This is what I found about 3 or 4 years ago, and still feel the same today apparently.
I see A TON of plugins and stuff on the site (so much that it hurts my brain), but it’s all for nothing if it’s not stable enough for daily use.
I think they have a quality vs. quality ratio and not sound quality…just stability and general usage.
Maybe they’re fine for mixing in Pro Tools and Logic but if they’re going to make mastering focused stuff, they really need to test their plugins hard in WaveLab, Sequoia, etc.
I’m able to hear them more now than I could 3 or 4 years ago and while they sound good, they’re not prompting me to dive into contacting Acustica to troubleshoot.
I have plenty of other good plugins that sound good and are stable/reliable in WaveLab…back to work.
i think there is a long learning curve that is not for everyone, since i start with Nebula long time ago, and it was way more difficult to understand well, for me now they achieve another level of experience. I keep believing on what they are working and pushing the boundaries of audio applications and computer hardware.
I have no reason to disagree about the sound quality. However, I can’t have the first 40ms of renders not have the correct processing applied, and I can’t listen to loud bursts of noise when loading a plugin while audio is playing back.
No other plugins I use daily do this.
They really need to hire somebody to work on presentation if they want to avoid threads like this on various forums.
Thanks! I would see if you or they could stress test rendering 1 or more Acustica plugins as Clip FX in an Audio Montage, when there is audio immediately present at the first sample, all the way through the last sample, even at 96k or 192k.
I know that’s not always common, but we need to be sure that Acustica plugins render correctly for gapless/live albums and all scenarios. We can’t have the processing fade in over 40 milliseconds.
DMG had a similar bug and they were able to fix it.
Also, see if anybody can produce a loud audio burst/glitch when inserting various Ivory plugins while audio is playing back, again as Clip FX in a 96k Audio Montage.
" We are not compatible yet with WL 11 and we are working with Steinberg to make able VST3 compatible with the next coming Nuendo and Cubase.
Please try to replicate the issue on Wavelab 10.5x on VST3."
Anyone here with Wavelab 10.5 installed that could check that?
There was no 10.5 but I have 10 still installed. I would have to rebuild my test session but I can try it today. I’m going to say there is a 95% chance it happens in 10.0.70 as well.
Same deal in WaveLab 10.0.70. See the attachment but the first 35 milliseconds or so isn’t rendered correctly. You can see the level ramp down slowly and and then close to 150 milliseconds you can see another minor level change before it levels out and renders correctly. I didn’t notice that second spot yesterday because I wan’t enlarging the waveform as much as I did today but I spot two issues there.
Here is a screen shot of the EQ setting being used, and the resulting rendered file.
This is classic developer behavior, thinking that if they have it working in Nuendo and Cubase that it must be OK for WaveLab too but that’s usually not the case. For one thing, WaveLab has Clip FX and Nuendo and Cubase do not.
WaveLab needs to be just as carefully tested as any other DAW.
Also, especially when I load Ivory Mac 2 ZL I get a crazy loud click if the plugin is loaded while audio is playing. Other plugins make some strange sounds too if they are loaded when audio is playing.
There is also a notable lag sometimes when pressing on a button and the button actually being pressed in all the Acustica plugins to some degree.
As someone with Acustica knowledge, would you happen to know why VST/ASIO performance tops out so early in Cubase when CPU resources are still only at 20%? My machine is capable of running vastly more instances of Acustica plug ins but Cubase can’t handle it. Very frustrating, searching for an answer. Thanks!
Hy John, Very hard to say what is happening without see your system, but if you are in Windows, have a look in the app LatencyMon, and check your system latency. Since with Acustica you are processing a lot of heavy data in real time it´s always good to fine tune your machine.
For example i have a old PC (2013) (dual boot) that is performing very well, close to my new i9 10900X! I can easly run 40+ channel strip on this old machine, but took me some time to fine tuning it.
About Cubase running Acustica plugins, i sow a big performance improvement after Cubase 8.5, and for me it was good enough to keep using Acustica and Cubase as my main tools.
Hope this helps a bit, or at least we can start to deepen the conversation.
they update very fast and constantly, next release, that is in beta doesnt have the 40ms gap anymore, its fixed, but im getting a crash in wavelab in a 96k project when i hit render… 44.1k is working without the 40ms gap and no crash…
I would love to know what your old machine is as i can’t run more than 3 channel strips of AA plugins on my finely tuned “Steinberg only” DAW machine , could you enlighten me on some processes you have to do to obtain 40 channel strips on an old machine ?
i think was a mix of lucky and some practical steps, and when i say that out loud, people always want me to prove i did that once at Acustia Audio Facebook page.
1 cpu: [Intel Core i7-3820 Quad-Core Processor 3.6 GHz 10 MB Cache LGA - 32Gb RAM
numbers of cores doesn’t matter so much and xenon is a NO go.
2 i use one ssd for the os, one ssd for the audio/samples files and another ssd just for the Acustica vector folders (symlink mode)
3 if you are in windows follow this guide to fine tune your machine:
remember that sometimes disabling windows functions is your friend
4 In Cubase use asioguard level >high and Audio priority > Boost and of course higher buffer size is your friend, specially at higher sample rate projects.
Thanks for your reply , my machine is finely tuned for Cubase ,Wavelab and Spectral layers and it has been that since 2013 , nothing else on the computer ,
My DPC is lower than 100us which is incredible for an old machine . All functions in windows that need to be disabled have been done over the course of time to illuminate any latancy isses but i can still only run the max of 3 chaanel strips .
I find the install and hope process a little to violate for my liking and i do follow the facebook group very closely and i see there’s another strip coming out on the 21st . It like i want Celest BUT reports say its a CPU killer so while things like this are being posted in the AA group it’s kind of off putting of risking break a machine that isne broken .
The sound quality are incredible and the tech they are using is fantastic and i believe in what they are trying to do but they are just to volatile for me
i did that once at Acustia Audio Facebook page.