Acon Digital Acoustica 7 Review – A Better Value for Money iZotope RX?

Acon Digital are back, and after our Multiply Chorus review, they’re back with an even bigger bang.

Having an audio editor that you can rely on during the post-production process is vital. With so many out there, it’s often difficult to cut through the noise and find a program that does everything you need, reliably, and doesn’t mean you’ll have to sell your kidney on the dark web to afford it.

Acoustica is something we hadn’t come across until recently, and we wish we had. It’s pretty much a cheaper version of iZotope RX-8 with a few less features.

We’ve recently been using this to clean up audio files for our new, free foley pack. And, it has been the most useful tool for noise removal, audio-restoration, batch normalisation, limiting, & a tonne more.

How Does Acoustica 7 Sound?

Like with most plugins, the decision you make on a purchase should usually come down to how it sounds.

And, Acoustica, sounds nothing short of amazing. The de-noise, de-clip, de-hum and other audio restoration features, are extremely precise, and do exactly what they say they do.

There are a lot of audio editors, and plugins that don’t compare to Acoustica’s tools. The de-noise is one of the cleanest I’ve heard, and used. And, the algorithms used to separate stems, and detect unwanted hum/background noise are scarily good.

But while I can tell you it’s great, I’d rather just let the examples do the talking.

Audio Examples

De-Hum

De-Noise

De-Click

remix example

Features

• Restoration Suite 2
• Mastering Suite
• 7.1 Surround Sound editing
• Precise spectral editing
• VST, VST3, AAX, AU plugins included 32-bit + 64-bit.
• Full multi-track editing
• Stem isolation tool “remix”
• Built-in audio effects such as reverb, echo etc
• A lot more, see the full list on Acon Digital’s website

Audio Editing in Acoustica 7

Doing simple cuts, volume changes & removing noise are all a dream in Acoustica 7.3. The audio editing window is extremely simple to use, and has a lot of detail and clarity.

Waveform Representation

One of the most important things in audio editors is having an accurate waveform response, so you can zoom in and make cuts accordingly.

If you don’t make cuts when the signal reaches -∞ db, then you’ll have clicking in your signal. Acoustica allows you to see the waveform in extra fine detail, so you can be sure you’re making precise cuts.

Not all audio editors allow you to see the waveform in its true analog shape.

Kill The Noise

In my opinion this is where Acon Digital Acoustica really shines. The algorithms in these plugins are very good at detecting what they’re supposed to, and nipping it in the bud, without really having to touch the controls.

De-noise:

After popping my foley samples in, and messing with a few of these settings, I ended up with really professional and clean audio. I was recording in pretty noise heavy environments (down the beach), with a fairly high gain, and Acoustica handled this easily.

Unlike other noise removal tools, it also didn’t bring in those nasty artefacts as much. Infact, the audio was a lot cleaner.

Acoustica 7 also has more in-depth control over these elements, when compared to its competitors, which is pretty incredible considering the low price tag.

If you’ve got audio with background noise, and you need to clean it up, you can rely on Acoustica 7 to do it.

De-Click

De-click is also surprisingly good. Here’s how it sounded on my recording:

audio example

After using De-Click and spending about 2 minutes changing settings, the click was almost gone.

You can probably already tell just how useful this can be for post-production. It’s amazing for removing pops, and other nasty plosives from your audio.

One interesting use I found, was removing bangs in the background of a foley recordings. If you’ve ever recorded an amazing sound only for something or someone to f*ck it up by making noise, then you’ll understand the pain.

Using De-Click, along with the Spectrogram can completely remove these bangs, and it can save your ‘ruined’ recordings! Hurrahhh!

De-Hum & Dialogue Extraction

I record next to my PC (and it has a pretty loud fan), so De-Hum worked great!

When using the De-Hum, and Dialogue extraction together, after a couple minutes of tweaking, and using the clever emphasis option, the dialogue was crystal clear.

audio preview

These are perfect plugins for anyone wanting to clean up, unwanted background noise, from their recordings.

Spectral Editing for Ninja Like Restoration

If there are some naughty pops that don’t want to leave your recording, the Spectrogram is also great for nipping these in the bud.

It has a lot of easy-to-use selection tools, that give you a precise lens to look through, and edit accordingly.

You can use this to either, sample for interesting sound design, or you can fix your audio.

By simply selecting the culprit in the Spectrogram, holding cntrl, hovering over a different section of audio to replace it with, & hitting ‘process’, your audio will be cleaned like magic.

It works by taking a sample from a section of the audio that’s clean, and replacing the selected areas.

Acoustica 7 For Mastering?

With the Acon Digital’s software, you’ll also get access to their full mastering suite.

This includes:

• A loudness meter with LUFs & LU values,
• A spectrum analyser
• Parametric EQ
• Brickwall limiter
• Compression
• Multi-band compression
• Dithering
• DC Offset removal
• Phono Filter

You can also add 3rd party VST plugins into the mix, with their processing chain module, if Acon Digital’s plugins aren’t enough for you.

It’s a fantastic mastering suite and, for the price, you won’t get much better. When comparing to iZotope’s Ozone, you get a lot more with Acoustica, plus all the audio editing benefits.

It’s an all-in-one audio editor, that you can be damned sure will do the job you need it to.

Acoustica Premium Edition vs Standard Edition

The premium edition comes with Restoration Suite 2, De-Noise, surround editing and the spectrogram mode. Standard comes with part of Resoration Suite 2 (with De-Noise lite), much less control and no audio spectral editing.

Premium is of course the better audio editor, and is definitely worth the extra money. The spectral editing and De-Noise plugin alone will greatly enhance your audio, not to mention the other benefits.

Both premium & standard give you access to Restoration Suite 2, which are Acon Digital’s award winning tools (great for removing unwanted background noise & other artefacts).

With Restoration Suite 2, you get:

• DeNoise 2
• DeHum 2
• DeClick 2
• DeClip 2

These are incredible plugins, they come as VST, VST3, AAX or AU and in 32-bit + 64-bit downloads. This means you can use them inside your DAW, away from the standalone software, if you have a proffered workstation.

Standard comes with a stripped back version of the mastering suite and the restoration suite, it can also only edit in stereo (which is fine if you don’t work in broadcast or film), doesn’t have the spectrogram mode, dialogue removal tools, and is more limited.

You do get the multitrack session view in both, which is pretty great if you don’t have a separate DAW, but if you have a DAW, you’re probably gonna use that.

Premium edition is 100% worth it for these tools if you’re doing serious audio editing, and even if you’re just editing your podcast audio/YouTube audio.

These tools will vastly improve the clarity of your audio, and it’s a huge, huge factor when someone is choosing to watch/listen to your stuff.

Acon Digital Acoustica vs iZotope RX-8

If we were to compare Acoustica premium to iZotope’s RX-8 Advanced, you’d obviously see a huge price difference.

But is iZotope really worth the extra $1.3k when comparing the audio editing functionality?

Well it really entirely depends on what you need your editing suite to do, and also how much money you have to spend.

If you are on a high-end film production or TV, I would personally go for iZotope, simply because it has a much more vast selection of effects.

If you are on a budget, Acoustica does almost exactly the same thing for a fraction of the price of iZotope. If the same features were added (which I’m guessing they will be), Acoustica would wipe the floor with iZotope when it comes to value for money.

I am personally not involved in TV or broadcast, so Acoustica would be the far better option for me. It allows me to clean my dialogue for YouTube, clean my foley samples for the free downloads here, and does an incredible job at it.

For the price, it is the best value for money audio editor on the market. It also comes with mastering options, which aren’t included in certain iZotope packages.

Ultimately the decision is yours, but considering the price tag and the minimal difference in audio editing functionality, I think Acon Digital wins it for me.

Things I’d Love To Be Included in Updates

All in all Acon Digital Acoustic 7.3 is absolutely fantastic, but there could definitely be a few improvements.

I feel like a de-esser tool could be added to make it a bit more of an all in one package for vocals. Although you can add your own plugins in, it would be nice to have an Acon Digital tool to add to the collection here.

I would personally love to see the introduction of de-breath, de-plosive, de-bleed, de-reverb, and a bunch of the other stuff included in RX-8.

But to be totally honest, Acoustica is already extremely good value for money and is going to get you professional sounding recordings, if you take the time to understand how to use it.

What Is Acoustica by Acon Digital?

Acoustica is an audio restoration tool/mini digital audio workstation, that is (for the most part) aimed at TV & Broadcast editors. But despite it being targeted towards TV & Broadcast, it’s an extremely useful tool to have in your collection as even just a bedroom producer.

At it’s core, Acoustica takes a minimalistic approach, with a simple UI, streamlined workflow, & an impressive set of features that would satisfy any professional audio’s hunger for high-quality tools that do the job quickly, and easily.

Whether you just want to clean up your podcast audio, are working on the audio for a TV show, or you’re mastering your tracks – Acoustica does a lot of stuff you’ll be interested in.

The Verdict

Absolutely great piece of audio editing kit from Acon Digital. They continually surprise me with their attention to detail in each plugin. If you’re looking for an audio restoration suite that’s cheap, does an incredible job, and contends with the competition – Acon Digital is a great shout.