Software Inspection:
[ Analog Lab ]
Arturia’s “Analog Lab” could very well be one of the audio-production community’s best kept secrets – all while being ‘wide open’ to the public. *Yes, that was a deliberate use of an oxymoron. Please, let me explain. Although most synth lovers are familiar with Arturia’s pedigree, there remains those whom have not yet actually experienced the products for themselves. Generally speaking, home producers fall in to one of two camps: those who like to tweak relentlessly, and those who just want great sounds with minimal muss n’ fuss. Analog Lab is perfectly suited to the latter group. While adjustments can be effected, per preset, to the more mainline operations, deep editing is eschewed for the sake of convenience. On a side note, if a user has a *full* edition of one or more Arturia V synth(s), then he/she can open that particular module directly within Analog Lab and tweak to their heart’s content. Analog Lab now contains about 6000 patches culled from the complete Arturia V Collection of virtual analogue synths. At the time of this publication, the following are included:
The most immediate advantage that “Analog Lab” presents is that you get the complete collection of Arturia's virtual analogue synth engines within a streamlined, easy-to-use package. The cherry on top is that It can be had at a fraction of the cost of its full-featured “V Collection” brethren. This is Arturia’s congenial, cost-effective option for value-conscious and/or non-tweakers to gain entry into the domain of Arturia's mighty synthdom. Ridiculously priced at only $89 (USD), it really is one of those items that you'll want to grab in a hurry while an accomplice "keeps the car running". . .
There is a dizzying folio of presets sure to accommodate most nearly any musical genre or sound design interest. All of the usual suspects are present and accounted for, easily loaded into action with one or two mouse clicks. It’s all here – a perennial one-stop-shop of pads, plucks, leads, basses, arps, strings, brass . . . well, you get the idea. It is rather negligent of Arturia to not ship this product with warning labels affixed. An unsuspecting adventurer may get swept into countless hours of experimentation, play and general tom-foolery. ;)
Visuals:
Arturia’s Analog Lab presents itself in an ample, multi-paneled window that has obviously been constructed to function in concert with Arturia’s own hardware controllers. The GUI is resizable, but even at its (default) smallest, it is generously proportioned with dimensions of approximately 1250px wide by 720px high. The overall hue is that of dark shades balanced with pleasantly contrasting indigo-blue text and a few tasteful white details scattered about. The fonts in use here are clearly legible and are easy to read in either dimly lit or bright environments. Overall, the interface is easy on the eyes and promotes fast, easy workflow. Other GUI appointments match the color schemes of Arturia’s hardware line; most notably the virtual ‘keyboard’ along the bottom of the interface. The array of rotary dials, sliders, pitch/modulation wheels, and etcetera, seen on the virtual keyboard accurately mimic those of the physical device. It’s also worth noting that the virtual keyboard dynamically changes its appearance to match whichever model of Arturia controller happens to be connected.
[ Toolbar ]
Along the topmost of the GUI you'll find a toolbar housing a presets manager, midi-learn, midi panic, KEYB (keyboard) display and general preference menu items. Below the toolbar, in the main body of the GUI, you’ll immediately see that the interface is divvyed up into three main regions. The upper area of the screen hosts the scrollable presets/browser panel on the left, and an instrument/preset filtering section to the right. These may be dynamically proportioned by click-dragging the dividing bar from left to right.
[ Virtual Keyboard ]
On the lower portion of the screen, we find the ‘virtual’ keyboard. As hoped for, it pretty much mirrors the controls layout of its physical (Arturia) counterpart. Artistic enhancements are subtly applied with the use of shadowing and 3Dish textures, giving its overall appearance a highly ‘playable’ aura. Personally, I find it wonderfully beneficial not having to fiddle with midi mapping or ‘double-checking’ that the knobs I’m turning on the physical controller are correlating with the appropriate software controls. Shall I mention it again? Hybrid synthesis.
Operations & Control:
Out-of-the-box plug n’ play performance is instantaneous whenever an Arturia keyboard has been connected to a computer running “Analog Lab”. All of the (Arturia) keyboard’s controls are pre-mapped at the factory. Talk about homogenous, hybrid synthesis in action – this is a perfect example of it. That said, “Analog Lab” is no slouch as a standalone app (or plug-in) independent of Arturia hardware. It can be configured to work well with most nearly *any* midi keyboard controller simply by utilizing the application’s accommodating midi-learn functionality.
Each knob, wheel and slider responds smoothly to mouse movements; if not a tad too conservatively. Notwithstanding, it’s much better to deal with slightly slow tactile sensitivity than be frustrated with controls that ‘overshoot’ with the slightest touch, or by accident.
If you haven’t a controller connected and would still like to preview any of the sounds, you need only click on the Keyboard’s keys. It would be a welcome convenience if one could use their computer keyboard as a virtual midi-controller, but alas, this feature is not implemented at this time. There are two expandable panels neatly tucked out of the way on both side edges of the virtual keyboard. Clicking on either of the two powder-blue strips will reveal the Snapshots or Chords panels – left and right, respectively.
Within the Snapshots panel you are free to drag/drop your favourite presets from out of the Browser – up to a maximum of ten. These 10 squares correlate with the ten physical push switches located beneath the twin rows of rotary dials on the KeyLab 61.
To the right, expanding the Chords panel facilitates easy assignment of preferred chords to any of the Keylab’s 16 Pads. (Have I already mentioned “Hybrid synthesis”?) The chord delegations are configurable in all key-signatures - from C-2 all the way up to G8 - in many variants: major, minor, diminished, and so forth. There are two clickable fields per pad: Key and Variation.
Whilst configure-a-doodling on the right side, in the Instrument/Data filtering compartment, you will find that there are two available ‘views’ – Studio view and Filter view. If you are looking at the Studio view you will see a nifty, graphical representation of a cozy little studio room filled with the various vintage synths represented in “Analog Lab”.
Clicking on any of the headers in the browser will sort the presets list alphabetically from 0 – Z or conversely the reverse. However, you can only do this for one column at a time; the browser doesn’t facilitate sorting first by Type followed by Instrument.
Speaking of presets, it’s simple to import and/or export presets using the respective functions located up on the toolbar. Regretfully, I have to demerit a few points from Arturia because of some persistent quirkiness I keep experiencing while using the Standalone application. Very often, the program will crash immediately upon start up, or will not make any sound, if it is trying to load certain kinds of user-presets. To narrow it down more, this anomaly seems to be specific to *only to the newer synth engines: Matrix-12 V, Wurlitzer V, and Solina V. The classic synth engines are seemingly *NOT affected. And just for the record, this issue exits on *both computers that I have the application installed on.
Common controller features, such as portamento, expression, mod wheel and etcetera can be assigned to either one, or both, of the two parts. If for example you would like your keyboard’s mod wheel to affect only one of the two parts, this can be simply accommodated.
There are a substantial number of pre-configured choices included, but as with the standard Sound mode’s presets, we may freely save our own. Multi mode presets can also be dropped into the Snapshots panel.
Sound Quality:
There are numerous videos, written-reviews, and forum comments dispensing plenty of commentary about Arturia’s virtual analogue synthesizers. Some of these extol the creations as the best things since sliced beats, *(er, I mean since sliced bread) while others find reasons to critique somewhat harshly. Personally, I really don’t belong in either category. After all, I primarily played guitar, bass and keys for most of my musical life. Like many of you, I grew up listening to most forms of popular music from the 70s, 80s and 90s. Without knowing which splendorous electronic instruments were being used, I was nevertheless enjoying the cool, sonic emissions of Junos, Jupiters, DX7s, CS70s, CS80s, OB-Xs, Mini Moogs and the like. Howbeit, in my not-so-blissful ignorance, I didn’t have a clue about Voltage Controlled Amps, Resonance Cutoffs, Additive synthesis vs. Subtractive and . . . well, you know . . . “synth stuff”. For that matter, I couldn’t have explained what ADSR meant; and back then, only the elite urbanite had a 28k dial up modem to look up the definition in Netscape Navigator. *Grin.
Admittedly, most non-synth players tend to be puzzled, perplexed and somewhat overwhelmed by a typical synthesizer’s myriad of knobs, sliders, switches, gidgets n’ gadgets. I empathize completely: Years ago I too was one of those confused souls. For this reason, I’m going to report my observations about Analog Lab’s sound quality without reverting to highly ‘technical-schmecnical’ jargon and ‘synthisms’.
Oh, and as a brief side bar statement: Analog Lab makes a *perfect choice for anyone who might be daunted by synthesizer technology. In this case, it becomes all the easier when enlisting Analog Lab paired up with an Arturia KeyLab midi keyboard. *Wink. I quite savor this bountiful crop of virtual vintage harvest. We have at our disposal an immense assemblage of many of the most favoured and sought-after synthesized tones known to man. Vis-à-vis the most discriminating ear, there might be minor discrepancies between some of these virtual presentations and their original hardware counterparts. Per contra, it is certainly a declaration of truth that the essence of each one is accurately rendered. At that, if one hasn’t a good deal of hands-on experience with the real thing, or doesn’t own an original hardware synth, you’ll be hard-pressed. Indeed to distinguish differences between them. Inasmuch as hardware vs. software discrepancies such as filter ‘warmth’, resonance sweeps, and etcetera are minor, Arturia’s virtual analogue synths are a God send. When’s the last time you packed up a “Jupiter 8” or an old “Oberheim SEM” and carried it off to a gig or studio event? Man, those things are heavy! The oscillators could be a bit finicky at times and difficult to tune. Sure, we all love a bit of ‘drift’, but when you’re sorely out of tune, that just . . . sucks. As a final blip of dissertation on Analog Lab’s behalf, we must be mindful that very few keyboardists have the budget or the space to keep a collection of 12 vintage keyboards. Very few apartment landlords or neighbors would welcome it, and most wives could be less than congenial about it. *Grin. For those times when one would prefer to veer away from obvious v-synth tonalities, you are welcome to revel in the splendid, classic vibes produced by “Wurlitzer V” and “Vox V” – emulations of a Wurlitzer 200a and Vox Continental respectively. Each of these variants includes plenty of unusual (creative) presets, but thankfully, there are a comfortable number of traditional-sounding patches enclosed as well. Generally speaking, both of these are capable of reproducing the sounds of their original hardware mates very well. In particular, the “Vox V” yields highly believable simulation. The “Wurlitzer V” is also very good, but I've found that it does need a bit of patient tweaking to coax it into sounding its best. If one is shy of patience, I recommend the "fifty-fifty" preset as a top-notch starting point. The Arturia originals still sound *GREAT to my ears! How can you miss? Mini V, Prophet V, Jupiter-8V, Arp2600 V, CS-80 V and Modular V: Not only are the hardware originals revered, but Arturia’s TAE ® (True Analog Emulation) virtual analogue series has also stood the test of computer-music history. I speculate that if it weren’t for Arturia leading the way, perhaps we wouldn’t have many offerings to choose from. It is possible to find other equally impressive virtual analogue synths, such as TAL’s “U-NO-LX” and MemoryMoon’s “ME-80”. However, for the most part Arturia continue to hold the reigning crown in this category. They practically invented the Virtual Analogue Synth industry, and continue to be the leaders in their field. It’s exciting to hear how their latter Oberheim-based offerings, SEM V and Matrix-12 V, are so close to ‘nailing’ the sonic palettes of the originals. For the most part, I consider the sound of the twelve synth engines (yes, 12 distinct instruments), to be an obliging blend of warm timbres to clear, ‘airy’ tones – and everything in between. From sweet, dirty, driven, chaotic, pulsating, sweeping, ambient, rich, harmonic, fractal, and etcetera - it’s in all here. How does one describe with mere words exactly what a dark, modulated ambience pad à la Prophet V sounds like; or how do I paint with verbiage the searing quality of a bright, Mini V lead? I cannot. What I can convey is that there is a proverbial avalanche of enthralling sounds crammed into Analog Lab’s 300 MB installer. I’ve been experimenting with “Analog Lab” since four months (up to the time of this publication), and I’m continually impressed with the quantifiable degrees of authenticity on tap. Ranging from bizarre to sonically soothing, I affirm that persons of all ages and musical interests will find something delightful in this unpretentious and deceptively simple-looking multi-instrument.
CPU Consumption:
Oy! This assessment is a little bit hard to determine. In a nutshell, CPU demands vary from patch to patch and from instrument to instrument. Generally, I would consider most of the older synth engines to be reasonably light on system resources. Listed, they are: Mini V, Prophet V, Jupiter-8V, Arp2600 V, CS-80 V and Modular V. I noticed that both Wurlitzer V and SEM V, which were both released about two years ago, place a little bit heavier load on my CPU. The most recent fare, Vox V, Solina V and Matrix-12 V can be somewhat demanding while using complex patches. Concluding Remarks: The longer that I’ve been experimenting and getting familiarized with this all-in-one, turnkey setup, the more that I have developed a sincere appreciation for it. Very often, a typical home producer or small studio owner puts together a ‘piece meal’ studio kit over time. You know the scenario: different plug-ins from various developers, sundry bits n’ bobs made by diverse companies – all being stock-piled together. At times, this multitudinous method of operation works against the home recordist, rather than benefiting him/her.
There’s a strong sense of assurance that comes with using the Producer Pack. Once you’ve become accustomed to it, you’ll find yourself relying on it, rather than the old way of doing things. Arturia isn’t the only developer who is cluing into this mindset and developing solutions to address it; Native Instruments are pursuing similar revenue streams with their “Machine” and “Kontrol” bundles. That said, what Arturia definitely has to their advantage is cost effectiveness *and* a luxurious software bundle complete with the FULL version of BitWig Studio DAW.
When you really stop to consider that the Producer Pack 61 features an impressive keyboard controller, a FULL version of a powerful, contemporary DAW, and a cornucopia of world-class synthesis, it’s a . . . wait for it . . . I gots ta use my least favourite cliché . . . it's a "no brainer".
This concludes the second installment of my Producer Pack 61 review. At your convenience, feel free to continue on to the next segment: Part 3 - Mini V Investigation
Brother Charles is a freelance writer, Gospel music artist and minister. Charles had been a professional touring musician during the nineties; working primarily as a lead guitarist in the Canadian country music industry. Brother Charles is also involved with music production and quality home recording.
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Visuals - Bands Panel:
The lower panel of the main interface is called the “Bands” panel. This is the primary configuration area for each of the five bands, or seven bands, of each Melda MDynamic EQ. By default, each frequency band is adjustable using smooth-responding sliders. These are Frequency, Q, Gain, and Dynamics (gain). The more fully-featured MAutoDynamicEQ includes ‘Attack’, ‘Release’, and ‘Threshold’ controls for immediate, convenient control over the Dynamics properties. Premium Features: Broad Range of File Types: Prem 5 can work natively with a diverse selection of file types (without requiring external codex): FLAC, Ogg, MP3, Wav, Wav64, AIFF (read-only), AAC (MPEG-4), WMA, and AU. CD Track Import & Basic CD Cover Design: That’s right, you don’t even have to use an add-on or 3rd party application for importing CD tracks. This feature can come in handy, especially if you want to easily rip a track from a pro recording to use for comparison reference within your own project. You can save and load your own CD projects and even create your own simple CD covers. The CD cover features are basic, but for anyone who only requires simple disc labels and jewel-case inserts, this is a very welcome addition. By the way - you can erase CD-RW discs from directly within Acoustica 5. If you’re one of those wise engineers that like to listen to your mix on various sources, reusing a CD-RW disc can be useful. K-System metering: If you’re working within a specific scope of audio standards, you can choose the metering mode that’s most appropriate for your project. You can choose from typical Full Digital, K-20 (Theatre), K-14 (Home Theatre) and K-12 (Broadcast standard) metering modes. Test signal generator: Just in case you want/need to execute some fancy-schmancy audio-aliasing tests and whatnot, you won’t have to hunt around for files or applications. Prem 5 keeps its batting average high and includes these professional analysis features. Declipping: A robust declipper is bundled with Prem 5, allowing you to keep your track’s volume levels up where you want them, but without any nasty digital clipping artefacts. Overall this is a capable feature and used judiciously, it produces pleasant, reasonably transparent results. It seems to work equally well for both analog and digital sources. A real-time visual monitor shows you what it’s doing. “StudioDeclipper contains an oscilloscope view to visualize restoration. The oscilloscope shows the last ten milliseconds of the recovered audio signal. The most important parameters of the declipper are the upper and lower threshold levels. The declipper will substitute all recorded peaks above the upper and below the lower threshold value.” Nice feature. :) Declick & Decrackle: This feature module is impressive, and I do mean impressive! Unless you put another two or three hundred dollars (and maybe more) with the purchase price of this gallant, audio-editing champion, you will not find a better audio restoration package. For the average home producer, Acon’s built-in “Studio Clean” utilities are second to none. Along with the super-easy audio cleaning wizard, this feature will greatly reduce tremendous amounts of vinyl LP crackle, pops, and clicks. Remember though, this isn’t a multi-hundred dollar speciality package like iZotope’s RX or Waves’ Restoration bundle. Still, for the money, this suite of restoration tools blows any other so-called ‘affordable’ audio cleaners out of the ocean. I was impressed! Noise Analysis & Noise Removal: Dear reader, have you ever worked much with audio restoration tools? I have. I used to undertake a great many audio restoration projects back in the late 90s and early 2000s. The computers were much slower back then and the software was not nearly as refined as the quality of today’s offerings. To record, edit, and “clean” a typical LP or cassette tape used to take me literally dozens, if not hundreds, of hours to complete. Seriously – it would take upwards of 6 hours to apply hiss reduction alone, to a single 4 minute track, using Syntrillium’s Cool Edit Pro at higher-quality settings. This didn’t include crackle and pop filtering nor did it include noise analysis and reduction. In some cases, you can achieve better results from the Declicker when you record an LP without the emulation of a phono preamplifier. You can post-process any recording originating from an LP this way by first applying the emphasis filter, perform declicking, and apply the deemphasis filter afterward. It sounds like a backwards set up, but it works to your advantage. In either case, the Phono Filter gives you a very believable preamp emulation and will lend itself to better vinyl transfers than its contemporaries. Sample Rate Conversion: This is an excellent, reasonably fast sample rate converter. I’ve compared the results with my other programs – R8Brain, Adobe Audition, Wavelab 7 (Elements), Sound Forge Audio Studio 9, and SOX. I ‘hear’ fewer artefacts when I resample using Acon’s sample rate converter. Unfortunately, the SRC Comparison web site does not list Acon Digital’s SRC engine. I sent the folks at Infinite Wave a message, requesting that they include the Acon Digital SRC engine in their list of comparisons. Let’s pray that they do. I would be very interested to “see” their findings. *wink Photo Filter Emulation: Hey, old-skool guy! You have some gnarly old vinyl that needs transferring? Good! You’re going to be very thankful that you laid out the dough for this college-league application. The “Phono Filter” emulates the effect of a phono preamplifier. It is not simply a gain increase. I would be very interested in knowing how Acon came up with this unique feature, but boys, it’s a great emu! Thanks for indulging my moment of nostalgia, but there is a point: Acon’s noise analysis and noise reduction engine is above-average in terms of accuracy, and it is very capable of generating satisfying results. It bests anything I had used back in the early 2000s. As is the case with its Declick/Decrackle team mates, you would require another $200 or greater, to achieve better results. It is this reviewer’s persuasion, that the quality of Acon’s “StudioClean” engine far exceeds any competing audio-editor’s built-in fare. To realize better by-products, I am strongly convinced that one would have no choice, but to consider an expensive, speciality audio restoration suite. Stereo Enhance: Surprisingly, this feature also works well and makes a very pleasant difference when it is used in moderation. I honestly don’t mean to ‘sound off’ like a grizzled old coach, but I’ve been ‘let down’ by many so-called stereo enhancing plug-ins. You know, that thin, ting, ting, ting sound you get while losing all the body out of the low end and cringing from the empty, over-scooped mids. Most of them rely on some variation or other of the HAAS filtering mechanism. I’ll be honest – I don’t know what method of stereo enhancement has been put into the game plan here, but it works! I’d play this little short-stop in the bottom of the ninth any day. If I had to get a mix out-the-door in a hurry, and it needed a little ‘widening’, I wouldn’t be one bit ashamed to use Acon’s Stereo Enhancer as my stereo enhancing ‘pinch hitter’. DC Offset: “Remove DC Offset” tool (select Enhancement | Remove DC Offset) calculates the DC offset of the selected region and subtracts the offset if necessary. Quick, easy, idiot-proof. I like it. Time Stretch: What!? For only $120 buck-a-roos, the Time Stretch feature can’t be ‘that’ good; Can it? Oh yes it can. Yessir! Rounding 2nd base on the gallop, while the far left-fielder is springing desperately to grab what looks like is going to be another home-run bullet; Acon’s “Time Stretch” engine is unbelievably able to slide home with style to spare. Effects Chain: What good is a team, if it doesn’t work together as a team? Acon have created the next best thing to Steinberg’s effects slots as found in Wavelab. Forgive my ignorance of all things audio, but I’m not familiar with any other audio editor, other than Wavelab, that allows ‘real-time’ audio “preview” or processing with multiple effects simultaneously. Acoustica 5 doesn’t handle this task quite as fluidly as Wavelab does, but it comes the closest of any other audio editor that I have worked with. The one caveat is that you can’t activate/deactivate individual effects while the “previewed” audio is being played back. However, just like in a typical DAW, you can have many effects active simultaneously and you *can change the settings ‘on the fly’, in real-time. You can also save effects chain presets (including the effects parameters) for later use. Unlike similarly-priced products, there isn't a restriction of how many effects you can chain at once. GREAT FEATURE! Again, I’ve just gotta tattle on myself and admit that I wasn’t expecting any more than mediocre, lacklustre performance from this built-in feature. After all, with perennial super stars like zPlane’s elastique in the limelight, I wasn’t expecting the thunderous, crowd-standing applause that this little unassuming, well-conditioned star would illicit. I could scarce believe my ears! In my scepticism, I loaded up one of the rough-mixed tracks I’ve been working on for my upcoming Gospel/Blues album. I “decreased” the track length, by “increasing” the calculated BPM (beats per minute). This was a full, polyphonic stereo mix of over-driven electric guitars, Hammond organ, CP70 electric Piano, Rickenbacker bass and drums. I was blessed amazed! Can I have a witness in the Gospel music booth up ‘heeah’, in this place? Yessir, Amen! It was fan-freakin-tast-tic! On a typical vocal or instrument track, the Acon Time Stretch plug-in will abundantly satisfy in most nearly any situation. Hats off to Acon Digital. Shame on those of us who have over-looked this pint-sized, underrated audio athlete. You can doll out the dough for other high cost products if you want to; as for me and my house, I wouldn’t feel underprivileged in the least to rely on Acon Digital’s Acoustica 5 Premium for typical time stretching duties. It works equally as well for both ‘speed ups’ and ‘slow downs’. Mighty impressive. As a general statement, I would estimate Acon’s “Studio Pitch” to be ‘almost’ on par with other higher-priced products. It is better than many similar built-in modules included with many mid-range DAWs. It is definitely better than similar features found in consumer-grade and freeware audio editors. Sound Quality: The clean, digital processing quality of Acoustica Premium 5 is comparable to any high-end audio editor. Across the board, this championship-grade software produces amazing, crystalline audio results. The array of effects and features need not take a back seat to any. As a matter of fact, I’m going on record stating that I believe that it BESTS anything in its price range, by a wide margin. Pitch Transpose: This is very good; not like the jaw-dropping greatness of the “Time Stretch” feature, but it is very good. You are given easily-configured fine control of a source material’s pitch, with either 50 cents upward or downward slider moves. A drop-down combo box provides 12 semitones of course pitch adjustment. Veering from the naming convention that we would expect, Acon have decided to use musically-intelligent terms such as: Minor second, Second, Minor third, Third, and so forth. These can easily be translated to mean: semitone, full tone, tone and a half, two tones, and etcetera. (Tiny niggle, nuthin’ to get our drawers in a bunch about). Effects & Features: Acoustica Premium 5 plays hardball with agility and grace. As the formidable, yet ingratiating host that it is, ‘Prem 5’ pitches seven, strong VST plug-ins squarely over the plate. It’s hard to miss with this able-bodied back-line string available to you on whatever digital field you’re playing. These digitally fit, all-rounders are: StudioCompressor (Multi-Band), StudioDelay, StudioDynamics, StudioEQ (6 Band ParaQ), StudioLimiter, StudioModulator and StudioVerb. These are in addition to the components that make up the Acon “Studio Clean” and “Studio Time” features that we’ve already been introduced to. As an umbrella statement, all of the Acon built-in effects hold up well under scrutiny. It is this reviewer’s findings that they are pretty much on par with those included in an average DAW. I’m not inferring that these are the equivalents of say, Pro Tools or StudioOne’s higher-scale vantages. Let’s not forget that Pro Tools and StudioOne Pro cost substantially more. *wink. Overall, the quality of these built-in effects is solid. Each of them is reliable and very useable. I experienced respectable processing results with each of them, and as advertised, they can be used within another DAW or host. To the left, you can see them included in the list of available 3rd party VSTs within Mixcraft Pro Studio 6. [ANOTHER SUBTLE PRODUCT PROMO] “I like em’, I like em’ a lot! “ CPU Consumption: * What a breath of fresh air. I have a couple of very well-known, fairly pricey, audio editing applications installed on my system. One of them in particular, is as slow as cold molasses running uphill, in the middle of January, in Alaska. Sheesh! The thing takes up to two minutes to launch on my 2nd gen Intel i3. Not so with Acoustica Prem 5, buddy. No sir! This little fleet-footed digital shortstop is practically locked, loaded and ready to go before I get my finger off the mouse button. Ok, well, that’s an exaggeration. “But ah’ll tell you wut! This thang is some blessed fast.” Even on the 6 year old dual-core laptop that I told you about, at the beginning of this article, Prem 5 launches in under 16 seconds – after a cold boot into Windows 7. Concluding Remarks: Throughout this exhaustive, inspective almanac, I’ve brought to your attention the stupendous value that Acon Digital offers with Acoustica 5 Premium. I now mean to reinforce that finding. Dollar for dollar, I am confident that this deluxe audio editing champion will ably out-perform ANY similar product at its conservative price point. Acoustica 5 Premium offers above-average speed, and a comprehensive, ‘ALL STAR’ feature-set, that exceeds and bests it competitors by a wide margin. Any small studio owner or self-starting home producer is well-advised to carefully demo and consider this application as his/her audio editor of choice. The 30-day unrestricted demo is freely downloadable from Acon’s web site and provides a prospective buyer ample opportunity to give Prem 5 a serious work-out. :: PROS - BEST-in-CLASS performance! - BEST non-speciality audio restoration tools. - BEST non-speciality Time/Pitch manipulation. - Professional-grade audio editing, manipulation, and processing. - Attractive, professional-looking GUI. - High quality, studio-grade results with minimal effort. - Highly Optimized code resulting in amazing speed. - Exceptional reliability. - Well-written user’s manual. - UNLIMITED effects chaining (featuring ‘real-time’ preview). - No dongles, call/response challenges, nor invasive piracy protection overhead. - Experienced, well-established audio-software developer of distinction. - Minimal system requirements. - FAST, FAST, FAST! :: CONS – N/A In this reviewer’s subjective opinion, it isn't necessary to try list any negatives in regard to Acon’s championed audio editing suite. Acoustica 5 Premium’s primary function is that of an audio editor. It scores mightily for Tape & LP transfer and processing, and powerful, convenient all-purpose audio manipulation. As such, I don’t think it’s fair to dismiss it because it’s not yet available in 64 bit. Many professionals are still using 32 bit versions of Sound forge, Audition and Wavelab – well . . . . nuff said! Does Apple make “Garage Band” available for Windows users? No. In this light, I will not dismiss a Windows-only application either. Visit the Acon Digital website for this, and see the season stats on other goodies as well: Acon Digital Web Site Reviewer's Revival Exclusive! Want a chance to WIN a copy of Acoustica 5 Premium? Until April 18th, 2013, YOU could be one of three lucky winners! 3 Premium edition licenses available CLICK HERE: Brother Charles is a freelance writer, Gospel music artist and minister. Charles had been a professional touring musician during the nineties; working primarily as a lead guitarist in the Canadian country music industry. Brother Charles is also involved with music production and quality home recording. |
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