El Rey is finally out - Greg Wells' Signature Tube compressor plugin

Product: El Rey
Developer: Acustica Audio
Price (MSRP): SPECIAL BLACK FRIDAY INTRO PRICING - €269 €148 (45%OFF)
Plug-in Format(s): VST2, AU, AAX
System Requirements (Windows): Windows 7 - Windows 10
System Requirements (OSX): OSX 10.8 - OSX 10.13
El Rey Commercial web-page: El Rey (Early Access) - Acustica Audio
El Rey Trial web-page: El Rey (Trial) - Acustica Audio
El Rey User's manual: https://app.box.com/shared/static/za...b7mneznanr.pdf

“El Rey” is the third plugin of our DIAMOND series, created by Acustica Audio and Studio DMI, in collaboration with multiple GRAMMY®-nominated producer, songwriter, musician and mixing engineer Greg Wells and including exclusive presets from some of the industry's most important names ever.


Take one of the music industry's most talented and respected engineers: Greg Wells’, who has worked with a plethora of international artists like Katy Perry, Keith Urban, Adele, Mayer Hawthorne, Twenty One Pilots, OneRepublic, Grace VanderWaal, Ariana Grande, Kelly Clarkson, Pharrell Williams, Dua Lipa, Deftones, Aerosmith, Burt Bacharach, Celine Dion - just to name a few.

Then take one of the finest and musical sounding analog tube compressors and add a bit of voodoo to expand it's essence and gradually transform it into something extraordinary, through a thorough process of experimentation, artistic judgment, and trial-and-error, with the aim of extending the capabilities of hardware through Acustica's breakthrough technology.

Then take exclusive, finely crafted presets from GRAMMY®-winning, Multi-platinum and Award-winning engineers Dave Pensado, Joe Chiccarelli, Serban Ghenea, Jason Evigan, David Kalmusky, Alan Meyerson, Mark 'Spike' Stent, busbee and Mark Rubel - whose credits are so extensive that it would take forever to list them all.

This is the secret recipe for El Rey.

Sounds incredible. Instant vibe, body, depth, size and glue (massive on the mixbus).

I'm gonna say it. Sounds like HW

Delving deeper...

Update: heavens above, it's a dream on vocals.

Great release- very pleased!.

This one is indeed mighty impressive. Such amazing natural compression! Very "pleasant" on virtually anything I've tried it on. Quite a bump in the bass but that can easily be compensated for with an EQ before or after.

A king is born! Sadly I can’t use it until Tuesday, but I’m making my other engineers use it until then! Haha. I bet Amber pairs nicely with this!

I'm shocked at how good this sounds.

Just stunning, brought! Thank you Acustica

Wonderful, really, great action and vibe. Very well done Acustica.

If you don't mind having your hi freq disappear. Plenty of weight but I think not for the mixbus, maybe paralleling as it rolls too much hi end. Perhaps genre dependent..

Still have to try it on different sources, but sounds really nice.

I wonder when Acustica will start selling their plugs cheaper, like £59 or so, they will sell many many more.

Not if you know how to mix into it.

I'm traveling right now - does anyone know how long the intro price is good for?

Off course if you start a mix from scratch with it on the mix bus it'll be a different thing. I just threw it on a ready to go mix and the hi end roll off was obvious.

Of course, 'throwing' plugins on a mixbus will do that. It sound great on the 2 bus when mixing properly.

You can mix into it (as you would with Taupe), or as bmanic says, compensate via EQ before/after.

On vocals, El-Ray followed by Taupe (Ampex 1200 @ 30 ips) just oozes quality. Perfect combo for the source.

wow THANK YOU.


wow THANK YOU.

thank you niklas. You are a beta but your opion is always welcome!

eheheh thank you

agreed. It is the first product we released I consider "woodoo".
My personal opinion: it is the best digital bus compressor ever. Waiting for someone who proves me wrong

just THANK YOU


just THANK YOU

well we are doing big discounts this black friday. For example amber, which is 99 eur is 40% off. Several customers have 45% off and it applies on the top of the other one. They are buying at a crazy cheap price



we don't know yet. For sure it will be valid for the b friday period (at least till cybermonday)

just to explain to people who didn't have a chance to test the product on analyzers, this is the frequency response (attached). @22050 it is almost flat. The compressor preamp does a very subtle smiley curve (more or less 1 dB)

Also
- the compressor works very well in parallel mode (the mix knob), so this cruve is even flatter.
I bet you could use it for mastering!
A lot of people who tested it (ie Luca Pretolesi) reported to me they are using it directly on the master

useful tips
- el ray is incredible on vocals!
- el ray is incredible on drum busses! even EDM ones!
- el ray is incredible on the whole master buss, especially in parallel with a limiter

Are you driving it too hard? If you back off on the input and go with deeper threshold the highs shouldn't disappear.

Also, there is a significant bass bump at around 54Hz and then everything is scooped from there with a loss of about half a dB. So in general you are lowering your overall track volume by about 1dB and then boosting bass with around 1.2dB. All of this combined may make it sound as if the highs are lost.

Simply put a basic bell EQ at around 54Hz, dip by about 2dB and you should be good to go with almost flat response. There's even gentle high shelf starting from around 6kHz all the way up to 13 or 14kHz where it then dips down slightly towards Nyquist.

In short: There is a bass bump and overal volume decrease over rest of the spectrum. This may make it sound as if you are loosing highs when in fact you are not.

EDIT: See frequency plot posted by Zaphood.

Woah yeah I think WEIGHT is the word for this, it really bulks up anything u put on it.

El Ray sounds incredible.
I am happy!

It would be nice if I could turn off Preamp section for more colour.

But I found a solution.I load only compressor part via Nebula4

Plugin Doctor...



Edit: ah, thanks Z, didn't see the attached image previously.

Impressive low end, most impressive

From those with many AA plugs would you consider this a step up from other AA compressors?

Anyone using this plug with Logic? Trying this out now but getting a massive CPU spike just by engaging the plug.

You are saying that me, Serban Ghenea, Dave Pensado, Alan Meyerson, Spike Stent, Joe Chiccarelli, and a long list of the world’s top mixing talent have put their name on a plugin that takes the high end away.
We are all making records for a living and wouldn’t endorse something that does what you’re describing.
Tape or a 1950’s tube compressor will reduce the highest frequencies around 20k and higher. The tone this plugin gives you is something that hasn’t existed before in software.

Thank you. I feel exactly the same about it. So excited to share it with everyone now!

I love the subtle bass bump of gear like this. If it isn’t right on a specific sound, EQ it out, but typically the hardest thing to get is sonic richness/fullness and that’s why I love what this magic beast does to everything I put it on.

Many thanks! Acustica is a brilliant company. I feel honored to have created this with them.

I feel so blessed to have your name in a product of the company.
Your support and suggestions are unvaluable.
If you ask to me, it's not a random thing we have our best product today with your support.
(giancarlo)

This plugin is making me smile a lot, it just gives audio a great big hug. It really makes friends out of the sounds.

The biggest problem I will have it trying to convince myself to use some of my other plugins as well

Congratulations Greg, zaphod and Luca, I love what you've created!

Indeed, stunning. Easily the best ITB Compressor I have ever used.

That's exactly it; sonic fullness. Even without compression—just using it as a pass through—it enriches effortlessly.

Pairs wonderfully with FET/VCA comps (catching peaks before hitting El Ray) on all the sources I've tried it on thus far.