TRY THIS PLUGIN FOR HEAVY BASS! | ACQUA - Diamond - Lift 3 Review

VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

Welcome back. Today, we are going to be looking at a new plugin that I think came out this week. It's been out before, it's called the Lift of by Acustica plugin. Now, I love Acustica plugin they always sound pretty good. So, this one has caught my attention. Also it's by a mix mastering engineer called Luca Pretolesi. I think that's how you say his name. So, that tweaks my radar. It's an all in one. They did the Lift 1 and Lift 2. This is now the Lift 3 with a few other little saucy bits on it. So, let's dive into the computer. Let's have a little look at it. Let's listen and see what we reckon. So, this is the Studio DMI box. It's supposed to present their sound in their room.

From the look of it. I can see that they use SPL desk, Maselec gear kind of various stuff. So, I guess this an accumulation of that sound across different things. Let's go into what it actually does. It's all in one unit. So you can have, there's a master version and a mixed version. And, I'm guessing the master version is a little bit more stepped, probably not as wide. You've probably got +5 rather than +10 things like that. You've got an input output. That's quite standard. There's a high pass and a low pass filter. There's a saturation here. This is quite cool. As you click the saturation, it turns up, which is nice. It's not too cluttered as an interface. That's really cool. And that's just 0 to 100 mix of how much you're mixing in.

There's an EQ section here with the filters where you can select them across the top. On this master version, it does plus +4 and a high shelf and +4 in the lows. You can see that. Obviously, if you've got it to the left here, it's starting a bit lower down probably about 1K, and then a little bit higher probably in the midst. And then this one here is more of an air band. And then, as you get down here, it's the same bit in reverse. So this, is like lifting a lot of the low end. And then, it gets lower as you go. So, then you're just lifting subs if you're right to the lefthand side. Then in the center here, we've got a bypass button, which as I've played with this, is a bit annoying because, you'll see in a minute, stops the plugin.

So what happen is,  it's very hard to hear a good A/B, but you'll hear what happens there in a minute. There's probably a technical reason for that, because I'm sure they would want it so that it clips straight in and out. Side amount, so this is a spreader,  with this obviously the more you spread it out, the wider it gets, and then the more mono it gets when you are using it there. It's basically taking any signal that's in the sides, and then pulling it out even further. That could probably get quite phasy. For me, I like a lot more thing on an EQ. I'll link above to a video where I talk about how to make, how to do this. But very handy to have that there. Just watch out for phase issues, things sounding a little bit too weird as you start using it too much, you can really overuse those buttons.

Then there's a compressor threshold obviously does what it does. Makeup does what it does. Now I think this basically gets really aggressive, when you get to 4 and they're preset attack and release time. So, really you've got to quite gentle on the one and then starts getting quite full on with 4. So this is gonna be very much dependent on how much you're driving the compressor. It's also gonna be down to the sound that you want. So this is going to really dictate that. So this, will be a suck it and see thing where, okay, let's put loads of pressure in play around with the threshold. You're gonna find things that work for different tracks. And, you can obviously turn that off there too.

Then we get into this section again, this is like the saturation where when you clip it on a clipper appears. And so, we have four different modes of clipper here. Again, similar to this mode here, different styles to the attack and release. So again, this is a blend, you can mix in how much clipping you want to do. Now clippers is just gonna be smoothing off the top rather than actually pulling the sound up as a limiter would do more. So, that's the blend there. So, you can blend how much clipping you're doing. There's also a mid button here. And so, what that's doing is it's just clipping the mids. That can be quite a cool effect to you. So I like that.    I think that, I'll have a play with that and see how that sounds. I would've liked to have seen some metering on the outputs. I don't know, if this is what this is here. I'll have to play with it. This might be the in and out.

There's another button, which I did forget nearly, which is this RTG, which is like a rooting thing. So this, is so that you can have the EQ before the compressor or compressor before and saturation after that. So, I haven't looked up what that it does, but again, that's gonna be using your ears which one you like? Like 1, 2, 3 or 4, because I've got a dangerous liaison, which does a similar thing. So, I can switch things around and reverse stuff, which is, I think that studio DMI have as well. So, that's emulating that I guess, so that you can switch things before and after. You usually have one set up that you use all the time, but it can be good just to have a quick flip and see how it sound.

So that could be really cool just to sometimes you do get different variants of sound by having EQ after the compressor on some tracks. You can open up the sound a bit more on the top end, where it might have clamped it down a bit too much. And then the same, you might want to drive some low end into the compressor. So that would be quite nice. So let's go into it. Let's have a play with the different sections, and then we can do a general setup. So let's just have, let's try and turn all this off so that we can just listen to the saturator first and the high and low pass. Let's see what they sound like. (Music playing).

It's actually quite nice. It goes more roundy, warmer sound. It's very subtle. So that's quite good. It's not just a massive over the top. I think this must be gain dependent. So, they've obviously adjusted the gain as you're putting the saturation in. So that it doesn't fool you into adding just loads of level, and then suddenly you think it's better. So that's a nice touch that they've done there. Because it just feels to me like it's just bringing in some really nice harmonics. So that's pretty cool. Now, I've with the high and low pass, they're not massively dramatic. So, I don't think they'll be worthless playing with those won't waste time on that. What they do, they're chopping the tops off and the bottoms, but they're quite a long slope. So, it's not like it's really drastic. So they're just smoothing off. So it's just turn the saturator off. Let's listen to the EQ. I'll put it on the more dramatic EQ setting, so that we can really hear what's going on. (Music playing).

So the top end one, the high shelf thinks a little bit crispy. I'm not massively a fan of that, but the low end one was amazing. That sounded great. That could just be this track that's doing that. You might be able to use the air band on this quite nicely. But that low shelf was really cool. Where it was really wide, that just added a really nice warm sound to the low end. So I really like that. That's really nice, low shelf. That's definitely worth looking at. The high shelf…Let's listen to the stereo width, see what's happening there. (Music playing).

So that's pretty cool. It's too much when it's on a 100% percent there. I reckon around here. Now this reminds me very much of the Maselec 1 where it spreads it like that. And, I always like this in conjunction with an elliptical filter on the low end. So that I could, just be controlling the more, where I wanted to control. I have much more control if I was monitoring the bass and then spreading the tops. So if you're watching, Acustica and Luca. If you can bang a elliptical filter on this for Lift off 4, I can that be pretty cool. I like that. That's pretty good. It's just be very careful with that. Because like I say, you can go mental, but on a mix bus, it might work quite nicely. So that's pretty nice. Okay. Let's now try the compressor quickly. (music playing). Let's go. Not too extreme. (Music playing).

That's quite nice. I like that. That's pretty good. I liked the number one there for some reason. I don't what that's doing. I'm sure if you look in the manual, it'll tell you. One seemed better to me, just for what I'd want do with it where I'm just tickling it, just to glue it a little bit. Again this would be quite good as a little extra. If there was some low pass filter on there just to  lose the low end and just tuck in or one that reversed that up so that you could just do the low end. That'd be nice. But, I think we're getting into a few more features, too many features there. I like that. That's pretty good. So, I reckon with that and the thing. I'm liking this, pretty smart. Let's just try the clipper. (Music playing).

I like that. That sounds really good. It sounds really smooth, but it doesn't sound like it's lamping the sound down too much, which is quite nice. I'm getting level, but without really  pulling it down, which a lot of clippers can do. Let's just do it in mid mode. So this is just dealing with the mids. Let's see what's going on there. (Music playing).

So that's excellent. Because it's just doing the mid rather than the sides. It's really good. It's a really nice idea. I like that a lot. It sounds super present then. It's really nice. It really just timing a lot. That's going on there and leaving this to do its thing. So like that a lot. Now, if you like this video a lot, then make sure you click the thumbs up. Now, I'm gonna play through the song. I'm gonna mess around with it, whilst I'm playing through. So, you can hear what's going on and I'll keep A/B-ing so that you can hear,  how it's sounding. But, it's a big thumbs up for me. I like this. I don't usually like all in one plugins because they can be quite annoying.  I wanted to have a bit more control. But I really like the low shelf. 

That was cool. I really like the compressor. That was nice. A punchy, and I like this clipper with the mids. So are we and also saturation was good, wasn't it? So, I'm gonna play around it a bit more. See how, I can find it usually with these things. Usually with these things, you find one thing that works and then you can use that for certain stuff. And it's like, you might have loads of tools, but there might be one or two things that are really useful. So, I'm gonna carry on having a play. Let's just download it. It's on offer at the moment. I think for 79, is it $79. It is at the moment rather than 149. 47% discount. So, get that. You can go here to Acustica, Diamond Lift 3. So, check that out. Let's have a play with it now. (Music playing).