Acustica Audio The Thing: The First Synth From Acustica Is a JP-8 Emulation and it Sounds GORGEOUS
New features include sub-frequency control, superstereo functionality and effects from Acustica's many other plugins.
3,7 / 5,0 | 
Does the world need another Jupiter-8 plugin emulation? If it’s Acustica Audio The Thing, the answer may be a resounding yes. However…
Acustica Audio The Thing
Amidst all the price wars and chaos of Black Friday, effects plugin company Acustica Audio did something quite unexpected: it dropped a synthesizer plugin. And not just any synthesizer plugin, but an emulation of one of the best synthesizers ever made, the Roland Jupiter-8. I am, of course, talking about Acustica Audio The Thing – and it sounds ridiculously gorgeous.
Acustica’s First Synth Plugin
Acustica Audio The Thing marks Acustica’s first synth plugin. Part of a new series called Marea, which means “tide” in Italian, the forthcoming line of synths will combine analog circuit behavior modeling with Acustica’s usual convolution-based approach, a technology the company calls MUST, or Modular Unified Synthesis Technology. Acustica’s effects sound good, so it stands to reason that its synths will too.
And boy does The Thing ever sound good. Just listen to it in the demo videos embedded in this article. This is one lush instrument. I’m not sure how much is VA and how much is convolution, but whatever Acustica is doing, it’s working.
The Thing Is Actually a Suite
Acustica Audio The Thing is actually a suite of two instruments, THING 8 (TH8) and THING 5 (TH5). THING 8 has, as you have probably already guessed, eight voices, and is the closest to the JP-8. THING 5 has a simplified workflow and five voices, “perfect for capturing ideas quickly without sacrificing quality,” says Acustica Audio.
Looking at THING 8, it offers two VCOs, each with a variety of waveforms plus the famous cross modulation and sync, a non-resonant highpass filter and resonant lowpass filter switchable between 12dB/Oct and 24dB/Oct, an LFO and two envelopes plus an arpeggiator.
THING 5, however, reduces the functionality to the most useful, with a single envelope instead of two and effects immediately available.
Features not present on the original include sub-frequency control, superstereo functionality, age control, an advanced effects section taken from Acustica’s stable of effects plugins including saturation, EQ, chorus, delay, and reverb, and over 500 presets.
Price and Availability
Acustica Audio The Thing looks to be a fun addition to the world of JP-8 emulations. It certainly sounds impressive enough. Although Acustica promises low CPU usage on the product page, some users have complained about it actually being high. Others have mentioned bugs but by far the most complaints have to do with the price. The Thing sells for €229 but it’s on sale for €179 until December 27. Supports VST3, AU and AAX formats.
Hopefully Acustica can address any bugs and CPU issues in future updates. Until then, be sure and try before you buy. Visit the product page below to download.
More Information
- Acustica Audio The Thing product page
- All about Acustica Audio
- All about synthesizers
- All about software
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4 responses to “Acustica Audio The Thing: The First Synth From Acustica Is a JP-8 Emulation and it Sounds GORGEOUS”
More fraud stuff from the worse programmers on the planet. This probably has 347, 000 support files.
Far better than I expected. Honestly, l’d easily say they raised the bar sound wise.
Knowing AA it’s going to have bugs and take over your hard drive.
But it does sound nice.
Now they apply 44% more discount! the THING is now at 100 euro! Enjoy