Maybe one of the best options for anyone looking to invest in a collection of useful audio processing tools is to purchase a plugin bundle. Which one you choose completely depends on the type of work you do, but the plugins included with Acon Digital Acoustica provide an excellent set of tools for a broad range of tasks, at a very affordable price.

Acoustica is suitable for audio editing, post production, mastering and restoration. Acoustica comes in two versions: Standard and Premium Edition. In my opinion, the Premium Edition provides the best value, due to the huge collection of included plugins. These can be used within Acoustica itself, or in your preferred DAW. Acoustica Premium edition includes a spectral editor, loudness meter, spectrum analyser and speech recognition tools. It provides multi-channel support up to Dolby Atmos 7.1.2., it is priced at £159.90 and includes the following plugins:

• Extract: Dialogue - A dialogue noise reduction tool based on deep learning.

• Verberate 2 - A natural sounding reverb plug-in.

• Equalize 2 - A parametric EQ with an intuitive user interface and some unique features.

• Restoration Suite 2 - This is actually a suite of four plug-ins for audio restoration. They are: DeNoise 2, DeHum 2, DeClick 2 and DeClip 2.

• Mastering Suite - A collection of mastering tools consisting of Equalise 2, Dynamics, Multiband Dynamics, Limit and Dither.

The plugins and bundles listed above can all be purchased separately, but the value offered by their inclusion in Acoustica Premium Edition, coupled with the fact that you essentially get all of this plus a spectral editor too, makes it a no brainer. Oh yes, and there’s also a suite of dialogue specific noise reduction tools, in addition to the aforementioned Extract: Dialogue. The other dialogue restoration tools are:

• DeWind: Dialogue - As its name suggests, this tool reduces wind noise in dialogue recordings.

• DeEss: Dialogue - An effective tool for reducing sibilance in dialogue recordings

• DePlosive: Dialogue - Attenuates low-frequency noise, pops and plosives caused by recording dialogue without a pop filter or windshield.

• DeRustle: Dialogue - Reduces clothing rustle and microphone bump noise from lavalier recordings.

• DeBuzz: Dialogue - This plug-in targets buzz and hum noises and eliminates them from dialogue recordings.

• DeBird - Recordings made outside can suffer from a variety of background noises, but when the problem is bird noise, this is the tool for the job.

• Finally, there’s a tool called Remix, which can split a complete mix up into 5 stems of vocals, piano, bass, drums and others.

A Closer Look At Some Of The Included Plugins

There’s so much going on with Acoustica and the included plugins that it would be impossible to cover all of it in a single article. I’m planning on creating more content about Acoustica over the coming months, but here we’ll look at some of the included plugins which I use regularly: DePlosive: Dialogue, Equalize 2 and Dynamics. All of these can be used within Acoustica or in your DAW of choice because they also come as AAX, VST and AU plugins.

DePlosive: Dialogue

Dialogue recordings made without a pop filter often suffer from plosives causing low frequency pops. DePlosive: Dialogue is a simple but highly effective solution for this very problem. Using a combination of the Sensitivity slider along with the Maximum Attenuation dial, pops can be reduced very effectively. Previously I was using the iZotope De-plosive plug-in from RX, which was reasonably good, but sometimes adversely affected the audio and could make it sound thin, even with careful application of settings. Acon Digital DePlosive: Dialogue is just a more effective solution, and it’s the one I turn to for reduction of pops in dialogue recordings.

Equalize 2

This includes some nice features, like the ability to adjust not only the centre frequency, gain and bandwidth, but also the filter slope for each band. The filter slope can be set anywhere from 3 to 120dB per octave.

Most EQ plug-ins work in minimum phase mode, which usually means extremely low latency but it can introduce unwanted phase problems. Some EQs also offer a linear phase mode, which allows for the preservation of phase relationships at the cost of higher latency. Acon Digital Equalize 2 provides both of these modes, but also offers a unique mixed phase mode, which allows you to set the latency freely in the range 5 to 120 milliseconds while preserving the phase relationships as far as possible. This gives control over potential pre-ringing artifacts which is a common problem with linear phase filtering.

Up to 12 bands can be added to Equalize 2 and 8 different filter type options are included:

• Low cut

• Low shelf

• Peak/dip

• Tilt

• Bandpass

• Notch filter

• High shelf

• High cut

These different modes provide the versatility to sculpt your EQ precisely as needed, and I find the interface to be intuitive, with the frequency display in the background providing a useful means of visualising the frequency content of both the original signal and the processed version. In fact, precisely what frequency response gets shown in this view can be set from the Analyser 1 and 2 drop-down menus. Options include Input, Output and a variety of mid-side options.

Speaking of mid-side, there are stereo channel mode buttons within the plug-in. By default, both channels are linked, but the left or right can be affected exclusively, or, for mid-side signals, the mid or side can be affected.

Dynamics

Dynamics does exactly what its name suggests. It’s a compressor. I’m quite a fan of the interface in Acon Digital plugins, including this one. While that might seem trivial, it is important to have something which looks good if you’re going to be using it day in and day out. One thing which I particularly like in Dynamics is the way it displays gain reduction, both as a meter and as a red inverted display at the top of the scrolling waveform within the plug-in.

The ratio control goes from 0.01:1 all the way up to 100:1. This means that Dynamics can be used either as an expander, or as a compressor/limiter. The range control dictates the maximum amount of attenuation and I like the inclusion of a Hold control. Hold can be set from 0ms to 500ms and it allows the compressor to postpone the activation of the release time. I find this useful in some cases with dialogue where I don’t want the release time to kick in too quickly during gaps in words. On certain recordings, this can give a better, smoother result.

The inclusion of a latency control is something you don’t find often in dynamics plug-ins, and it means that the lookahead time can be set. This can sometimes help to reduce harmonic distortion of low frequency content.

The Make-up gain control can be set manually, or an Auto option can be enabled, which compensates the output gain to increase the level as the amount of gain reduction is increased.

Fans of parallel compression will like the fact that there’s a Mix knob within Dynamics. In normal operation, this is set to 100%, but setting it to lower values allows parallel compression to be achieved within a single plug-in. 

To see and hear DePlosive: Dialogue, Equalize 2 and Dynamics in action within Acon Digital Acoustica: Premium Edition, check out my video below.