Acustica Audio offer up a dash of ‘Lime’ for your mix
Looking for that 'British' sound when mixing in the box?
In October we saw the release of ‘SAND FAB4‘ from Acustica Audio, which was a bundle of their Sand plug-ins. As well as the complete channel strip option, the SSL-inspired FAB4 package enables users to apply single instances of each module within a mix. While Lime appears to be a very similar story, it appears to be modelling gear by that other famous British console manufacturer, Neve.
Acustica Audio Lime Plug-in
Now, this will get the enthusiasts excited. In my opinion, Acustica are pushing the boundaries of what’s sonically possible with software plug-ins. Like many, I’ve been watching them closely. As a direct result of striving for better sonics, however, the processing power their plug-ins require are beyond what most machines offer today. On top of that, their plug-ins haven’t exactly been trouble-free. Suffering from glitches, installation problems and bugs, users have been reluctant to use Acustica plugs on their mixes.
However, we also saw the introduction of their new CORE9 engine this year and Acustica are promising that Lime is their “most advanced product for mixing purposes to date”. Users are starting to report better performance from this new addition, and the comments about its sound are very encouraging indeed.
I haven’t tried Lime yet, partly because I’ve been put-off by the frustrating past performance of Acustica plug-ins. However, reading in on some forums suggests that things might be changing. Not only is the efficiency of these plug-ins apparently improving, but there seem to be fewer bugs too. Quite an interesting feature of both SAND FAB4 and Lime is the ability to use any of the modules from these channel strip emulations as separate plug-ins. This reduces the CPU power needed. Lime includes the previously released Lime Crazy88, which are effectively the individual modules that make up the new complete Lime channel strip. With the complete channel strip, there are 14 routing configurations and some additional pre-amp emulations added.
The thought of being able to mix ‘in-the-box’ with the tools and sound of a Neve console is really exciting. Add to that the sonics that Acustica say they are offering and the result is a product I can’t wait to try. Let’s just hope that the plug-ins are efficient and stable enough that you could run one across each channel of your mix.
More Information
Acustica are currently running an introductory offer of 159.20 EUR, after which the price will rise to 199 EUR. That’s a good deal considering how much is included in this package. Just try the demo first to see how well it performs on your system. For more information and to download Lime, visit the webpage.
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