Waves Maserati ACG Acoustic Guitar Designer

The Waves Signature Series plug-ins are designed to be simple to use. They are simple to install and simple to authorize. They are almost 'dummy-proof' in the sense that as soon as you load them up in your session, your mix will mix will improve. There aren't a lot of controls to worry about, which is a good thing. There are plenty of other plug-ins on the market with a lot of controls. I like having option to pull up a plug-in and not have to worry about parameters.
I own all the signature series plug-in bundles (Maserati, CLA, JJP, Kramer). Of all the individual plug-ins in all the bundles, I think this particular plug-in is the most useful and most unique. I would recommend the Maserati bundle just for this plug-in alone.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

The plug-in has one main function: make an acoustic guitar sound better. It does this in three ways. First, it adds an eq filter curve tuned for an acoustic guitar. To my ears, the plug-in rolls off the low-end booming of an acoustic guitar. This really helps when the acoustic guitar is in a mix with other instruments like drums and bass guitar. The plug-in also adds some nice top-end frequencies to help the instrument cut through. The 'eq' controls are simple and are set up for appropriate frequency ranges.
Second, the plug-in controls the dynamics of the acoustic guitar signal. I assume it does this with some kind of compression that works well for an acoustic guitar. Whatever it is, it makes the acoustic guitar loud, and make it cut through a mix.
Third, the plug-in has some great sounding reverb/delay to add to the signal. This adds some tasteful effects to help an acoustic guitar fill a 'perceptual' space.

OVERALL OPINION

The Waves Maserati Signature Series Acoustic plug-in is part of the Maserati bundle. As the name suggests, it is fine-tuned for processing the recordings of an acoustic guitar. This plug-in is very unique in the sense that none of the other signature series plug-ins have a specific 'acoustic' guitar plug-in. Although, there are no other 'acoustic specific' plug-ins to compare it to, the Maserati Acoustic plug-in stands out as an exceptional processor. It really makes the recording of an acoustic guitar sound better, and also sit well in a mix. There are just enough controls to make the plug-in flexible, but not too many controls to make the plug-in confusing and complicated. In fact, this plug-in is almost like to separate acoustic guitar processors in one. The 'ACG1' and 'ACG2' settings sound noticeably different, which increases the usefulness of the plug-in for different sounding guitars and different sounding sounds.

I didn't have any problems with installing and getting the Waves Maserati ACG up and running. I had no compatibility issues with my machine and the configuration of the plug-in is easy to follow and manipulate. It is laid out fairly simple with a section for a compressor, a limiter and a filter. I had no use for a manual as this plug-in is easy enough to use without one.


SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

I am running the Waves Maserati ACG with a Mac Book Pro that has a 2.2 Ghz processor and 4 GB of RAM. I am running this plug-in in Pro Tools LE 7.4 with a Digi 002 rack audio interface. I've never had a problem running this plug-in with this configuration and I am able to run a few of these at once.


OVERALL OPINION

I've been using the Waves Maserati ACG for about three years and it is one of my favorite compressor plug-ins for a number of reasons. The first reason is its overall sound quality. It really has a bit of vintage sound that is warm and full. It sounds great on everything from vocals to guitars and drums. The second major reason is the plug-in's versatility. It isn't just a strict compressor - it has a section for limiting and filtering as well, both of which prove to be extremely handy. It is this versatility which makes it great for applications of all kinds. It also has a nice metering system. I would probably compare this plug-in to Smack, and while I love Smack as well, this plug-in is cheaper and has more options. The sound quality of both is great, but the extremely cheap price of the URS plug-in makes it my choice. I've become of big fan of not only the 1975 Classic Compressor, but a number of Waves plug-ins! This is a must try!

Tony Maserati is a producer/music engineer who has worked on everything from Tupac to Mariah Carey. He's one of the top producers in this style of music, so it's no surprise he got his own special plugins. One problem that a lot of people face is recording a very solid acoustic guitar tone. This plugin is there to assist those looking to help gain that sparkle and depth without spending hours and hours tweaking the mic position. The plugin itself features knobs for hi, mid, punch, sensitivity, fx, excite, dry/wet, pre-delay and output. There are two buttons to select between two different settings, and there's also a switch to change the meter output.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

I've been using the Mercury bundle for half a year or so now, and it's been awesome. I've never experienced a single crash or issue with any of these plugins, including this one. No matter how many plugins I tend to load, my machine still keeps chugging along. The plugin itself is cross platform compatible, so nearly anybody can use this on his or her favorite machine. Personally, I'm a Mac user, so I'm using OS X on a Mac Pro with Logic Pro. There is one issue that I've been having, however. For the OS X users out there, this plugin is a 32 bit plugin. That means that your DAW will need to utilize a special bridge application for this to work inside your 64 bit DAW. It's not a huge deal, but it can be a bit of a pain, depending on how your particular DAW handles the 32 bit conversion.

OVERALL OPINION

Acoustic guitar can be a real pain to record because of how sensitive it can be to the most minute settings. This plugin definitely helps deliver a better tone without having to spend hour and hours behind a mic, redoing takes and trying to get them perfect. In fact, it's basically a sort of compressor with effects in a way. I recommend anybody who is recording acoustic guitars to check this plugin out. It helped me quite a bit during certain takes.

The Waves Ltd. Maserati ACG Acoustic Guitar Designer is a unique plug-in that is part of the Tony Maserati Collection of plug-ins from Waves and designed in tandem with legendary producer Tony Maserati. You can only get this plug-in and the others in the bundle within this collection. The ACG in particular is a really cool plug-in, as it's unlike any that I've really seen out there. I installed the plug-in in the full Waves Complete bundle, so I didn't need to install this plug-in individually. However, the whole process was easy enough where it wasn't even worth thinking about a second time. Learning the plug-in's interface isn't all that difficult, but there are a decent amount of parameters and settings to be aware of. The plug-in essentially has equalizer, dynamic processing, and some other controls as well. The specific parameters includes are for sensitivity, punch, mid and high EQ bands, output level, excite, dry/wet, predelay, FX, and two separate modes, one of which has a bit more of a compression level. I haven't had a need to look at the manual for this plug-in, so I can't speak to it's make up.

SUITABILITY/PERFORMANCE

As far as performance goes, I've yet to have any issues with the Waves Ltd. Maserati ACG Acoustic Guitar Designer. I'm running it in Pro Tools LE 8 that I run with a Digi 002R audio interface, and the computer I use is a Mac Book Pro lap top consisting of 4 GB of RAM and a 2.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor. I monitor with a set of Adam A7's as well. This system has definitely been stable enough to support my use of the Waves Maserati ACG plug-in, which has to date only been one or two instances at a time within a single session. It hasn't slowed my system down at all, but I've never needed to run more than a few at once...

OVERALL OPINION

I'm a big fan of the plug-ins in the Waves Ltd. Maserati bundle, and the ACG Acoustic Guitar Designer is one of my favorites in the bunch. I've used it mostly on a few sessions for a live recording session series that I've been apart of, so it was on an acoustic guitar that was being played live in the room with the other players. It has been perfect for this application, as it helps the guitar to cut through a mix, and when used in tandem with equalization, you can do a pretty good job of cutting down bleed from other instruments as well. In the future I'd like to use it more for mixing records with isolated instruments, as I think it will work well across the board. The whole Waves Tony Maserati bundle is worth looking at if you've got an interest in this one.