Ivory EQ by Acustica Audio! (Aqua plugin)

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Selfik wrote:sounds nice...bmanic what reverb did you use on that piano?
I think it's the built in reverb + room in Addictive Keys. Not sure though. I mixed the piece at the studio so if this is one of those mixed renders then it's probably Exponential Audio Phoenix or one of the Lexicon LXP reverbs.
"Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of the idiot who said it." -an idiot

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bmanic wrote:Another, more delicate, example. This is a song I composed for a short film a while ago. It's piano only so really delicate processing is needed and Ivory EQ works brilliantly for this kind of stuff. This file has the following chain of effects: Aquamarine very light compression -> Ivory EQ (single instance, no preamp, all 4 bands used but only tiny bits of EQ.. about half dB except top shelf which was +2dB from 14kHz) -> AlexB's N14 API console Master Bus (clean version)

Delicate piano, original mix

Delicate piano, Aquamarine+Ivory+N14
Those examples sound great the EQ just adds that nice bit of weight. Nice... :)

PS - Figured that the other boyo had a bit of agenda going on there by his reaction to you. :wink:
I will take the Lord's name in vain, whenever I want. Hail Satan! And his little goblins too. :lol:

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bmanic wrote:
Funkybot's Evil Twin wrote:I've always said Nebula would be successful when they got rid of the awful UI and built plugins that look like the original units. I'm glad they've been doing just that, while lowering CPU and latency but they need to figure out a proper demo process. I'm still not ready to drop that kind of cash without a demo.

The prices are a bit to high too considering how quickly they seem to be able to turn out units at this point. Obviously the R&D that went into making this technology a reality should be compensated, but it just feels like they're an EQ releasing machine at this point, and all the EQs are pretty darn expensive.

I honestly feel like $99 + a demo is the right price point for these things.
Yeah, the lack of demos is a real bummer and something I've been highly critical about. We've made quite a lot of noise on the forums for this and managed to get a 1 month weird exclusive "february" demo thing working for Magenta.. or was it Titanium? Can't remember. But yeah, I agree very much that there should be a demo.

However, as for the price, here I disagree. I don't think you guys understand how much time and resources it takes to create these. We are talking about hundreds if not thousands of man hours to get these done! I've done a few EQ samplings of my own and it is a complete nightmare!!! Granted, they probably have much better tools available to them but it's still manual labor that takes a long time to do.. which means high studio costs and rental costs for the equipment.

Also, this price for Ivory EQ is pretty much on par with IK Multimedia's version and cheaper than the UAD one. It's also superior sounding than both previously mentioned ( in MY opinion! .. and I have only had a brief go with the UA version EDIT: On the UAD I mean the Precision EQ because AFAIK it's inspired by the sontec/maselec type EQ).

One thing is certain: The new Core 6 engine is a lot faster and smarter than any of the preceding engines which means a lot lower CPU and somewhat lower latencies, without compromising the sound quality. Nebula technology has always been a future tech and we are not quite there yet when it comes to commonly available hardware but it's not long now before these plugins start to make a lot of sense.. and they are still way ahead of the game when it comes to sound quality (again, my opinion).

Cheers!
bManic
as i have said in other threads, i think that the effort that alexB, CDSoundmaster, Olonga,
Cupwise, Tim Petherick and several other nebula developers
are putting into sampling is same or more than the acquas
yet the acquas sell at 5-10 times higher price points.

and it is not the gui cost either. CDSoundmaster sells
aqua vsts with fine guis at a third to quarter of the acqua prices.

so i have to conclude that the premium in price is due to the
newer generation engine that only acustica has.

and by the way, Uad, slate, waves etc are developing circuit models which are
much much harder and specialized labor intensive than sampling,
they pay royalties to owners of the original units for use of intellectual
property rights, deliver code in highly specialized platforms
like uad or soundgrid fpgas, and the products are flawless, with
carefully crafter presets, clear refund policies, etc.

So as a customer of all of the above including acustica,
i feel that acustica is price gouging big time.

and i am still waiting for the promised acquamarine demo!

i hope that i will not start be called names now. 8)

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cfanyc wrote: as i have said in other threads, i think that the effort that alexB, CDSoundmaster, Olonga,
Cupwise, Tim Petherick and several other nebula developers
are putting into sampling is same or more than the acquas
yet the acquas sell at 5-10 times higher price points.
It's a basic market rule that is in place here. The market itself has dictated the price (and due to recent quality increases in programs the prices have gone up considerably over the past few years.. especially AlexB and CDsoundmaster programs). It's not the fault of Acustica Audio that all the program makers set so low prices. Heck my programs I gave out for free.. one of them is still exceptional and sampled from a unique unit made by a famous high-end analogue wizard, highly regarded in the mastering field. Not sure if it's still available but suffice to say, the ones that got hold of it hit the jackpot. :hihi:
cfanyc wrote: and it is not the gui cost either. CDSoundmaster sells
aqua vsts with fine guis at a third to quarter of the acqua prices.
Not true. Some of Acustica Audio's plugins are dirt cheap. Orange EQ, a complex sampling, costs 30 euros. BlueEQ is 89 euros. Amber EQ (my most used EQ from the whole Aqua library of plugins!) is 99 euros.

CDSoundmaster has several plugins that cost way over 100$. Punch VCA compressor is 149$. VTMC-M2 compressor is 199$ (!!), Warm tube compressor 149$, R2R 149$ or 179$ if you want the combo, VTM-M2 179$.. even weirder, some of his plugins seem to be selling separately for 32bit and 64bit. Very confusing and definitely not at all cheaper than Acustica Audio plugins.. so please check your facts next time, ok?
cfanyc wrote: so i have to conclude that the premium in price is due to the
newer generation engine that only acustica has.
As you can see above, you are severely mistaken.
cfanyc wrote: and by the way, Uad, slate, waves etc are developing circuit models which are
much much harder and specialized labor intensive than sampling,
they pay royalties to owners of the original units for use of intellectual
property rights, deliver code in highly specialized platforms
like uad or soundgrid fpgas, and the products are flawless, with
carefully crafter presets, clear refund policies, etc.
Have you seen the code of Nebula / Aqua engine? Why on earth do you assume it is "easy and straight forward"? That shit's EXCEPTIONALLY next generation. Heck it's more than 10 years before it's time. I don't even remember when I first met Giancarlo but I think it was 2006? Back then it was out of this world. It was completely and utterly revolutionary and he said back then that it'll probably take 10 years before this technology will start to get some recognition. Well he was definitely right.. and the code has evolved like crazy.

And about Slate plugins.. you sure you aren't falling victim to the over hyping of the "genius" Fabrice Gabrielle? His code isn't magic.. nor is the code at Universal Audio (highly specialized platforms? :lol: More like highly obsolete platforms).

Speaking of specialized platforms.. how many audio plugins can you count that can do their processing on the Nvidia CUDA platform? How many of them can do their processing over a network, allowing for a huge render farm? Yeah. :)
cfanyc wrote: So as a customer of all of the above including acustica,
i feel that acustica is price gouging big time.

and i am still waiting for the promised acquamarine demo!

i hope that i will not start be called names now. 8)
I wont be calling you names because you were polite. But I will correct your "facts" and put some of your thoughts and opinions into question. Hope you are okay with that? :wink:

Cheers!
bManic
"Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of the idiot who said it." -an idiot

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bmanic wrote:
cfanyc wrote: as i have said in other threads, i think that the effort that alexB, CDSoundmaster, Olonga,
Cupwise, Tim Petherick and several other nebula developers
are putting into sampling is same or more than the acquas
yet the acquas sell at 5-10 times higher price points.
Not true. Some of Acustica Audio's plugins are dirt cheap. Orange EQ, a complex sampling, costs 30 euros. BlueEQ is 89 euros. Amber EQ (my most used EQ from the whole Aqua library of plugins!) is 99
....
cfanyc wrote: so i have to conclude that the premium in price is due to the
newer generation engine that only acustica has.
As you can see above, you are severely mistaken.

.....

I wont be calling you names because you were polite. But I will correct your "facts" and put some of your thoughts and opinions into question. Hope you are okay with that? :wink:

Cheers!
bManic
i think you are cherry picking the cheapest acustica acquas to compare with the most exprnsive third party libraries.

i collected the prices over ALL eqs offered by the mentioned
vendors and here are the results

- alex B average eq price over 14 total eqs offered is 27 euro
- Tim Petherick average eq price over 5 totaleqs offered is 25 euro
- Henry Olonga, average eq price over 5 total eqs offered is 5 euro
- CDSoundmaster average eq price over 22 total eqs offered is 36 euro
(with repeat customer discount)

- Acustica audio average eq price over 8 total eqs offered is 107 euro

the most expensive third party eq is 45 euro whereas for acustica 160 euro

only one out of 8 acustica eq is less than 79 euro. if it were not for this single outlier then the acustica average price would be 118 euro!

Conclusion: the acustica acqua eqs, depending on vendor are from 3 to 20 times more expensive than third party eq libraries on average.

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our acquas are aligned to the market prices because we need to run a "normal" company. And the company is necessary now, because we are working hard to our little miracle: we need an engine which moves gigabytes and at the same time behaves (for performances/usability) like an "algorithmic" plugin based on few taps/coefficients. Your can only guess how much complex the engine is actually. As bmanic said, we are supporting networking, cuda.
Just to explain it further, the company is also working on other projects, like a nosql database, which was started just because nebula needed it internally. This database (it will be released as opensource during the next incoming year) executes million queries for each core, and dozens of range queries for each core/second for example.
This tech needs developers, resources, time, money.
It explain why we cannot sell acquas at a cheaper price. But what we are doing now will be used in the future by other 3rd party companies, like cdsoundmaster, alexb and so on. They are small, and they need tools, which are created now by our higher prices.

About endorsement: our models now are DIFFERENT enough from original gear (especially in the appearance) and sometimes we modify things here and there (we even improve them: faster times, fixed imperfections), but we are AVAILABLE to create exact replicas, and we even contacted some of original developers for agreements on using brand names. Some of them are interested but we have still low numbers for catching their needs (ie we are working on a pt version of the engine).Considering the increase interest in our products, and the new planned improvements, it could happen somewhat soon.

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last thing: we have higher prices SOMETIMES (bmanic said it very well.... sometimes we are even cheaper!!!), but acquas are already way more usable than simple nebula libraries:

- instances are loaded and saved in parallel (ie if all bands are engaged you can load your song faster)
- latency is a fraction (core6) because instances are collapsed
- cpu is a fraction (core6) because instances are collapsed
- the gui is "complete" and intuitive

So we can justify them very well. There is a different position on the market.

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Zaphod what's going on with Trinity Eq 2 and Neo Console aquas?
I would like to sell them...who is doing the transfers you or AlexB?
If anyone is interested in these PM me..

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cfanyc wrote:
bmanic wrote:
cfanyc wrote: as i have said in other threads, i think that the effort that alexB, CDSoundmaster, Olonga,
Cupwise, Tim Petherick and several other nebula developers
are putting into sampling is same or more than the acquas
yet the acquas sell at 5-10 times higher price points.
Not true. Some of Acustica Audio's plugins are dirt cheap. Orange EQ, a complex sampling, costs 30 euros. BlueEQ is 89 euros. Amber EQ (my most used EQ from the whole Aqua library of plugins!) is 99
....
cfanyc wrote: so i have to conclude that the premium in price is due to the
newer generation engine that only acustica has.
As you can see above, you are severely mistaken.

.....

I wont be calling you names because you were polite. But I will correct your "facts" and put some of your thoughts and opinions into question. Hope you are okay with that? :wink:

Cheers!
bManic
i think you are cherry picking the cheapest acustica acquas to compare with the most exprnsive third party libraries.

i collected the prices over ALL eqs offered by the mentioned
vendors and here are the results

- alex B average eq price over 14 total eqs offered is 27 euro
- Tim Petherick average eq price over 5 totaleqs offered is 25 euro
- Henry Olonga, average eq price over 5 total eqs offered is 5 euro
- CDSoundmaster average eq price over 22 total eqs offered is 36 euro
(with repeat customer discount)

- Acustica audio average eq price over 8 total eqs offered is 107 euro

the most expensive third party eq is 45 euro whereas for acustica 160 euro

only one out of 8 acustica eq is less than 79 euro. if it were not for this single outlier then the acustica average price would be 118 euro!

Conclusion: the acustica acqua eqs, depending on vendor are from 3 to 20 times more expensive than third party eq libraries on average.
Are you sure you are not the one cherry picking here, he? You specifically mentioned CDSoundmaster and his GUI based plugins compared to Aqua plugins. So I did the same. I did of course not compare non-gui / ordinary Nebula programs to Aqua plugins because that would be silly. The added value of Aqua plugins and their multiple EQ bands / complex compressors (Titanium comes as 3 different plugins, two of them being true multibands!) is not a small thing compared to single use programs. Lets not confuse Nebula + Aqua. Also remember that you need to purchase Nebula if you want to use nebula programs from 3rd party vendors. This is not the case with Aqua plugins (nor the Aqua like plugins from CDSoundmaster).

I just don't see the logic in your argument. You don't seem to understand that the actual market value of Nebula programs has been dictated by their own creators. This has nothing to do with Acustica Audio. It's not their "fault" nor responsibility.

We could equally well start complaining about Waves/FabFilter/U-he/UAD/Slate etc. prices because some developers sell high quality stuff for pennies (Klanghelm and Toneboosters comes to mind. Incredible prices for world class plugins).

This kind of complaining of prices is very tiresome in my opinion and makes very little sense. It's a free market. You don't like it? You don't buy it. :)

Cheers!
bManic
"Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of the idiot who said it." -an idiot

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bmanic wrote:This kind of complaining of prices is very tiresome in my opinion and makes very little sense. It's a free market. You don't like it? You don't buy it. :)

Cheers!
bManic
3 tiring pages just to reach to the point for the above (and the OBVIOUS) to be said... :roll:

cfanyc :

This is the technology.
This is what it does.
This is how it sounds.

Don't like it ? there are PLENTY of dirt-cheap (and I mean DEART-CHEAP) options around.
And if not "dirt-cheap" then discounted-to-death.

My advise : have 'em.

Don't take this personally, but there is a very good chance you can't even understand the benefits of the technology. and its OK... but appearantly VVKT is just not for you, even if was 10$ worth.

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Selfik wrote:Zaphod what's going on with Trinity Eq 2 and Neo Console aquas?
I would like to sell them...who is doing the transfers you or AlexB?
If anyone is interested in these PM me..
we improved and we support those products. Only they are not on sale. It is a new perspective: a software is not available to new customers. But it could be sold, like an hardware, and you are lucky if you own a license. You'll see this new thing moved to a next level with an incoming product named pEArL

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Yes - the pricing issue does seem to pop up during many Acustica-Audio discussions. After spending several thousands of dollars over the years on 3rd party Nebula presets both old and new Acqua technology I am claiming a seat at the discussion. I really have felt I was supporting an advanced technology and getting a fine sounding EQ or Compressor in many cases, maybe I should have a stock certificate also? :lol:

My particular interest in recent pricing stems from my normal plugin-ceiling budget of $79-$99, rarely I'll pick up a $129 or higher plug if it's warranted because of popularity (by posters I respect) and my own testing (via demo). And yes, as a side note, there's always the "Shy" factor in my mind where he explained why buy 5 mediocre items when you could by 1 really excellent item that might cost $$$$$.

DMG and Fabfilter have been mentioned, I have plugins from both and qualify for customer discounts. Same with AlexB (Silver discount) and CDSM. Acustica-Audio Acqua offer a pre-release discount (but without demo).

Having said that, here's what I would like to see:
* Demo for Acqua at pre-sale time
* Loyal customer discount at all times
* Release of Nebula 4 with all current technology

Now - back on topic...when all of those things happen I will then be able to try out Ivory EQ, determine if it fits my needs, and purchase.

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Zaphod (giancarlo) wrote:we improved and we support those products. Only they are not on sale. It is a new perspective: a software is not available to new customers. But it could be sold, like an hardware, and you are lucky if you own a license. You'll see this new thing moved to a next level with an incoming product named pEArL
You can get them here if you want to be the lucky one :wink:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 9#p6095839

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kylen wrote:
Having said that, here's what I would like to see:
* Demo for Acqua at pre-sale time
* Loyal customer discount at all times
* Release of Nebula 4 with all current technology
This! :tu:
"Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of the idiot who said it." -an idiot

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BTW, what did happen to the demo's? I know you can get your money back, so arguably that is like a demo, but was wondering none the less. I used the Titanium demo, and remember seeing at least one other there (think it was Amber). Are the demo's not gonna come back?

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