them all so far, but for now there was only 2 plugins that I really liked.
And that was Space Control and Ash. (Not Ash Ultra, that one was a massive CPU Hog)

Magic Flow with the "Master 1" preset took nearly half of my CPU (it's a Ryzen 7 5800x, so not a bad CPU).
Sienna sounded interesting, but that problem with Volume C and 48 kHz was so annoying, hope this will get fixed.
And the rest I've tried so far were meh, there are other plugins that can do the same.
Haven't tested the actuall ones yet, but I wanna see what's about El Rey, I read in many forums that it's a really good plugin. We'll see.

So, all in all AA plugins are not superior to other plugins on the market, imho.

 

Not a game changer but not bad plugins. Not CPU hog in my system to be honest (an old i9 9900 hackintosh with Monterey) because Logic audio manage them very well and R2R version seems to work much better than the originals. I like Ash a lot and a few other compressor emulations

 

For some time now, I have been asking myself why every second offer on the sister site is a compressor, limiter, equalizer, enhancer, transient shaper or something of this kind.
Surely it may be of interest to some to use these products. But in the end it's like Photoshop: You create an illusion that would never exist in reality.
So I'm all the more grateful that "real" musical instruments can still be found on the sister site from time to time, such as Falcon 3, which I also own legally. Unfortunately, the loading times of the sounds are too long even on one of the "power computers" mentioned a lot in this thread. So I fall back on the "optimized by R2R" version...
Plugins like the Acustica stuff are just cosmetic, which (if used correctly) can improve the sound, but they are not essential FOR ME.
It would be a shame if at some point it was no longer down to the musician's ability, but solely the sound engineer's ability, whether a song will be a number 1 hit or not.

 

Last edited: Nov 27, 2023

ok, i agree, its ridiculous the resources these take, but i have to be honest, Ash and Ultra at next level for me, if mixdown in 1k mode, there is a clarity ive never had, also Gold and SALT, just amazing Eqs, i can get the the sound i want quicker for sure, its like there is a sort of solidness to the sound, not grainy like normal plugins, but yeah, maybe impossible to use regularly, just for bouncing special stuff, also pumpkin, the style of type of distortion, its pure, i cant do this with anything else. They are indeed amazing sounding, Shame this company cant rethink its programming but maybe that the technology its IR isnt..? Not really dived in to compression, seems good but cant really comment, Ultramarine seems good, but nothing MJUC, TuCO NEOLD and other cant seem to do,

 

i think a lot of times these "rare" emulations from Acustica or other companies as well, are because many of the hardware units were used by / were a part of a signature sound of some of the greats. Pink Floyd, beatles etc. People are after that tonality, even though modern units may be "better" in terms of usability, versatility etc.

 

On mac at least, many of the plugins are just cpu crazy, and just touching the controls leads to stuttering noises. They don't seem very well coded to me. So some are at least to me, unusable. Some sound pretty good, but all in all, a bit odd and dated. In summary, .. overrated. imho of course.

 

I'm downloading all this Acustica stuff and putting it on a USB 256 GB flash drive I got on a Black Friday sale.
If all titles on the Acustica website are released I may be using the whole thing
Don't know if I'll ever use this software but am curious about the hype and bad reviews.
Everyone seems to have a different opinion on whether this software is worth the grief involved in using it

 

Last edited: Nov 28, 2023

If you seek information about part those obscure gear sampled, you will see that they were not good at all, and replaced later by common studio brands like API, Neve, SSL... To mid 70's to 80's. You will never see a good referenced studio using and seeking those. And people seek Fairchilds like crazy, so this is a difference, for example, of a rare gear that is sough after besides obscure and not common brands that no one cares.

"You want a vintage sound? Better hire a vintage engineer instead of buying vintage gear!"

 

You may be onto something here

 

No. I was commenting about "rare" stuff that was never used by anyone even remotely like that, because no-one cared about junk then either. Companies made 50 of something that you have never heard of, because junk doesn't sell. Companies go out of business because they lose money when they make junk. The Beatles did not record on gear that was from a garage sale. That's what these "rare" emulations almost all are. They make a substandard plugin and sell it to suckers. But it's "Accurate emulation" of some unit no-one can compare it with.

 

I like them as color boxes .. I think people are using them wrong ... or should maybe try a different way of using them .. I use them to add depth and "analog MOJO I find a setting I like and print the track.. then if I need heavy lifting like stuff to stay on like a eq I'll grab something like fabfilter .. I know everyone has their own way of doing things and this workflow might not work for some people.. the only pligins I'll leave on all the time is salt and gainstation.. I really like that plugin for some reason

 

Wow alot of opiniuons on GUI i must say today people DON T use their EARS anymore well when listen to todays music on radio i know know WHY..
Computer technology, Autotune, Melodyne etc has killed the music industry as a monkey could easely create a similar song that is popular on radio today.
Noone can sing anymore very few can play an instrument