A lot of their suites recreate real analog gear. They do that in a way that is proprietary and only used by them. A lot of people swear by them, hence the polarization. I'm new to their offerings. If you have not tried them then I'd encourage you to try a few for yourself. Trials are 30 days. You can hear for yourself if you think they'd add value to your productions. That would give you a basis to do your own comparison with the tools you run. I find the suites that are most colored are the best at showing this. Gold 5, Water 3, Cardinal are good starting points, or Green 5 Ultra or Scarlet for a mastering suite A few things: If I'm running Acustica in a session it fills the tone shaping part. I keep Kirchoff for corrective work and a modern limiter if needed. The pre's almost always are enough for saturation of individual tracks or a session. Each suite has usually 3-5 plugins in it and one of the best way to use them is to mix and match from different suites based on achieving a sound the track needs.

I think we have over generalized here @Jasper Labuschagne. This one is a Neve Console emulation. It comes with 9 of the eq styles, two compressors (52/54) and onboard saturation. The channel routing allows for sidechain filtering. The full suite can be broken up into: - A preamp module for harmonic content - An EQ / metering module - A compressor module - A channel strip version So yes, it does all of the things you listed, and usually anyone with plugins has come across a neve emulation so its a good conversation starter. If you are only using stock plugins then that's not really the same (even if you would be planning to use plugin doctor to cook up a 'replica' of an emulation). In that case I don't think even that would sound the same because these are not driven by algorithms like normal plugins. They have their own method. So my invitation to you was based on that. https://acustica-audio.com/shop/products/GOLD

@Marcello Lioy Yeah I have heard as well and jokes aside it is a good sample rate. A year ago I was holding out at only bouncing at 96khz. Since then I found that depending on my choices in the mastering I'm happy with lower sample rates if it means I can have a certain configuration on my chain. So now I will work at 44.1khz or whatever rate if it means my end result is good.

@Ralph Galetti yes that's a good point. These days you can run a session in one sample rate and then bounce to a different one if needed for sharing. I know there's perhaps a more sticky argument around 48khz due to the 'it covers the whole audible audio spectrum' piece. That said... that's the reason for the comment - da da da duuuuuuh

Joined the community this year on workshops and the Mastering Intensive. Was so happy with the community and its positive effect on my music life I decided to continue with getting a membership! Looking forward to walking the journey with you all and making some great music!