Acustica Audio Sienna
What can the dynamic convolution experts bring to the world of headphone monitoring?
I use a lot of Acustica’s ‘dynamic convolution’ plug‑ins, but my interest was piqued when they told me of their plans to launch a filter‑based headphone correction system with dynamic convolution emulations of monitor speakers in real studio control rooms. Called Sienna, this suite of four related plug‑ins (AAX, VST 2 and 3 and AU, Mac OS 10.9 onwards and Windows 64‑bit) and two optional expansion libraries is now available and I’ve been testing it for a few months. Download and installation is courtesy of Acustica’s Aquarius app but, curiously, you must find the product listing on the web rather than the desktop version of Aquarius to download the manuals, which I consider essential reading.
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NUGEN Audio Paragon
Have you ever wished convolution reverbs could be a little more malleable?
If the name Paragon sounds familiar, it might be because you read Sam Inglis’ article in SOS November 2020 (https://sosm.ag/Paragon) about the genesis of this NUGEN Audio plug‑in. And if you haven’t read that article yet, I’d urge you to do so before reading this review, as Paragon is no ‘ordinary’ reverb plug‑in and Sam’s article provides helpful background to its development and underlying technology.
As many other reverbs are now, this one is based on convolution. But, while practical convolution reverbs have been around for over 20 years now, Paragon is no ordinary convolution reverb either. Based on groundbreaking research and three years of intensive development by Dr Jez Wells of the University of York and NUGEN’s own software geniuses, Paragon employs additive resynthesized impulse responses. This is a highly innovative technology which Sam explains well in hi