Tommy Byrnes

If you have an Apollo this is a great plugin. I track electric guitars through it with the Unison preamps and it's amazing. I then put it on the guitar track in my DAW. Tracking and mixing through the same console. It ain't subtle. If you need a scalpel this is a spoon. It's a bucket of paint and that's why I love it. This is a top 5 UAD plugin for me.

It's also useful on other things besides vocals. I use it on electric guitars often because of the three layers of parallel compression and the de-ess can tame some of the harshnes that can be present.

This is a great plugin! https://www.musikhack.com/

I found Sound City to be very CPU intensive, though I thought it sounded good. It taxed my machine during regular production after only a couple of instances. I LOVE Fame and use it in every production. The plates, chamber and the iso booths in it are also really great. It's the sound of fairly small rooms, which I prefer for ambience. I put an instance on each of my instrument busses, choose a room placement setting, make a few adjustments and I'm in a great sounding room. I use Sound City as well, more for a larger, rock-style sound. It's plates and booths are also fantastic.

I demoed this a month ago and although I liked it the cpu hit was pretty extensive so I chose not to get it.

It's interesting that the UAD Apollo version has a different look than the UADx. Many more controls and also includes the calibration tone generator.

Version 1.6.1 June 4, 2024 Fixed Resolved an issue that could cause Export Mixdown to fail when deactivated tracks were selected for export Significantly decreased the memory usage of LUNA Poly and LUNA Razor Blade Warp algorithms Resolved an issue that could cause some Native Instruments plug-ins to crash Windows LUNA when instantiating ASIO device channels now show correctly on the Settings > I/O SETTINGS screen on Windows Resolved an issue that occurred in Windows LUNA when importing audio from an exFAT formatted drive Resolved a crash that could occur during offline mixdown on Windows Resolved a repeated "Driver_Windows_MidiIO" issue that could occur when launching LUNA on Windows The close button location for plug-in floating windows has been corrected on Windows

There's no way I would have considered this if not for using it as a Unison insert in Apollo. I'm pretty much done with getting the UAD plugins as I have all the ones I want and use. The only exception has been for new pres/strips that are Unison enabled. This is a good one, IMO. I just tracked stereo acoustic guitar XY'd and used it the way I used to use the LA-610, with the 610 pre, no EQ and light comp with the LA and about 3-7 dB of gain reduction. Sounds wicked good; to my ears it behaves like the hardware.

I sold my LA-610 8 years ago to buy a firewire Apollo 8, figuring I'd have the 610B preamp and an LA2A x 4 with the Unison pres. It never quite felt the same. Close, but the hardware gave tracks a kind of weight the plugins didn't. Close though, so I was and still am happy with that trade. I demoed this new plugin and I have to say it's really, really close to the hardware. I haven't gone back and looked at some old call-back sheets from the hardware to compare (I will as soon as I have some time) but it works like I thought it would in a quick test. It's $49 for me so I grabbed it. I loved the LA-610 on acoustic guitar and wind instruments and I have an acoustic session coming up so I'll put the plugin through its paces.

The initial VST scan took forever but after it opens in about 10 seconds.

I've been playing around with it a bit and I like it. I'm sort of used to the layout as it's similar to the UAD console. The MIDI implementation is not very elegant but it's fun to track audio. If you have an newer Apollo (I have an old firewire Apollo that won't integrate with Luna as it's Thunderbolt only) it's a pretty seamless ecosystem to work in, I would think. I could see me using this more if I had a Thunderbolt Apollo and was tracking bigger live projects than most of my clients are recording. Lots of stuff I haven't figured out how to do yet, like multi-outs for VSTIs but I find it easier to get around in than MixBus, which I keep upgrading and never use. This will not replace CbB/Sonar as my main DAW. After all the years with it it's all now just muscle memory and I can't imagine working without it. But Luna is kinda fun.

Thanks, Aaron. I'm intrigued by the concept.

Aaron, I still just can't quite wrap my head around this compressor. I've had it since the inital release but its operation is not intuitive to me. It would be great if you would make a tutorial video.

I was thinking about this and searched around to see if the subject was already covered. Has this been discussed? Most other major DAWs are.

Yep, that's what I had to do.

I love the rooms, especially Studio 2 for drums but the secret weapons are the plates, the chambers and the booths.

I did a reinstall of TRacks and now it's there.

I grabbed it but I don't think it has a standalone vst. I've only been able to run it inside TRacks. Am I missing something?

Wouldn't that require a monitor controller as well as the Studio box? That may be an added expense some folks may not want. It only has one ST I/O. I would think you'd have to run mains out to the box and then to a controller to switch between different speakers. Also, you would then have to open the software to switch profiles. A bit clunky for a multi-monitor setup. A system-wide software solution is a more elegant solution, I think. I still think Arc Studio is a great idea for a one monitor pair setup. Perfect for a little workstation rig.

That's how I do it, sort of. All tracks and AUXs come into the SubMix, where all the bus processing is. That feeds the Master, which has meters and HP sends (after 2-bus effects, before correction), which feeds the ARC bus, where the correction plugins are. That outputs to my mains. When exporting, I just turn off the FX bin on the ARC bus.

Turning off room correction before bounce, for me, is just muscle memory. It's like forgetting to hit the record button and the artist wants to murder me after missing a perfect take. Lesson learned quickly! I think the Studio box is a good solution for studios with one set of monitors and an interface with comparable A/D/A specs. For me, it's not a viable option as I have multiple monitors and a live room with listen-back speakers. I use an Audient Nero as my central monitor station and it's one of the best studio purchases I've ever made. Amazing little box, really. I also bought the RME UFX3, in part, because of the converters. It sounds amazing. For me, I think the box would be a downgrade. I'm not sure I'll upgrade to ARC4, personally. Though I have both, I prefer Sonarworks to ARC3 in my studio as I think it gives me a more accurate picture of the low end in my room. And, with the cans profiles I can use it with cue mixes. I just have to remember not to be an idiot and turn off the correction!

I know there are Virtual channels in Console. Maybe there's a way to do it using them?

Do you have an interface with loopback? Although I haven't tried it I imagine it would work. I have a MOTU M2 with loopback so now I'm wondering if it would work with it as well. I don't have time today but I'll give it a bash and report back.

I just tried it and it works great with Sonarworks. I don't have a current calibration profile for ARC3 so it wouldn't load but it works as expected with Sonarworks. TotalMix lets me route anything to anything so I use an unused MADI I/O with loopback.

Thanks, Jonathan!