MANTIS PWM compressor, the first creation by Acqua/Nebula 3rd party developer SoundDrops, is out!
Introductory price is 65€ (more than 15% off).
MANTIS is part of the MetaWare product line (see below) and models a device that was expressly designed and built with the creation of a N4 library in mind. Its sonic behavior has been especially optimized with a view to produce a program that could replicate all its desiderable musical features, yet without the inevitable drawbacks of the analog realm, such as unwanted distortion, noise, lack of repeatability, etc.
MANTIS PWM compressor is characterized by an extremely wide knee and a uniquely engaging musical action that always seems to 'bounce' along with the signal in an inspiring and complimentary fashion. Mantis can morph from almost invisible all the way to downright sonic abuse. It can act quite fast, since the minimum attack time is 0.1 mSec, still it always seems to mantain a certain musicality with its transparent and forgiving attitude… Unless it is set to “Nuke”, that is. The rightmost position of the Ratio control can produce a negative compression action that in a way reminds the well known All-Buttons-In setting of the 1176-type devices.
MANTIS comes with a streamlined, clear 2D GUI and includes two programs: the regular one, precisely MANTIS, and an external side-chain enabled one, MANTIS_SC. In this case, the sidechain signal must be sent to inputs n. 3 & 4, as is the norm with Acqua/Nebula compressors.
MANTIS started as an experiment just out of technical curiosity, but eventually the way this circuit worked and sounded made it worth of being sampled and offered in a convenient N4 library format.
MANTIS will surely find its place of honor in many mixing and mastering chains.
Commercial version available here.
Fully functioning 30-day trial version available here.
In both links you can find the manual in the download section, at the bottom of the page.
Please note: as is the case with all Acqua plug-ins, also trial and commercial versions of Mantis aren't presently compatible.
If you plan to buy Mantis after testing the trial version, you'll have to manually transfer all your settings to the former from the latter. For this reason it is advisable to:
- buy the commercial version before the trial period expires or
- save a screenshot of your settings (or alternatively write them down).
MetaWare – Augmented Reality Acqua Libraries
MetaWare = “Beyond the Hard/Software”. A series of Acqua/Nebula libraries for N4 by SoundDrops based on an innovative concept. Proprietary hardware processors are specifically conceived, designed and built from the ground up with the creation of N4 libraries in mind.
Great care then is taken during the sampling and deconvolving process. Thanks to Acustica’s innovative technology, each aspect of the device’s behavior (frequency and phase response, harmonic and dynamic action and so on) can be separately sampled and then reassembled in an optimized form. The final outcome is a series of extremely clean and noiseless vectors, as it is easily apparent from the resulting response plots.
This procedure allows the creation of virtual machines that would be plainly impossible (or, at least, extremely unpractical) to build in the real world; a series of consistent and dependable digital processors that yet retain all the great sonic traits of real world analog hardware, down to the tiniest detail.
