Acustica Audio have released Graphite, a fully endorsed emulation of the GR Bass One head in combination with their AT 212 carbon fibre bass cabinet. The first plug-in dedicated to bassists to have been developed using their Acqua technology, Acustica say that Graphite is one of the most modern sounding bass emulations available on the market today.
Reproducing the layout of the hardware GR One solid-state head, Graphite’s GUI features a gain control followed by a semi-parametric four-band equaliser section, a DI signal level and a master output control. In addition to the equaliser’s low- and high-shelf controls, each of the two mid bands allow users to choose between three central frequencies, whilst two switchable ‘deep’ and ‘bright’ filters offer some additional tonal options.
The GR Bass AT 212 cabinet is constructed from carbon fibre rather than wood, and Acustica say that a careful design, sampling and optimisation process has allowed them to capture all of the cabinet’s tonal shades. The sound was captured with two different microphone setups (utilising four microphones) which can be used individually or in pairs, the plug-in offers freely adjustable cabinet settings and microphone management, closely emulating a real recording session. Contributions to the process were made by the GR Bass team themselves, and Acustica say that the resulting sound is as close to the original as possible.
Graphite comes in two versions: a standard version, and an alternative ‘ZL’ (zero latency) version which has been optimised for use when tracking at the cost of requiring extra processing resources. Available in the VST2, VST3, AU and AAX formats, the plug-in is compatible with Windows 10, and also with Apple M1 computers running macOS Monterey.
Graphite is available now. Acustica are offering an introductory price of €69 until 16 August 2022, after which the price will rise to €99.
