Acustica Audio has announced a new suite of Acqua plugins that they say combined vintage stype with modern sound. We have the details.

This is what Acustica say;

“Sunray is a brand new suite of Acqua plugins (available in VST2, VST3, AAX, and AU formats) that faithfully recreates some exceptional units with a vintage styling but a modern sound, handcrafted in the USA by a famous boutique manufacturer of high-quality, professional audio gear mainly based on vacuum tube technology, catering to the recording, post-production, broadcast, and live sound industries.

With Sunray, you get the power of modern sound with a vintage twist.”

Key features

• Hyper 2 technology.

• Numeric Input/Display for main controls.

• High-quality oversampling (up to 16x).

• Resizable GUIs*

*Choose between 3 magnification values (1x - 1.5x - 2x) from the top left ▼SIZE drop-down menu. 

Once the desired size is selected, the plug-in must be removed and re-loaded to apply the changes. This action affects the currently selected plug-in. New instances of the same plug-in will open with this magnification.

In Detail

The Sunray suite includes 3 different plugins: a mono 4-Band Parametric EQ, a hybrid mono dynamic processor, and a preamp module.

Sunray Comp

A tube-based compressor/limiter with its pre-amp stage that combines hand-selected vacuum tubes with high-reliability 990 op-amps in a transformerless signal path. 

This compressor merges the most desirable sonic characteristics of valves with the increased reliability of solid-state devices resulting in an incredibly clean and precise sound with subtle overtones and the warmth characteristic of vacuum-tube technology. 

It offers exceptional versatility and imparts a musical quality that has shaped the sound of countless albums and concerts over the decades.

The sound of this compressor offers a harmonious combination of gentle tube warmth and delicate harmonic tones while preserving a bright, clear, and modern character. 

One of its notable features is its ability to deliver exceptionally fast attack and release times, making it particularly well-suited for vocals and bass.

Even when pushed significantly, the Sunray Comp’s compression remains subtle; suitable attack and release settings can always be found to prevent excessive pumping. 

The resulting sound is truly sublime: wonderfully warm, full, and exquisitely controlled.

Sunray EQ

The Sunray EQ accurately emulates the extraordinary sound of a rare Class A solid-state equalizer, including the microphone preamps and two high/lowpass filters.

It delivers flawlessly pristine analog parametric equalization with an incredibly smooth sound when boosting high frequencies.

This smoothness evokes the characteristics of vintage parametric EQs (to draw a parallel with Acustica’s product line, we could refer to our Scarlet suite), often attributed to its output transformers.

When combined with the exceptional sound of the ‘classic’ preamplifiers, this equalizer offers versatility, precision, and unmatched flexibility.

Sunray Pre

The Sunray Pre encompasses all the preamplification emulations in the suite into one comprehensive plugin. 

It is a ‘hybrid’ plugin, allowing users to select between the circuitry of the Sunray EQ (Class A, discrete and solid-state, plus transformer-coupled designs) or the Sunray COMP (FET and Tube).

Moreover, you can choose between the original Stereo model or the corresponding Mono preamps derived from them, for a total of 6 different preamps based on our ultra-performing Hyper2 technology.

Additionally, each plug-in included in the Sunray suite comes in a 'standard' version and an alternative 'ZL*' version, which operates at *zero latency and is thus suitable for use when tracking (at the cost of extra processing resources).

Technical information & compatibility

• Supported formats: VST2, VST3, AAX, and AU.

• Available sample rates: 44.1, 48, 88.2, and 96 kHz.

• Windows 10 and 11 compatible.

• macOS 10.15 (Catalina) to macOS 13 (Ventura) compatible. 

• Intel, AMD, and ARM compatible.

• Apple Silicon native (Rosetta not supported).

Price and availability

Sunray introductory price: €69 | 37% OFF until June 15, 2023 (reg. price €109) Get it here!

The product is at an introductory period for the first four weeks after release or until the first official version is released; this implies that the product may receive improvements, changes, or fixes available through Aquarius Desktop updates.

Note: Sunray trial version includes 44.1 - 48 - 88.2 - 96 kHz sample rates.

Please remember that trials expire 30 days after authorization, and they strongly recommend not using trial products in commercial sessions or any important projects.