Black - Volume D is an additional Volume for Black.
IMPORTANT: It is mandatory that Black be installed on your computer for the additional volumes to be used.
Make sure you have installed and authorised the Black FREE player through the Aquarius Desktop application.
Black is an Acqua plugin suite made of two FREE players that focus heavily on Gain Staging:
the standard version (BLACK) and a pro-oriented version (BLACK GURU). Both plugins are available in the following formats: VST, VST3, AAX, and AU.
When designing Black we had in mind to offer you two simple and easy to use players that would bring to life our preamp emulations and at the same time handle filtering and saturation intuitively.
Black will give you the best tools for gain staging in the digital domain by easily finding the best gain levels possible while keeping the source in the optimal range and distortion levels under control.
Black includes:
1 - Black: FREE player - standard version, which includes a default emulation bank ('Navy Geranium').
2 - Black Guru: FREE player - pro-oriented version, which includes advanced featuring as additional fine-tuning controls, it also includes the default emulation bank ('Navy Geranium').
The basic concept behind BLACK is to re-create in the digital domain that warm and tone rich feeling that an analog setup is capable of delivering.
Samples and recordings are usually distributed with 0dBFS while user set processors require an operational level of around -18dBFS.
So as per any analog mixer, prior to mixing a take, it is quite important to set a correct amount of pre-amplification to your signal since the rest of the chain depends on it.
So, with that said you should consider Black as the first plugin suite to add to the channels of your DAW: just set the Input signal level using both the meters and the overflow led.
By increasing the input gain you will also affect harmonic distortion, just like on a real mixer.
Then you should use the filters to eliminate any rumble and useless content in the top end and then fiddle with the different pre-amplifications until you find the one you like most, that adds the best coloring to your source.
By taking advantage of the numerous emulations you will be able to recreate that non-linearity which is characteristic of those deep and open mixes, just like on a real analog piece of equipment.
Thanks to the contribution of the sound engineer and producer Alex Trecarichi (www.alextrecarichi.it), who is an invaluable collaborator of Acusticaudio, and has been deeply involved in the production of this project, the Acustica team are very proud to release this high-performance yet easy-to-use plugin suite.
IMPORTANT: The Black plugin suite, due to the way it is designed and is used (to achieve good gain staging), does not follow the usual Acustica convention of using an input level of -18 dBFS = 0 dBu.
In order to understand what your optimum level is, please use the overflow led and meter indicators.
Black Volume D includes 10 different emulations of pre-amplifications of vintage and modern consoles for a total value of over 100K.
NOTE:
- In order to facilitate the understanding of each emulation, when possible, we have chosen compound names that include a clear reference to the released Acqua plugin. This should aid in the identification of the original sampled unit.
- None of the preamp emulations in Black's 'Additional Volumes' are part of an already released product, so they are samples of different hardware models than those in the plugin suites currently released by Acustica.
What you get
1) Forsythia ES400
2) Taupe - Japanese Tea M600
3) Japanese Anemone Elite
4) Alcea & Hollyhock S8
5) Camel - Tatsoi
6) Green - Rose 8304
7) Dahlia IV
8) Blond - Artemisia 3800
9) Blond - Sutera Starlight
10) Amethyst - Hyacinth 98
For further information and explanations of each emulation, please take a look at the Black User's manual.
HOW TO TRY A PLUGIN (TRIAL MODE):
For details about the installation/authorization process, please refer to this page.
Technical Specs
All other trademarks and trade names mentioned on this page are used for identification purposes only and are properties of their respective owners. The product is at an introductory period for the first four weeks after release or until the first official version is released; this implies that the product may receive improvements, changes, or fixes available through Aquarius Desktop updates during that time.
