DEEP DIVE: ASH by Acustica Audio

all right so let's get into it I want to get this out of the way now so Ash does come with one flat skin and then a bank of skins this is the traditional way of acoustical audio's GUI this is the one that changes color based off of the converter that you pick so for instance if I decide to choose digital this is the stage yellow it's actually a few of them stay yellow and then you have this one here stays yellow so the portion says yellow right cool but if you switch it to gray Onyx is black platinum and then you have the red outside of that the biggest difference is just the workflow here right it's really it's the same plug-in with the different skin you have all of your meters here this kind of stays the same here right the uh the bypass and listen area is over here though now that I'm looking at this the one thing this does not have is the mid and the side listen function I could be wrong maybe I'm missing it somewhere on the screen but it doesn't have those two options just the Delta personally I like the flat skin alright so on to it okay so how do you use this thing right and I've already went over the interface so we don't have to talk about that but the way you set this is you want the signal coming into the plug-in to hit around here this is the optimal range for the Clipper with this sitting at zero if you go over this zero it'll start clipping so you want to hit just here I don't think it matters too much if you just a little bit over and it starts clipping that's fine but the biggest thing is that you're looking for one to two decibels of clipping or if you're in the creative mindset like I am you may go for more all right so we're going to start with the kick drum here so we need a little bit more input now just to give you a heads up back here on the mixer I have all of my meters calibrated to negative 10. so if I go over negative 10 with Peaks especially um then I have not properly gained staged signals coming in and I I can't say I've done done everything on here like that but I definitely did the kick in the snare all right so we're going to give it some more volume so we get up there to that zero point then I'm going to compensate and I think you can use the auto function but it doesn't seem to be working that way so I'm going to compensate but the volume increase get this right back around negative 10. which should be roughly the opposite here right [Music] let me give it a little bit more volume all right that should be good now one of the ways you can tell if you're hitting it just right is when that number moves I'm right there [Music] all right so we got it set it's calibrated properly right now I'm going to take this and put this back on left right and then we're just going to push into the converter here basically is what we're doing now turns the auto on which means it shouldn't be an increase in volume and we're looking for around negative two or we're looking for two decibels of reduction [Music] all right bypass [Music] if you're listening you should hear it increase it should be about a two decibel increase and the in the overall volume of the kick without it necessarily going over the negative 10 here now if I turn the auto off you can see where the volume definitely increased right so we'll bring down our output [Music] a little bit more [Music] all right that should be good bypassed [Music] so that is the clipping part and and mind you I do have this on the times four now if I turn this off [Music] you can see that the clipping point now is at its normal state so if I increase this and get more into it and we can max out at plus five but we can do soft clipping [Music] hard clipping now to my ears the soft clipping seems to retain a little bit more of the bottom end just to smidge it and as you can see it's definitely digging in more with the soft clipping versus the hard clipping interesting I think I like the soft clipping so we have a number of them I'm going to actually go for the aggressive limiter here [Music] and you can hear the limiting happen right I'll bring it down no limiting is happening right there so this is pushing into the limiter [Music] but all the while [Music] if you notice even though it's louder we're still at that same negative 10 decibel point in fact Let Me Clear that so we're we're sticking around negative 10.2 here even though we have a louder volume on the kick of course the the character of the kick is changed because we are limiting right so let's bring it back down just a little bit all right so I'm gonna keep that there so next will be the snare drum so I'm going to solo the snare drum here so again we need to I'm going to set the auto for right now and I'm I'm told to make sure that the auto is off if you're using the um the limiter so but right now we're setting the the Clipper so we're gonna reset all of our controls by hitting um control just make sure everything is back at zero all right and then I'm again going to increase the input until it gets up to a nice healthy level good healthy signal coming in and again the way you can tell is if you got too much because if the gain reduction meter starts yapping at you all right so I'm gonna bring it down some just about there all right that's fine so let it start clipping this one now I'm going to leave it on point I'm gonna leave it on um the without the minus 20 it's a song minus five so and again we're aiming for around two decibels a little more up won't hurt if it sounds good all right all right so we're clipping there and actually here let me reset that and let me bring this back down like I did before that just under the a little bit more roughly are matching the input and the output right all right oh yeah 10.7 that's good all right now we can increase the clipping and we're looking for two decibels of clipping all right and this is roughly how you you set this right all right so we have that gang stage we're getting around two decibels of reduction I'm gonna be naughty foreign so let me bypass this a little more hmm all right and again I'm using this on an individual channel so I'm not so much trying to follow the rules as I am trying to get a good sound and I think the other part of it is that of course I'm cutting some of those Peaks that will have an effect on the actual mix after the fact right so doing this now rather than compressing or limiting which it will essentially change the texture of the sound this is taking care of those extreme Peaks that aren't really useful now I still want to keep the the transient sound to it I want it to have some twap to it right but I want to be able to get a much more louder mix that especially according to the meters and according to whatever processing goes on the master bus or in mastering right this will allow you to get a little bit more volume down the road that's how I'm looking at this all right let's see what we can do with the limiter this time let's try the transparent limiter see what that's all about I'm going to turn the auto off I'm gonna push into this here and that might be a little too much let me get back let's see what happens if we break this down some more and just a little bit now I'm trying to be good here so let me do a full bypass that's our original and where are we hitting 10.4 10.7 engage 10.6 so 10.1 bypass so I'm getting definitely a fuller sound because of course we're clipping and then we're limiting the clipping right the post clip limiter I do have some stabs in here that I think May benefit from using Ash and I'll actually use this version here with this GUI and we're going to try out this on the stabs here right so we're going to adjust and get our gain stage together here turn this down by 10 a little bit more because it looks like we're going to need some some real getting up there [Music] all right [Music] this thing is really dynamic [Music] all right so let's start clipping here and again I am going to do the minus 20. foreign [Music] [Music] of course as I stated changes color based off of the converter that you choose so let's listen this is what it's adding that's what it's clipping all right interesting and that little bit of stuff right there can be the difference between you getting a Extremely Loud master or not now I am curious I'm told these first four are from fire to clip so this is essentially fire the clip within this plugin aha it's not doing as much as the other interesting so we're going through what each one of these Clippers or converters I should say are doing in regards to clipping and digital standard let's go to the gray if you're familiar with acoustic audios business model they don't really talk about any third-party gear that was sampled because it would kind of be you know it just wouldn't be good business right but I'm not a third party acoustic or employee or anything so I can freely talk about these things and what I'm getting ready to say is not law it's not written anywhere these are just my best guesses let me say it like that so the the yellow well first of all this yellow this is like I said this is the acoustical audios fire the clip right here right these first four what was guess that for the others um that the gray might be prism or Burl I think it might be prism because I think Burl would be more green right the this yellow is Lavery this is my guess slavery gold interesting sound the Platinum my guess was crane song and some of this was just me looking at the actual converters and looking at the color of the boxes themselves so this is my best guess here onyx I figured to be links just makes sense but as you can hear these definitely are doing something different for each one that you choose now I do know this name here this is one of the third party Developers for acoustica and this is a home rule set of converters That Was Then sampled right this one has Transformers in it so it's very interesting so let me see what that sounds like he has quite a few in here so a bet base one one based off of LED one based off of Neon interesting this one isn't doing as much well in certain parts it is okay but it's not as grabby as the other ones this is the Transformer heart hmm and this is the Transformer soft all right and then you have various versions of yellow X and a couple of versions of yellow K3 this one seems to be doing the most the company said you should start with is the um the K3 I believe or it might have been the X3 this one hmm plus six and then a custom version of it foreign [Music] with this particular model so I'm gonna put it back to the one I like the best which is this one no sorry it is this one [Music] [Music] and I'm gonna actually [Music] now we are clipping this thing to hell here aren't we foreign [Music] match this up [Music] now what I'm going to do I'm going to pull up good old trusty EQ and Cubase and I'm going to cut some of this stuff at the bottom a nice soft slope that down there I don't need [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] I got a guitar sound in here and I'll go back to our flat version which is the one that I do like [Music] foreign so I'm going to do this and this again and then I'm going to put Auto along whoa way too much now let me make sure I check my game stage with this bypass should be fine it is okay [Music] all right so 10 just like three proper [Music] all right all right we'll stick with that and we'll push this see how much we can get I really do like this yellow X3 bypass it [Music] aha I hear it now now some of that I can live with it is snatching it though I just seen something that I think somebody may have pointed out in the Facebook group and I think this is a and I think it was even stated this is a property of clipping if you look at the signal right [Music] bypassed there's a high difference between the left and the right Channel all right when I Engage The plug-in because it's now clipping there the the signal that was reaching above the threshold that the clipper is stopping at is now no longer getting that high so the stereo correlation has definitely been modified as a result of that all right let's see if we can go extreme with it here all right see look at that now there's still some stereo information different between the two of the left and the right because there's still some signal that once it's below the threshold it's different on one side and I think that is a property of it's not even pan so this is the actual signal itself straight up the middle and that makes a lot of sense because this signal on the left side and I think I don't think that they're I think they're independent here and to me that would make sense but they're independent here as opposed to being um like two monos do a mono so yeah the stereos the stereo portion as far as the major changes in amplitude between the two is definitely apparent so I think at the end of the day it's really just the the signal hitting up against the clipping and because one side is not as loud as the other that one side that is the loudest is is folding down more yeah so you're gonna lose some kind of stereo information when it comes to clipping now if you've been looking at this here and wondering what this is this is keeping your overall level um below full scale by minus one that's my understanding all right let's try some aggressive limiting and see what happens here now we're going to push on the first clip here I'm gonna push it a little harder and now we're getting what appears to be even more reduction or rather no I take that back I did modify that didn't I so let's bring that here all right and get it together yes all right so we're just going to do the drum bus for right now so let us set this accordingly I'm just going to go ahead and reduce this in level increase this until it pops right there it's a little under 10. a little bit more right there okay that's fine so then we'll increase this to look a little something like that bypass [Music] and turn all that off start with that off keep that on auto [Music] now I'm gonna behave this time remember I've already clipped the kick in the snare I'm going this loud you can hear us not necessarily good [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] if I go back to and this is just a guess here let's do this since I'm doing just the drum bus let me stay where all of this heavy percussion is because it's a lot more instruments playing okay there we go [Music] all right I'll behave around here now if I turn these off what are we thinking may happen let's see [Music] well they definitely lost some power there so hold on let me go back I'll make sure I'm doing this right [Music] well of course it lost some power interesting very interesting actually so I would actually have to turn the volume down in order to match the volume the perceived volume rather than the peak volume there right [Music] hmm [Music] that's pretty close [Music] okay so let me do the same to the snare drum okay well you might have got about one decibel there all right let's go back to our drum bus here all right how are we in the pocket [Music] I'm gonna turn on the naughty button [Music] foreign [Music] from my drum bus [Music] now I'm going to do some limiting with this one transparent I don't really need true peak in this case and let's do 2X I'm gonna turn this down [Music] this is about two and a half decibels here there we go [Music] foreign [Music] I'm going to put this back on okay 14. interesting you see that foreign [Music] [Music] around negative four here or plus four [Music] but we're pretty safe without it oh yeah thank you interesting foreign and now we're going to do the master bus it should not have a significant amount of clipping right in fact I can turn the auto off bring this up some look at that [Music] now I'm gonna do just one more decibel full maybe one and a half oh that's too much so right here 0.5 let's see what we get [Music] still that one little area and that's it [Music] of course we've increased the volume a little bit here [Music] let's bring her down just to smidge it mash it up bring it down just a little bit more [Music] let's do a little bit of limiting I'll put this at 4X [Music] nearly a decibel bring this down just a little bit [Music] now to demonstrate this minus one take a look at our meter put that on look at that [Music] we're right here at our k-140 which means we still have 14 decibels of Headroom to go so if we look at our digital scale meter we're right here at 14. it is not moving above that right so now foreign let us do the grand before and after [Music] [Music] here's my final thoughts as a mastering processor you got several converters that have been sampled and put into here to use for clipping the usage of this on individual tracks will vary it really depends on the type of music and the type of signal that you're processing but you can knock out some problematic transient stuff that is just in the way with this till next time

Channel: Yish In Your Ear

Views: 8,317

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Id: cQEsuI6XqMY

Length: 36min 40sec (2200 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 16 2022