The Experts team wondered what we thought people would want to find behind the windows of a dream studio advent calendar. Some of the things we own, some we wish we did. Owned or not, we think any of the things we name in the next 9 days would be a gift to a professional studio owner
Day 16 - Acon Digital Acoustica
Paul Maunder chooses Acon Digital Acoustica.
These days we have lots of choice when it comes to noise reduction software. Everyone has their favourites and we all have opinions on which work best in our own workflows. I’ve been a user of iZotope RX for several years and it does what I need it to do (most of the time). Earlier this year I had the opportunity to try out Acoustica from Acon Digital. Acoustica is an audio editing solution designed for podcast creation, mastering and audio restoration work. In a similar way to iZotope RX, Acoustica consists of a standalone application and a number of plug-ins which can be used directly within a DAW. The standalone application includes spectral editing along with various different audio processing, restoration and noise reduction tools. These include:
Mastering Suite consisting of Equalize 2, Dynamics, Multiband Dynamics, Limit and Dither.
Verberate 2, a natural sounding reverb plug-in
Restoration Suite 2 with four plug-ins for audio restoration: DeNoise 2, DeHum 2, DeClick 2 and DeClip 2.
Extract:Dialogue which automatically reduces background noise in dialogue recordings
DeWind:Dialogue
DeRustle:Dialogue
DeBuzz:Dialogue
DeClick:Dialogue
DePlosive:Dialogue
DeBird, for reducing bird noise effectively and automatically
Transfer, an AAX plug-in that makes audio transfers between Pro Tools and Acoustica a breeze.
Acoustica is available in two editions; Premium Edition which features everything listed above and Standard Edition which is slightly stripped back in terms of the including noise reductions tools. Both versions are excellent value, with Standard costing just £49.90 and the Premium Edition costing £169.90.
I was extremely impressed with the quality of the noise reduction Acoustica is capable of. For the price, it’s amazing what this software can achieve and in some cases, and with certain material, the results are better than those from the equivalent modules in iZotope RX.
Other features include a BS.1770 loudness meter, spectrum analyser, stereo correlation meter and output level meter with true peak indication. There’s also an output level fader and a Processing Chain area where multiple processors can be added for a variety of tasks including dynamic control, time based effects such as reverb, echo and chorus and of course noise reduction.
Both editions of Acoustica represent superb value for money and the Premium Edition even includes multi-channel support up to Dolby Atmos 7.1.2.
It’s always useful to have a variety of different noise reduction solution at your disposal, and Acoustica has become part of my toolset of options for this. For more information, and to see and hear what Acoustica has to offer, take a look at the video below.