Curious to hear G.Wells comment/perspective ... personally, I'd vote to scrap 'Backward compatibility' in favor of more ATT/Rel choices for such a high-end/quality product.

Agreed, we're in the early access mode, it makes no sense to keep such a bug in the UI from this point onwards. It's too good to have a flaw such as this kept in.

All you need to do is remove the selectable points from the UI (keep backend the same so those using it already—I'm assuming the pros who made the presets—have no issues).

The presets would be simple to update.

This will imply a lot of more sampling , but i m in also !

I have a non-vintage Sta Level that i love so much i write the maker every year to thank him. Wonderful tone and i often marvel how it can glue tracks together to one organic chunk.

It's so pleasant as tracking compressor with few dB gain reduction and for additional gain staging options.

Even as mic preamp it's very nice if a bit noisy used that way.

Yet... i have to agree with your friend. Not only as compressor but the tone as well and the combination is what really freaks me out...

(one of the sweetest 'details' is that i can use the fast release on El Rey and it sounds as buttery as my Sta on slowest (original) setting, which can have the disadvantage of being draggy or muddy.)

Then considering the magic lives on the input (at least that's how it feels on my Sta) and with El Rey you can drive that as much as you like without squashing everything, or you can squash or drive everything and then use this little blend knob...

anyone could tell me the difference between the zero latency version and the ordinary one?
i couldn't find any information about it from the manual.

Bar the obvious, ZL uses more CPU.

I tried it.

Maybe it's all the words used (wow, voodoo, magic etc...) and the eulogistic analogies but I am bit underwhelmed.
Sounds good for sure. But nothing crazy IMHO (don't kill me). Or nothing I can't really reach ITB quality wise IMHO.

Also I tried to really push the input (with the autogain on) to get something from the tubes (the digital tubes). I didn't felt anything special again.

Sometimes on tube gear, pushing the input is marvelous when done carefully, I do this everyday :

- On the Culture Vulture Phoenix : Done well it can imparts some "natural" tube limiting. Which is very cool.

- On the Fairchild 670, on some source you may like what it does (but the circuit is far more complex so maybe it's different).

- On the Pendulum CS-8 it can be wonderful or really bad depending on the source (I personally prefer not pushing too much into it or making it "limit" or clip).
etc...

The effect induced is a good or a bad thing (taste dependent) but I truly hear the tubes or the parts of the circuit over-working and doing something to the sound.
Here I didn't.
But maybe it's part of this unit ?
I have to admit that I have saw those RCA gear but never took the time to use them in session.

Also, El Rey crashing my Pro Tools. The session became impossible to re-open when closed. I had to hold shift to deactivate all plugin. And when reactivating El Rey it crashed.
But it happened the same kind of thing with Crimson when I tried it.
And it couldn't be a clash with other plugins on the session since I only used El Rey.
Too bad because the CPU usage on this one looked way better and the knobs are responding very smoothly.
It looked like a superb piece of work.

P.S. : Please don't say I am a troll or I don't have ears or I don't have a life because I have a different opinions from everybody here. I read the whole thread and I didn't really liked how the users with different opinions were treated. Who care if the guy just created an account to give his opinion. It doesn't prove it's a competitor or a troll, it can be someone that read gearslutz for quite a while but never write anything and finally decided to do regarding the whole praise on with thread contradicting his guts feeling after testing the plugin. Maybe you had bad experience but it doesn't prove anything. You never know, so please let's stay respectful or at least objective.

alright thanks for the answer. and sonically they are identical?

Absolutely not, but there are many people confirming the plug is magic and someone (very very few posts) disagree
This is perfectly reasonable, even the best device you can find in a recording facility doesn't reach 100% of consensus!

Yup.

Exactly the same, one has a lower latency and a bigger cpu hit

Wow THANK YOU

I wanted to dislike this. Both because I already have a lot of ITB compressors, the price (even with the intro discount) is a bit steep, and because I do find some of the comments here slightly condescending ("how dare you question the product, we're professionals, so just trust us"). But dang, I do like it. If I didn't already have an arsenal of compressor plugins, I'd be waving my card in front of the screen. I don't know if it's some sort of psychoacoustic trick or super-deep modelling, but it works. The closest I could get (on a DId bass, recorded through a Cranborne Camden + Chandler TG Opto) with my regulars was with MJUC (I) and the Acme Opticom, but both were still different. Whether that difference is enough to warrant a purchase is something I'm still pondering. The fence is getting more and more wobbly, though.

r,
j,

Don’t do that.... most probably it’ll sound awesome on almost anything... so don’t waste your time... just enjoy it!

If your song sucks....it will suck a lot smoother with El Rey

... but with a well-recorded acoustic signal it will glorify it! That's where i feel El Rey will shine the most.

Wow! I just heard a rough mix from one of my engineers with El Rey - Ruby cutting at 300hz and Green (didn’t tell me what he did lol) on the vocal bus. And then on the mixbus Charlie - El Rey - Taupe - Diamond Lift and the results were stunning. We have a AKG c12VR going into an Avalon VT737sp for vocals, which usually turns out bright and airy.. sometimes harsh.. but wow did El Rey add girth and a weight that compliments our recording chain, while smoothing out the Hi End but still maintaining that C12vr sparkle! This was on rap vocals. Hah, up and coming Chicago rappers will be very happy with the sound! I’m jealous my other engineers got to play with it before me, I have to wait until Tuesday! Yeah, I’m probably overhyping it but I can’t deny what my ears heard and how excited my engineers were!

Great job Acustica, Studio DMI and Greg Wells!

Is someone have compare the antelope audio BA-6A with El Rey?

Man, am I blown away. Your plugins always sound great, but this one is ridiculously close to the real deal. It does sound like hardware to me. The compression feels a little tiny bit off, as always with your stuff. But the overall sound is just jaw-dropping fantastic. The first plugin that let's me think that maybe the future has begun.
Big shout-out to you and Greg. Great collaboration, so....what's your next project? Bring it on, boys!

Any ideas why my session always crash when I try to reopen them with El Rey on ?

I wanted to export you a sound example but it's almost impossible (even reloading after holding shift doesn't work).
El Rey is the only plugins in the session.

If I want to use it, it'll be a bit boring to always having to use Audiosuite to avoid that :/.

Pro Tools 12.6.1
Sierra 10.12.1
i7 4Ghz
16 Go RAM

(don't tell my computer is not strong enough, it can handle a few instances of it, it's really when reloading the session that it's crashing, and I don't wanna deviate to thread to why buying a war machine as computer).

We don't have many crash reports, please raise a ticket. They will try to replicate your exact configuration

A big THANK YOU on my side

Just THANK YOU

Exactly!

Just THANK YOU

This is my feelings exactly. The gain reduction itself feels a little unpredictable and at times strange like other AA's, but man what this thing does in tone and soundstage is just stunning and a no brainer purchase.

Dont post often here, just wanted to chime in and say Congrats. Im a huge fan, and regular user of Diamond, Charly, Lift, Pink2 and now Taupe and El Ray.

What I would really love to see from you guys is a dsp box that could add power to our computers so we could run more of these wonderful plugs.

Oh, and a tranisent designer.
Please and thank you.

I agree with this, does seem like too nice of a thing to have this UI error.

Anyway, just when i think i'm really, truly done buying plugins, I demoed and subsequently bought this. It sounds really fantastic to my ears. Big thanks and congrats to all involved!

I remember having this with Acquas, Nebulas and Pro Tools 12.4 to 12.8

For some reason, one day it stopped and I can't even remember the last time I had this problem with Acustica's. I never found why.

Actually, I'm having the same exact problem now with Sonarworks and PT 2018. It simply crashes anytime I open a session with it.

I understand and respect that and I also like the tone in general (although I really cannot understand the hype fully tbh), but my experience with AA products is that most of the time after a short while with the plug in I tend to switch off any preamp and I (and my mixing clients - I don´t use AA stuff for mastering atm) ALWAYS seem to prefer the mixes when no AA preamps were involved. I guess it´s because I work with a hybrid mixing set up with many analog parts and some plug ins.

if I engage the pre amp of an AA product for me something is just degrading the tone...making it less direct, hard to describe...but something about the "originality/honesty" (sorry I know that sounds horrible but I cannot find better words atm) and the transients of a sound is just not right (for me) anymore then. this is mostly for the lowend though I have to admit...but even with side chaining the effect the impression of a degredation is still there for the lowend (at least in the AA plugs that I´ve tried and own)

I don´t have that feeling when I use any of my hardware even if some stuff is really cloured.

...I can understand that some of you like the preamps just for what I dislike them, but to me the AA stuff I used so far just "blurs" the sound too much with the preamps engaged. so for me this would be a dealbreaker if I cannot switch off the preamp.

as I said, of course I respect your decision but still wanted to offer here a personal view that might be also valid for other users.

apart from the preamps I love the AA sound very often!

El Rey or Gold 2? El Rey or Gold 2? El Rey or Gold 2? El Rey or Gold 2?... Only have money for one this black weekend. Tougher choice of the year...

I’ve always thought this too about the compression, but the latest compressors since Pink 2 sound spot on to me when comparing to the UAD equivalents blindly with the added depth that Acustica processors bring. I think the meters are throwing our brains off because they’re definitely not perfect yet.

Weird right ? But it doesn't seem to happe with Ivory. But with El rey and Crimson it did.

I have similar problems on PC whenever I use Plugin Alliance. Crashes or project won't almost every time I use them together. I'll remove PA & it's fine.

I agree, they're getting closer and closer and leaving other developers like UA way behind. To me the compression still is a tiny bit off, but the rest is just unbelievably there.