Ivory EQ by Acustica Audio! (Aqua plugin)

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The LCA I used for around a month last year. It's a great comp. I agree meters were faster than what you'd expect on a comp but I can't remember if it was like that just for the limiter side which would make more sense.

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bmanic wrote:
enduser282 wrote:For anyone that might not know, vu meters respond to rms levels, analog gear doesn't react to peaks while digital can do both.
This is such a gross generalization and it has to stop. It's an urban myth. The REAL truth is that every single manufacturer TWEAKS the meters to respond the way they want to. There are analogue compressors out there that have blazingly fast meters.. so fast that you hear a clickety clack kind of sound when the needle bounces around.

Then there are leds as metering on some units that are tweaked to be very fast. Tubetech LCA/SMC series being one of these. The meters are really ridiculously fast.

I'm not sure where this myth about everything being some specific rms level metering started but it needs to stop at some point. Meters are there to help you visualize what you hear. If a compressor can do really fast gain changes it makes absolutely no sense to have a slow GR meter.

.. just saying. :)

EDIT: also note that Gain Reduction metering has nothing at all to do with input/output level metering (which is indeed usually set to typical averaging levels). The point is: Metering needs to make sense. For signal level measurement it makes sense to have some kind of averaging going on, not so much for GR metering if the compressor can do fast attack and release times.

Cheers!
bManic
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/dec11/a ... 1211-5.htm

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You don't get it. :dog:

Input or output voltage metering (volume/amplitude, whatever you want to call it) is the one you linked to and is indeed RMS/averaging based, for good reason (like I said earlier in my previous post).

GAIN REDUCTION metering is not. It is usually tweaked by the product manufacturer to suit the actual unit in question. If it is a decently fast unit (1176, dbx 160, tubetech LCA/SMC series) the meter will have been tweaked to respond accordingly.

I'm not sure how much more simple I can put it than that.
"Wisdom is wisdom, regardless of the idiot who said it." -an idiot

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It's simple, as bmanic said. Manufacturers always tweak meters (we're talking about meters when they're set to GR) because there are many aspects that change from one compressor to another so the goal in most cases is to make meters practical for that given unit. Some are faster/slower than others (or just too bad to even care).

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bmanic wrote:EDIT: In short, this is how to use TITANIUM: Set the compressor to attack and release values that you feel does the job as expected. Now don't look at the GR meter, just use your ears (chances are that the GR meter isn't even moving at this point). Now when you get something you like you can set the release knob so that it is a lot slower (move it to about 3 o'clock) for a glimpse of just how much GR is going on. Now you know how much it's grabbing.. adjust accordingly then set release time back to what you had before.

Cheers!
bManic
Thanks bManic, that is a REALLY useful reminder of how to use Titanium. :tu:

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bmanic wrote:You don't get it. :dog:

Input or output voltage metering (volume/amplitude, whatever you want to call it) is the one you linked to and is indeed RMS/averaging based, for good reason (like I said earlier in my previous post).

GAIN REDUCTION metering is not. It is usually tweaked by the product manufacturer to suit the actual unit in question. If it is a decently fast unit (1176, dbx 160, tubetech LCA/SMC series) the meter will have been tweaked to respond accordingly.

I'm not sure how much more simple I can put it than that.
You keep talking about meters being fast but i never talked about meters being slow. :hihi:

I said that voltage translates to rms levels, also meaning GAIN REDUCTION and volume/amplitude reduction is the same thing in this case, both use voltage. Again, analog doesn't react to peaks (not only the meters but the actual gain reduction circuit, don't even know why i have to explain that!) because it doesn't read peaks and you anwered that's a myth (lel), get your facts straight. In addition to that digital offers peak detection / reduction method which meters show dbfs in which case not only the compression method is different giving another sound but the GR metering as well, since dbfs=/=dbu.


What each manufacturer does and how good the GR meter is calibrated to match the actual reduction is another story and coming from the factory the only way to know is open it and measure it, to make sure at least it's not faulty. Anyway i already said each box might have it's quirks. Then again vu meters are famous for being inaccurate and the fact is that a vu meter won't reveal much about transients by nature, no matter how fast it is.

So as engineers say use your ears.

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Zaphod (giancarlo) wrote:there will be a cycle of trial demos asap...
hmmm.....why i am not holding my breath?

a month ago you promised a demo for aquamarine.

no sign of it.

in the meantime though you released:
- ivory eq
- prime eq, compressor and console
- versatile eq
with honey eq and many others announced
to follow

Somehow only demos and nebula 4 cannot be produced by
acustica....

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demos: we are updating main plugs to core6, than we'll release demos. We though it would make sense. If you are not sure just hang a bit! we are just quickly creating the acqua shop, it is normal we are announcing many new entries now. They are products for nebula lovers with a small discount, many of them don't need a demo, this is the reason of our delay.

nebula4: we are working on that, but it is not a product tied to something paid from someone, or in presale. It is just announced. "it is done when it is done"

Our current product is nebula3, it is working, stable, updated.

If the issue is just aax, we are already working on that. It is possible we'll adapt nebula3 too.

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enduser282 wrote:
bmanic wrote:You don't get it. :dog:

Input or output voltage metering (volume/amplitude, whatever you want to call it) is the one you linked to and is indeed RMS/averaging based, for good reason (like I said earlier in my previous post).

GAIN REDUCTION metering is not. It is usually tweaked by the product manufacturer to suit the actual unit in question. If it is a decently fast unit (1176, dbx 160, tubetech LCA/SMC series) the meter will have been tweaked to respond accordingly.

I'm not sure how much more simple I can put it than that.
You keep talking about meters being fast but i never talked about meters being slow. :hihi:

I said that voltage translates to rms levels, also meaning GAIN REDUCTION and volume/amplitude reduction is the same thing in this case, both use voltage. Again, analog doesn't react to peaks (not only the meters but the actual gain reduction circuit, don't even know why i have to explain that!) because it doesn't read peaks and you anwered that's a myth (lel), get your facts straight. In addition to that digital offers peak detection / reduction method which meters show dbfs in which case not only the compression method is different giving another sound but the GR metering as well, since dbfs=/=dbu.


What each manufacturer does and how good the GR meter is calibrated to match the actual reduction is another story and coming from the factory the only way to know is open it and measure it, to make sure at least it's not faulty. Anyway i already said each box might have it's quirks. Then again vu meters are famous for being inaccurate and the fact is that a vu meter won't reveal much about transients by nature, no matter how fast it is.

So as engineers say use your ears.
Ah I see. Agreed, looks like I misunderstood you. My point was though that the gain reduction meters in Acustica Audio compressors are way too slow, at least the ones on the Titanium (tubetech SMC). How do I know this? Because I've used the real thing (well the LCA version) many times before. Also, it's very easy to look it up on youtube. I've heard this "it's based on RMS/averaging" excuse before when it comes to gain reduction metering but the truth is that the meters are tweaked by the engineers to be meaningful/useful. If they don't correlate at all with what you hear then they make no sense. For input/output, "gain staging"/loudness metering we usually have an averaging meter (which was standardized very early.. 1940's I think? or 50's.. don't exactly remember) because it makes sense in that application.

The gain reduction meter of the Tubetech correlates pretty much 1 to 1 with what you hear. Even a tiny bit of very quick compression is very well represented on the metering. Not so in the Titanium plugin.. not even close. Basically it's extremely fast in the real hardware and pretty slow on the plugin.

In short: Metering, be it gain reduction or input or output, usually is setup in a way that makes sense. A fast compressor with a slow meter makes no sense (Titanium plugin being a good example).

Hope I'm more clear now with what I wanted to say.

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

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Zaphod (giancarlo) wrote: nebula4: we are working on that, but it is not a product tied to something paid from someone, or in presale. It is just announced. "it is done when it is done"
That is a very good idea - put Nebula4 in presale. Why not? I would purchase Nebula4 presale before I purchase any more Acqua to be honest. :tu:

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kylen wrote:
Zaphod (giancarlo) wrote: nebula4: we are working on that, but it is not a product tied to something paid from someone, or in presale. It is just announced. "it is done when it is done"
That is a very good idea - put Nebula4 in presale. Why not? I would purchase Nebula4 presale before I purchase any more Acqua to be honest. :tu:
I very much share the enthusiasm about the next gen nebula
but the cynic in me says:
better yet, make nebula 4, test it thoroughly and offer a demo and if
customers like it for performance, features, stability, and usability they will buy it.

The presale honeyjar combined with no demo policy and
unspecified/erratic return policy encourages
companies very bad habits imo, like half baked, under-featured and buggy products released (since customers have committed their money product unseen).

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nebula will be in presale when it will be almost ready, not before!
And yes, I would prefer to iron all products, ie we are going to release a mkII for almost all our main tools.

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Ho provato a fare un esperimento...
Ho fatto un mastering ITB con questa catena...
- 2 filtri HPF\LPF
- Acustica Red EQ (Le tre bande andavano a cadere con gli interventi che dovevo fare)!!!
- SSL Bus Comp
- Waves UltraMaximizer...
Il mastering è venuto bellissimo, il cliente è rimasto soddisfatto (ed era contento di pagarmi) e gran parte di tutto questo è dovuto alla qualità del Red EQ (che è gratuito e ha una buona pasta analogica) e non escludo che lo userò ancora in futuro ma quella maledetta latenza che non me li fa usare in insert...
Mi mangerei le mani...
Grrr

I tried to do an experiment ...
I did a mastering ITB with this chain ...
- 2 HPF \ LPF
- Red EQ Acoustics!!!
- SSL Bus Comp
- Waves Ultramaximizer ...
Mastering came beautiful, the client was happy with (and was glad to pay me) and most of this is due to the quality of the Red EQ (which is free and has a good analog sound) and do not exclude that I will use it again in future but the damn latency that makes them not me use an insert ...
I'd eat my hands ...
Grrr

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