NAT 3 is out.

[danielbest]

Acusticaudio


will this new version improve the sound?...

[Stratman]

Just thought I'd make this thread a bit less ambiguous.

NAT3 is a software product for sampling equipment
NAT3 generates presets which can be used with Acusticaudio's Nebula 3 VST plugin

As with any product used to sample any sound with a computer/audio interface etc the level of quality is determined by what you are sampling and what you are using to sample.

You can sample eq's, filters, preamps etc

More complicated devices will become sample-able over time e.g. compressors.

See the site for special prices and further information.

And yes, I am affiliated with Acusticaudio.

Stratman ;)

[Animus]

First thing I suggest is that you overhaul your website. Everytime I go there I end up just leaving in confusion, not mentioning the fact you have to register to do almost anything. Interesting products though. I just think you need to make more user friendly and simple gui's, like a 4 band parametric eq.

[lordnielson]

Originally Posted by Animus

First thing I suggest is that you overhaul your website. Everytime I go there I end up just leaving in confusion, not mentioning the fact you have to register to do almost anything. Interesting products though. I just think you need to make more user friendly and simple gui's, like a 4 band parametric eq.

+1

[cooker]

Originally Posted by Animus

First thing I suggest is that you overhaul your website. Everytime I go there I end up just leaving in confusion, not mentioning the fact you have to register to do almost anything. Interesting products though. I just think you need to make more user friendly and simple gui's, like a 4 band parametric eq.

Whats the problem with registering? this helps keeping the librarys+updates inside a certain community. Also its been nearly a year since I bought my neb. 2 and I haven't seen any question unanswered there.

At the begining I wasn't really happy too with the GUI but got used to it pretty fast (actually current gui is pretty simple if you only use the knobs and select the preset with 2 ticks. No need to mess with any other settings).

Its cheap and sounds amazing.

[Stratman]

I'll address some of the comments now (busy, tired, overworked poster warning!)

Registering is in part a value add for customers. The Acusticaudio forums are a great way for people to ask questions about all the great things that go on at Acusticaudio. It's very difficult for us to be across every other forum. We'd rather users joined the website, downloaded the goodies and participated in the forum. It's the place to be for all things Acusticaudio.

Registered customers also get the benefits of the contents of the registered users forums as well.

Acusticaudio is a small company guys. Everyone has a day job. I don't own a Ferrari. Giancarlo has a pizza habit. A lot of the work is concentrated heavily on producing a stable plugin that pushes the boundaries in terms of quality and hardware sampling. The technology, website etc are in a state of flux, with things being added and changed all the time.

I think, as per some statements made above, for the current asking price there is no plugin out there that does as much as it can as well as it can. Yes I know people will say "but it uses a lot of cpu to do it" - but I think the results speak for themselves. In terms of features there's an awful lot in there. For example, support for GPU processing under Nvidia's CUDA platform.

Some say the UI is complex, but yet again, you don't have to use all the controls. It is possible to use the plugin easily with only making use of TWO of the pages in the UI. There are other users that want more options in the UI. There's a lot of opportunity in the current UI for people to adjust Nebula to trade cpu/quality etc. In that manner it is highly flexible. I don't think there are many/if any other plugins out there that offer as flexible an engine.

Yes it is modelled after a hardware interface. Yes in part it suffers as a result. But on the other hand it's easy to find and load a preset and then move the sliders around. That's not very technical. And yes, Gian our programmer in chief knows what I think about the UI....over time things will change with respect to that. The UI is skinnable though, so if the default look and feel doesn't take your fancy and you love hot pink, by all means make a skin. But don't ask me to use it :P

I can't see how we'll ever make everyone happy. I think though that it is a very flexible tool. It's not perfect though, and it is being improved continually. I wouldn't want to live without it.

Oh and for people who have been out of the loop, checkout Velinas's excellent presets that have been released over the past few months. Some nice EVEN and QE IPA like things are out..

Stratman ;)

[zaphod]

Originally Posted by Animus

First thing I suggest is that you overhaul your website.

agreed. We are improving and improving. This month we'll go live with a news section.

Originally Posted by Animus

not mentioning the fact you have to register to do almost anything. Interesting products though. I just think you need to make more user friendly and simple gui's, like a 4 band parametric eq.

Originally Posted by Animus

not mentioning the fact you have to register to do almost anything.

this was in our policy. You need to regist almost for everything. Maybe we'll remove this constraint.

Originally Posted by Animus

I just think you need to make more user friendly and simple gui's, like a 4 band parametric eq.

a better gui is in our plans, and we are already working on it. We are waiting for faster computers in order to implement more bands.

Our products will be better and better (at least I hope so), but their price will increase and increase. At the moment at the cost of a couple of beers you get tons of emulations of expensive gear. The real price of the product, if everything was perfectly tuned (site, plug-in, gui) should be around 500-600 eur and not 20-80.

[Animus]

Cool guys. I think you are on to some really cool ideas with Nebula.


I was only saying that I am not a customer and I don't think I should have to register to find out more information about the product, including reading the forums. In fact when Nebula originally came out I did register and downloaded the demo (which in itself was almost impossible due to so many different parts you have to to download). I eventually stopped going there because a lot of the times I couldn't login due to endless loops in the pages.

[zaphod]

Originally Posted by Animus

Cool guys. I think you are on to some really cool ideas with Nebula.


I was only saying that I am not a customer and I don't think I should have to register to find out more information about the product, including reading the forums. In fact when Nebula originally came out I did register and downloaded the demo (which in itself was almost impossible due to so many different parts you have to to download). I eventually stopped going there because a lot of the times I couldn't login due to endless loops in the pages.

Yes i agree.
Actually the "free forum" is readable even if you are not registered, tell me if you experience troubles. About the "customers forum", we'll ask to our customers (maybe customers prefer a private forum)
About nebula-programs.com, I made this request a couple of weeks ago and velinas (the site admin) started a poll.
About downloads this evening I'll contact our site admin and we'll speak about it.

[lllubi]

Originally Posted by zaphod

Yes i agree.
Actually the "free forum" is readable even if you are not registered, tell me if you experience troubles. About the "customers forum", we'll ask to our customers (maybe customers prefer a private forum)
About nebula-programs.com, I made this request a couple of weeks ago and velinas (the site admin) started a poll.
About downloads this evening I'll contact our site admin and we'll speak about it.

are you thinking of making an AU version in the future?
i have to say im not happy with plugin support for VST at all thats why
im changing to AU.

thanks

[zaphod]

yes, but we'll release a vst-macintel version before.

[sonicdefault]

Yes,

I'd definitely be interested if it was in AU. The website letters are tiny, by the way.


-SD

[kzkingsley]

Originally Posted by Stratman

Registering is in part a value add for customers.

Sorry, but this is not true. It's been shown in quite a few web studies that people want to get what they want out of a site and leave. People want to get in and get out without any work required. "We are Sorry, but this section of our site is for Registered Users Only." on a main section of your menu is site suicide (not to mention grammatically silly). This is much to the chagrin of advertisers and sponsors, but it's just how people act on the web these days. It would be great if people had time to register at every website they joined, and maybe with OpenID (which PHPNuke doesn't seem to support) it could happen some day, but the reality is that registering and logging in is mundane and tedious.
I have honestly visited your site at least a dozen times in the past few years, eager to give your software a try, but by the time I realize I need to register I just immediately get turned off and convince myself I probably don't need another plugin.

Originally Posted by Stratman

The Acusticaudio forums are a great way for people to ask questions about all the great things that go on at Acusticaudio. It's very difficult for us to be across every other forum. We'd rather users joined the website, downloaded the goodies and participated in the forum. It's the place to be for all things Acusticaudio.

Registered customers also get the benefits of the contents of the registered users forums as well.

You have to either decide if you want a social community, or if you want to create products that people will try and buy. Think of it like this: you know those rewards cards at the grocery store? What if you had to fill out a form for one everytime you went to a new gas station to buy some new flavor of Gatorade? People that want to give your product a try are theoretically walking out the door because you are hassling them more than you should. Even more confusing is that the error messages on your site don't even give a handy link to the registration page, just some crummy graphic probably designed 15 years ago.

Also, are you aware your site becomes complete unusable if you don't have CSS enabled? I would seriously consider ditching the PHP Nuke CMS and getting on board with a more modern and powerful system like Drupal or Wordpress. You don't need to own a Ferarri or a masters degree in programming to run a great website anymore, much of the modern web software available holds your hand through every step of the installation and customization process.

edit: Sorry for coming off so scathing.. I just re-read this and want to delete it because I don't want to publicly insult you or anything, but I think I have some valid points that you should consider.

[zaphod]

I don't know about studies really, but we need a community.
After all we are not selling the usual eq or compressor plug-in. We are distributing almost for free a product able to emulate expensive gear. Ok, we are selling 3 items, but we are asking money (a LITTLE mone) just for covering the application management and band cost and little things, for example computers or phone costs. So our primary goal is the community. There is a third party community named "nebula-programs.com", users are sampling and sharing programs using legal torrents.
We are not interested in users who download, and even we are not interested in users who download and pay. We are interested in users who give a feedback.

But you are right, all our forums should be accessible, because our site doesn't describe our products in a proper way. At the moment there is a free forum, we'll ask to our customers if they want a protected forum or not. Nebula-programs.com is opening a free forum section. Our downloads will be accessible to everyone, but ehi, after all we are just asking to register to a site and login, it's just a little effort. This is my idea (it's not directed to you obviously!!): "if you don't have 5 minutes for registering to our site, maybe it's better if you buy gear when you need it. Maybe you are too rich, your time is too precious, and you would be useless"

[Stratman]

I'll be quite up front about the registering thing, and in part where the value is. It's probably not quite clear. Part of the reality of the logging in thing is that we do not have unlimited bandwidth. If we did there'd be less reason to ask for a registration. It's that extra step that makes some differentiation between people who are somewhat serious versus people who are far more serious. If we gave away less the value equasion for end users, even those who just go for the freebies would be limited. It'd be far worse if we said "well, you have to buy the demo!". There are a few companies that have kind of tried this, and well...I can but only suggest they're dreaming. Demos are demos. I wont pay to demo something. I don't think Giancarlo is so stupid as to make people do so.

I do sometimes think however that excellent audio demos coupled with the right doses of information can win sales. If something really is super-fantastic.

If we go and talk about the idea of instant gratification and users "getting in and out asap". It's probably not going to happen with downloading Nebula. The libraries are large. There is going to be some waiting involved at some point. Yes, there are ways to get around this, but to the best of my knowledge they are all less than instant in nature.

I would be very careful of these studies. There are too many sites out there that ask you to register for NO valid reason, that is they are in the business of getting your details without genuinely attempting to provide any kind of real end user benefit. The user often receives no value because what is being provided is often non-exclusive, misleading, inappropriate, miscommunicated, pirated, snake-oil derived, advertising drenched or not what they thought they were looking for. It's quite obvious at AA what you are signing up for. If you go over to IK's site, the same can be said for Sampletank. Yet again it's quite clear what you're getting. The guys at AA need some help with their documentation too. I agree it's not as good as it can be, and whenever I get the opportunity that is improved upon. And certainly sometimes there are lingual barriers that get in the way, and that's something that can be overcome.

I am aware of several problems with the website. I'd be quite happy to list them all here. Some of them have been addressed, and there are still a few gremlins in the works, but not all of them are of AA's doing.

As for improving the site, there's a billion and one things I could think to do to it and with it. But that's not my personal function over there. In my day job I am involved in a wide range of things and I know what it means to provide universally accessible interfaces. So really, no need to talk to ME personally about them. The trouble you are highlighting in a round about way is that most of the proliferating bb board systems are more often than not about pushing and evolving technology/various agendas than they are about providing a consistent accessible platform for all potential users. Depending on which theories you subscribe to concerning "progress", web technologies and interfaces there are varying degrees of rights and wrong in the approaches that have been taken in various bb systems. But it's not just bb systems. It's web browsers too. If you're personally interested in this sort of thing I'd suggest going off and having a read about what the chaps who implement software like IE8 have been up to with regards to the need for "backwards compatibility" and the dilemma of trying to provide a better and more progressive browsing product. It's quite interesting to look at what thought/lack of thought often goes into things we are all forced to live with or work with, against and around. But given this is gearslutz, a place about pro audio equipment, gear and software it's probably not the best place to discuss web standards. I happen to be quite prone to discussions about the poor utilization/deployment of customisation and personalization of websites/portals etc as well..a topic that is quite highly related to poor understandings of user values and technology...but yet again, this is gearslutz!

The Ferrari illustration and the other factors I allude to are more or less about quantifying that our operation is small. Often I have come across people who seem to suggest that a small operation should be as extensive, in depth and as far reaching as that of others which are much greater. The reality is AA is a small software company, that happens to be run by people who tend to be very passionate about their main mission, have limited resources, but try their best. I don't think there's anybody that we've dealt with who can say we haven't tried to support them or answer their questions. It's not an excuse which says "let's provide a rubbish website". Although I can potentially see some people construing my statements to mean such things.

Over time what has happened with the site:

Original forum was connected to the one used for development - The original forum solution was a major collaborative tool for running aa
Acusticaudio.net was brought online
Original forum and customer forum became two different distinct things
Product pages were built and enhanced
BB board updated - certain problems disappeared (though some still remain)
More product information and pricing
Removal of some things that weren't quite right
Enhancement of download section - added better descriptions etc
Over the period up till now we have had various problems with service providers that have caused all sorts of problems with the forums, in particular strange and weird things relating to cookies and logins etc. These are generally no longer an issue (now that I mention such things I'm likely to curse proceedings)

For me, in my PERSONAL opinion there is some disjunct between the current site and a more cohesive customer experience. But yet again, things change and can be changed. Part of it is through feedback, part of it is through updating the board, and part of it will most probably be in finding a turnkey solution that either fits with the parts that exist or replaces them in their entirety.

FYI, Nebula Programs has done some interesting things with their access regime, and it's quite probable that the AA forums will follow suit. But yet again, if people want the value of the AA experience and get an understanding of where things sit at the bleeding of edge of what's being done the forums are almost unavoidable. The product is stable, but at the same time VVKT is far from being fully exploited and completed. That's a dimension of buying into the product. Some users do not like the fact that the plugin is not in an "end state". If someone's thinking is "I buy something and never need to update or add to it" then perhaps this isn't the product to buy. For people who can see value in something that gets better and more featured etc over time and they don't mind reading a forum and downloading updates, then this product is more likely to appeal.

Nat3 as a product is a bit of a driver for people being a part of our forums too. When users are producing Nebula content they're the ones going to the forums posing the questions, posting their presets etc. I'd much rather I saw registered user names on a forum where people are posting content and are asking about issues surrounding theory of operation. It becomes very difficult to manage things if we were to allow anonymous participation.

I think I've addressed much of what has been said by kz. More than happy to discuss things further. This thread is/was however about Nat3......Ah, the wonders of internet forums.

Giancarlo will probably respond on here....here's in a better position to express what his thoughts are on what AA will be doing in the near future.

Stratman ;)

[Lippo]

ACUSTICA AUDIO NAT


DESCRIPTION


Nat is professional tool able to sample the major part of audio effects processor, software or hardware, analog or digital, extending the concept of sampling to FX units and not to sounds. Combining different kind of convolution techniques (linear, not linear and time variant) Nat is able to replicate the original sonic behaviour of vintage units like pre-amps, compressors, equalizers, filters, tapes, guitar and bass amplifiers, reverbs, microphones and any time variant device like chorus, flanger, tremolo, phazer, leslie and more.
This is achieved through Vectorial Volterra Kernels Technology, a fully automated procedure completely designed to capture:
1.Linear sonic behaviour : traditional linear convolution
2.Not linear sonic behaviour : 9 diagonal Volterra kernels
3.Dynamic behaviour : level-dependant convolution
4.Time variant behaviour : cyclic convolution
Internal complexity is provided to users through a simple interface so that users could sample their own staff. Sample and share is the final aim so that:
1.Users will be able to use equipments that don’t possess.
2.Users will be able to sample their own effect units and use them everywhere, simply with a notebook.
Each kernel is saved using 64 bit (only in Nat3 while Nat2 uses 32 bits ) so that top quality is fully guaranteed.


TECHNICAL INFO


Category : FX Sampler.
Format : Stand alone.
Harmonic orders: 0 to 9.
VST Players supported:
·Nebula3 commercial (64 bits).
·Nebula2 commercial (32 bits only).
Bit rate:
·AUDIO 64 bit floating point.
Software requirements:
·Windows.
·ASIO driver.
Hardware requirements:
·Pentium IV or Athlon, 1.8 Ghz or better [Centrino 2 Ghz suggested].
·1 Gigabyte RAM [2 Gigabytes suggested].
Optional software support:
·FFTW library
Layout:
·MAIN LCD: 58x14 characters
Notes:
·Free bug-fixes.
·Free upgrades to future versions of Nat3.
To be released:
·Support for dynamic devices (compressors).




For more information visit : Acusticaudio