Scarlet MHE-400 (mastering high-end homebrew eq)

[giancarlo]

Here we are.
Make your guess.
This homebrew product will be priced in the 100 eur ballpark, and it was derived by an homebrew version of a famous expensive mastering eq. Choosing components and sampling "from the inside" we have reached even a better product.

Anyway before the end of the year we'll provide also the "big brother", a little more expensive and derived from an original and well serviced unit for nostalgic users. There will be also an upgrade policy. The big brother should be "less perfect", anyway I understand people which wants exactly it.

We are just providing more choices.
The gui is nothing less than amazing.

Disclaimer: we'll publish a trial release and also comparisons with an other famous software emulation of the same product.

This product was built, tested and sampled by Stefano Dall'Ora (stedal) for Acustica. He was so meticulous, he compared each curve to other software emulations looking for bugs.
Actually there will be a new tech for improving its results further, it will implemented in our final product.


Released date should be 24th august
It is a new era for plug-ins, we are raising the bar again!
You cannot have it in the hardware world. You cannot have it in the software world from other developers. If you want it... there is only Acustica!

[spigon]

Might I ask how this product would be consider an improvement over the original unit?

[giancarlo]

stedal will tell you more about it on the hardware side (he replaced several components used in the original project with new and faster ones).
On the software side there are 3 further improvements: it was sampled from the inside, bypassing as many things as possible in order to get the most clean path possible. Than there is nat itself, based on very long sweep tones which reduce the noise further and increase precision a lot. Than there is a new software improvement adopted at fft level which fixes several small issues at the edges of the audible bandwitdh.

If you sum it up you have something which is even better than what you would get sampling the original unit alone. Using a fir filter we have also a clean signal with a beautiful frequency/phase response till niquist and almost alias free. Long kernels reduce ripple but without introducing errors coming from typical IIR implementations (no oversampling needed, no decramp filters, no lowpass filters, no phase issues or approximations...)

Sum it all....


Last but not least. Since all these modifications I was asking if the product was realistically close to the original. So stedal compared it to an other software emulation, and I was amazed. Magnitudo shapes are exactly the same in vst analyzer. I was amazed because the shapes are so damn close, but without IIR artifacts (ie phase issues close to nyquist freq).

[SteDal]

I'd like to add something to what Giancarlo wrote above.

Scarlet is pratically identical to the original hardware as far as frequency curves (for certain aspects, it's even better).

What's different here is the preamp color. Scarlet's pre is extremely clean and transparent, but if you're looking for the sound of an ancient 432 equipped with its custom discrete op-amps, then you'd better wait for the original hardware based Acqua release later on.

IMHO truth and myth are a little mixed up in this department. 432s have been built for decades, now, and they underwent many design changes, mostly with their active components. As technology evolved over the years, new parts where available and others were phased out.

So there isn't just one 432 sound; there are quite a few of them, all of which of very high quality, of course.
But please keep in mind that all they ever wanted to do with the 432 was to build a device which didn't have a sound of its own, except for the equalization process itself.

This is why I believe that Scarlet won't disappoint you!

[Dimzo]

looks interesting.
How does it compare to ivory?

[tumburu]

Finally!

When is the 'original' emulation planned to be released?

[giancarlo]

the original is scheduled before the end of the year

[giancarlo]

looks interesting.
How does it compare to ivory?

good question. Scarlet should be cleaner
Design is similar, but scarlet is the original product which inspired probably the ivory hardware.
We'll put online a trial, so you could compare directly

[Tim Petherick]

Nice!!

Ultra long sweep tones, one of the techniques in silk

[Dimzo]

good question. Scarlet should be cleaner
Design is similar, but scarlet is the original product which inspired probably the ivory hardware.
We'll put online a trial, so you could compare directly

Thanks G, i was assuming that but good to know.
I could use a clean eq and was eyeing for ivory but this looks sweet.
Will try this when it's out.

[spigon]

How will this cleaner approach compare to say a GML 9500 which uses a similar topology?

[kindafishy]

Awesome, guys.

So... what are you guys going to be doing with the hardware you build for sampling? Are you going to sell it? Does then engineer keep it for personal use?

I'm not in the market! Just curious. Seems like there may be some very serious Acustica collectors that may want to get their hands on the hardware at some point.

[giancarlo]

How will this cleaner approach compare to say a GML 9500 which uses a similar topology?

well, we are going to sample a 9500 and compare, but I would say 'yes' on many points. Stefano bypassed as many unuseful stages as possible. When we sample a real 432 or a 9500 we would sample it as unit.
Than there is this design which is incredible

We compared with an other software recreation and we are close to an ideal circuit modeled plugin approach, but with a correct phase and even a debugged frequency response plot. For example a real 432 when you dial +6dB to a specific frequency also the whole curve is slighly shifted for several fractions of dBs (you increase also other unwanted frequencies)

I think we are finally doing something new: a software which is finally superior to both a classic software approach and an existing hardware starting from a specific hardware design. The first would be sterile and will sound like a "plugin" cause the usual iir and phase issues and the complete lacking of harmonic distortion introduced by real world components, the second would include too many mistakes and physical world limitations
You cannot buy it as hardware or software which is not acustica
About the build hardware, it is ugly, we are not interested in selling it but we'll show it during events - ie namm, and its performances are inferior than nebula for the described reasons.


Everything completed with a gorgeous gui and core6 load

[Sheikyearbouti]

It looks like that this could be the future of plug-ins. Design a single hardware unit that does some kind of processing duty amazingly well, than sample it. You just can't get this amount of details and the particular idiosyncrasies if each unit if you were to start and finish with a plug-in only. There is life that comes from every real box. I hope this project turns out to be a successful one.

[jfjer379]

me to really think this is the next step in plugins, really awesome

may i ask how high the hi shelf goes on the Scarlet ?