bruh....fyi the reason why they started using that Techs you mentioned is to avoid the very thing you accused them of today. go figure.

bruh.... 3 years late for this idea but okay. now there's this thing called transient response too (the most obvious on SALT) but cant be seen under PD. Okay add multiband transient shaper plugin and adjust/recreate by ear. Now 3 plugins vs 1 and that 1 plugin can do it within 10 seconds. How about efficiency now ? People stopped even entertaining this idea because it brings more problem than actually solve it.

 

Last edited: Dec 1, 2023

so do u guys think gearspace made mr acustia rich n non chalant as he is? lol people love his plugins, more people thn we will ever know. I don't think people with certain tools go preaching the gospel to the undelivered. this internet thing is hardly really.. these discussions... just chat, not really representative, its just people who feel compelled to be heard
numbers dont lie and mr acustica is confident as fuck.

 

How is that a bruh? an IR is just a whole lot of EQ moves.

 

.............................. okay. you're right. all good

 

I cant say yet because i have to categorize and name every part of them to presets first. Even the black has like 50 preamplifiers

Iam excited and i bet the eqs are going to be great

 

It seems the more looks I have at these AA plugs it becomes increasingly evident that many of these plugins are simply clones of the other, differing only in pretty outer clothing, with rather clumsy operating GUI's tacked on to them. It would not surprise me to find out that AA has a finite library of stock IR's sitting around that they round robin into "new products". I say this because all of these "different" products kind of sound and operate the same give or take minuscule bits here and there. ALL the interfacing on pretty much every one I have looked at thus far has the same supremely clunky GUI operation that is reminiscent of old win95/98 style 16 bit plugins from back in the day - the twitchy knobs, the slow-on-the-go buttons and indicator lights, the stuttering meters, laggy pull down menus, etc... This kind of operation running on today's heavy hitting hardware platforms is indicative of shoddy craftsmanship on the developer side. Also I find it rather odd that a lot of this supposed "gear" being IR'd is certainly not anything I have ever heard of in the mainstream audio world. To be quite honest I wonder if any of these supposed italian hardware wunderboxen, that a great many of these plugins are quoted as being sampled from, actually exists in the real world. I would also go further to wonder IF these devices really existed, given the fact that most of it has slid under the radar of pro audio circles (circles that I am in anyway), why are they even relevant at this point? Simply because it's analog and it's old DOES NOT necessarily mean it was worth a dam now or back in the day.

Also, I have to say that not many of these things, so far, has really captured my fancy much at all. I'll keep testing more of them in hopes some of them do, but thus far not much of it has amazed.

 

here's my strategy for new plugins to implement

I will use AA plugins mainly as "set and forget" devices on busses and parallel chains, so I dont have to fight with the "latency" during tweaking, and I deserve the technical work on single tracks to most technical tools (Waves, FabFilter and stock). I usually try side by side an alternative to something I use since ages, so I can compare quickly. Example: I have a buss for melodic/punchy instruments where I usually have as main compressor the UAD Avalon 737 with certain settings. I tried to clone those settings as much as possible with AA Amber and I am going to A/B during the next mixing sessions. If it comes up that on 10 mixes Amber wins at least 5 times then I keep it, otherwise I unistall and delete it. Will do the same on the buss where I have UAD's Fairchild

This way, after 3-4 weeks of testing I can say if to keep a plugin as an alternative/different flavour OR to delete it OR to substitute something I had since ages (ok I didnt invent anything lol just sharing)

my last mixes: UAD Avalon wins 3-0 vs AA Amber and UAD Fairchild is 2-1 vs AA Midnight

note:
a. I am planning to make the same with AA Ultramarine, which is older but probably better for my tastes, will see...)
b. AA Amber is not emulating the same Avalon machine as UAD; I have to say that I like it, I will probably use it for something else and not delete it. Anyhow it's lagging, so can be used only for set and forget situations

-----------------

I wanna thank @Riddim Machine for his secret sauce on on stereo buss ehehehe, so I wanna write done mine:
my "secret weapon" on stereo buss is the Pultec EQ bass trick with AA Purple (often drivin its preamp). I actually uninstalled it hoping to see the R2R version soon, and I have to say that my mixes want it back a lot! lol Sometime I change Purple with UAD's Pultec (lets say 2 out of 10), which is also very good, but in my tests I have found that using 3-4 UAD's Pultec on my busses and just 1 AA Purple driven on the stereo buss give the most interesting results

I always use the analog emulations like being in a physical studio: I dont open 10 distressors, 6 Fairchild, 23 LA2A or something, I assume I have 2 distressors, 1 Fairchild and 4 LA2A in my DAW studio, and I think that this way you have very interesting results

PS I am going to test TAUPE on my stereo buss, where I have UAD Ampeg or Studer, cant wait!

 

good way to test if the plugins work for you or not! i do something similar. I dont have Purple, but i have smoke, which is another pultec style eq and i often times have it on the master as well. Have fun with TAUPE! its a great plugin. I rarely use it for actual tape sounds, but i abuse it all the time. crunching stuff up and lofi-ing things. Great tone box. The eqs are great as well, and decent compressor

 

I tested Taupe as a Master Tape and quite honestly i prefered Softube's Tape for that job. UAD Tapes are on 70% of stereo busses i know, so i think Taupe is going to find a hard time against those.

But as @shinyzen said, this plugin work more at a Lo-Fi area, so it's really good for crafting sounds, automation, putting the sounds at different environments and give em different textures and feel. I don't use Taupe as a regular tape plugin, but still find one of the best of AA for what it delivers.

Anxious for Purple, BTW. The EQP1A is residing on my music bus since 2020 after Michael Brauer preaching about those after 33609's. But i'm using Softube's Tube-Tech PE since, which is solid, but no better than UAD's EQP. If you're saying that Purple wins a battle against UAD, this thing must be magic and i'm holding my breath for it.

 

try using plugindoctor and matching the curves and output with Master EQ 432 and do a double blind test. see if you can tell the difference

 

Last edited: Dec 2, 2023

I demoed a bunch of AA plugins, for me Purple is their best creation along with ASH. Will start trying El Rey asap, too much stuff, my method needs time and I really cant find something better ando/or quicker. Would your share your method/ideas if could be useful?

To be more precise, I am actually using a Waves StereoRack with 4-5 different compressors on busses, when I activate it, I can switch the different compressors with buttons from a midi controller, so it feels like hardware. Then I close eyes and start to change 1-2-3 or 4 and so one, then I choose the one I like and I unload the others. All compressors are in set and forget, so I have just to switch on and listen to

I have to say that the UAD tapes are on my stereo buss template, I always switch them on during the first part of mixing, test them both, but I rarely end up using one. The Studer is on every track (except main drum sounds) like a multi track recorder, and I dont think I will ever change it, but both adds a certain lofi flavour that I dont need every time on master bus. Also, the Ampeg has a very particular behaviour on low end: bumps as hell, or rounds up a lot, and this thing is not useful everytime on my stereo buss. Hope that Taupe will give something different, so I will have another colour to try

About Pultecs: as stated, I have UADs Pultec on every buss (except drums), so something like 3-4, and only one on the stereo buss, and it's the Purple. I have found that having Purple everywhere gives less depth, instead having just one driving the master buss is very effective. The Purple bundle is very very good, also its pre are cool.

PLEASE WITCHES

 

ive done this. countless times. pretty much every new plugin i get or plan on buying i do this with to some extent. I compare everything to everything, so that i can use what i perceive to be the best. I have come to the conclusion that acustica's eq's offer something special that the majority of algo eq's lack.

I test in a treated room with RME interface, mogami gold cables, with PMC 6-2 and Focal Shape 65 monitors. The difference is usually apparent immediately.

Compressors, thats a different story. Pre's, Console busses, Eq's, and recently saturation and clipping, night and day in my opinion.

 

I have no problem with people saying that they can't hear a difference between Acustica plugins and stock EQs. Some of the stuff Acustica are sampling is very clean.

Transient response, in a linear system, is the combination of magnitude and phase response. Virtually all analog EQs are minimum phase, and stock EQs as well (minus cramping if they don't do oversampling). So in a nutshell, if you match the curve of a stock EQ with an analog EQ, they will also have the same phase response, same group delay. The only difference will be from the harmonic distortion. And some analog EQs have reaaally low harmonic distortion. Sometimes completely inaudible.

I'd be shocked to see people picking up the difference between a Knif Eksa, and a stock EQ with rigorously matched curves in a double-blind test. Because they should null to insanely low levels. Sometimes, the hardware is designed to be as transparent as possible, just like a stock EQ.

 

Plus often the problem isn't "hearing a difference". It's like going to the optometrist and they say, "this one, or this one?" Which of two subtle differences is actually better?

 

yoooo i thought i was tripping . notice a big difference when i started using v2. It was way too snappy and heavy handed when it did start compressing. guessing new version don't always mean better

 

I have to agree with @Gyorgy Ligeti when he says that AA plugins don't interact well with distinct DSP (sometimes not even with their own products ). I choose to incorporate the plugins on my workflow, but i had some troubles over this week with some plugins that worked well before, and now, with AA on the chains, i need to be very picky on the choices i make, because some simple plugin with low level harmonic distortion can crap the whole chain.

In general, i'm trying to do the work with algo plugins before they hit the Aquas; Soon as they hit the first AA plugin on the chain, i need to start paying a lot of attention and sometimes when you turn off, the thing that worked before turns out to sound crap.

I always was aware that certain plugin brands don't interact well with others, but with AA this can be taken to extremes. I'm not trying to minimize this fact. A lot of people agreed with him. And when you are on the rush, this can be painful, especially when you're not aware of which tool will work or not. The first time this happened to me was with Gold EQ. I choose a preset that worked well on one song and on the other, the very same preset sounded crap. So i needed to retweak the Eqs to choose the right flavor and that pissed me off a little bit. Today i put Pink after Brown and sounded awful. Without Pink was much better, so i did the job with a colorless eq.

So, better know this plugins well before putting on a important job. And it's not an easy learning curve, BTW.

 

Are you guys talking about the 32-bit (x86) plugin from more than 10 years ago?

 

Nope, about MkI vs MkII.

 

your test is super flawed bro. Amber is not an emulation of the 737sp. Amber is an emulation of the 3 separate solid state AD series boxes:

The AD2022 / M5 Preamp
The AD 2055 EQ
The AD2044 Compressor

The Avalon 737sp is a channel strip with a tube preamp, tube opto compressor, and an Solid state eq (not related to the AD2055). The Avalon 737, and AD series devices sound very different. The Ad2022 / M5 preamp for most things, is in my opinion is better than the 737sp.

All of them are good devices, but are different topologies and the AD and SP series are not related. Don't assume just because its made by Avalon, that each design sound the same.

I own both.

 

Paul 3rd Has an opinion to share on the whole Debacle as well.