Favorite plug ins, worth buying 🙂

[rew]

I try to keep my plugin library small because I’ve gone overboard with freebies in the past and I end up with a morass of options that hampers actually creating.

The Soundtoys suite and the Valhalla reverbs (and the delay) now constitute like 90% of my plugin usage but I’d like to mention the Fielding DSP Reviver, which as best I can tell hasn’t been mentioned here.

$29 and precise control over 2nd and 3rd order harmonics. It’s really simple and makes almost anything sound better.

[mateo]

Puremagnetik is having a sale right now and lots of interesting looking plugins

Puremagnetik | Free Ableton Live Packs, Kontakt Instruments & More

[addamm]

I would love to hear if anyone has recommendations on the puremagnetik effect plugins (I know there are already a couple upthread). Currently considering Eidolon and Pastfabric but really wondering how Balloon stacks up against other tape emulator and lofi plugins - or if it’s something more unique. I’m not really looking to do anything specific with any of them, though am inclined to avoid anything that touts “glitchiness” as a feature (but maybe I just need persuasion!).

[healthylives]

I have Pastfabric, it’s very unique, as are most of their plugins. Would definitely recommend for $10!

Edit: You can also pick up some ‘free’ puremagnetik plugins through $1 digital bandcamp sales. Highly recommend!

[bradfromraleigh]

I was pretty stoked to hear about the new UA 1084 Unison preamp plugin. I purchased right away and paid the not so great sale price of $149.

As a Unison preamp, it sounds fantastic. Its definitely going to be a go-to for me. Since I already own the Studer A800 plugin and can demo the Neve summing extension for Luna, this is quite the high-end, old-school recording emulation. A dream for acoustic guitars. One of my all-time favorite albums, Time (The Revelator), was recorded with vintage tube mics and 1084 preamps through a Neve BCM-10, straight to 2" tape on a Studer machine.

[tslesicki]

Check out the Waverunner one: https://www.waverunneraudio.com/shop/rhodes-73/

[mattlowery]

That sounds great, and you can’t beat 29 bucks. Thanks!

[LLK]

Sean Costello from Valhalla DSP just released a new plugin, and it’s definitely worth buying since it’s free :

https://valhalladsp.com/shop/reverb/valhalla-supermassive/

[hermbot]

Been playing it for for a little bit, this is incredible. There are some wonderful presets, and then playing with the different Modes can change them completely. Another hit!

Here are some blog posts about it:
https://valhalladsp.com/category/valhallasupermassive/

[nkozi]

Sean Costello is working up to having the rights to my first-born child and I’m not exactly mad about it.

I can’t believe this dude released a reverb (?) this insanely powerful for free.

[Starthief]

I haven’t even listened to it yet, I’m just reading the blog, and I already suspect it might become my favorite Valhalla reverb thing that isn’t ValhallaDelay.

[LLK]

Even James Blake is vouching for it, you’re not alone, we’re all thankful Sean is there.

[hnrrr]

venom - a spectral manipulation tool. done by a friend.
(i find it more useful than other stuff by that company )

Venom | W. A. Production

[veil_s]

I haven’t had much time to play with it yet as we’re deep into programming/recording/sound designing a new thing after just getting the cycles update off to NI. Will have to look into soft cut as haven’t heard of it, but cheat codes was something I thought that looked super cool so will definitely have a play with that.

P.s I had been on here for quite a while, mostly lurking but with a few posts as there’s so much knowledge and cool ideas on here. Got booted off and my account history wiped as I started a thread about cycles and admins thought I was just spamming

Some clips of the new thing below as well

SLATE + ASH

SLATE + ASH

[vytis]

I’ve been mixing feature films and sound design for the last 15 years so plug-ins are my daily life. Here are some of my highlights:

Mixing:
Izotope Neutron Advanced covers almost every mixing situation. Neutron dynamic EQ is excellent - it’s an EQ, a de-esser, a pseudo multiband dynamics tool… But Sculptor is useful for acoustic and electronic sources. If you don’t mind the interface, Fabfilter Pro Q is also great, so are DMG Audio’s offerings. EQuality in particular. Waves Abbey Road stuff is good.

Reverbs, Delays and Multi-FX:
Valhalla DSP as has been said here multiple times. Exponential Audio reverbs are excellent as is their Excalibur sound mangling tool (currently on sale I think). Soundtoys - especially Echoboy, Crystalizer and PrimalTap. Eventide have some cool effects too.

Synths:
TAL Juno and SH-101 emulations, Arturia V Collection are excellent. If you’re into the CS-80 sound, Memorymoon ME80 is an often overlooked emulation. Native Instruments have some powerful, more modern synths, but I find a lot of NI stuff takes too much time to set up and thus kills the vibe for me.

Mastering:
Waves TG Mastering Chain, Elysia Alpha Channel, Shadow Hills Compressor, bx_digital and Izotope Ozone are among the best.

However! Don’t overlook those built in stock plugins that come with your DAW. It is very much possible to create excellent sounding mixes with the tools you already have. Think about it in a modular way - if your stock reverb sounds too sterile, put a chorus before it, and put saturation after, then follow up with a subtle phaser and feed that into a delay. You can design some incredible, unique effects using the most basic building blocks!

Don’t overthink it!

[Senorakubra]

I love Pianoteq 6. As well as the pianos, there are beautiful harps and steel drums, as well as fine rhodes & whurlis. Pro allows for .scl files, taking off into sublime territories.

My desert island vst.

Honourable mention to unfiltered audio’s spec ops, which scratches a very significant itch.

[Deru]

Yeah unfiltered audio’s spec ops and triad are both fantastic (as well as lion and their others really).

[j4ustin]

I love the freakshow industries plugins. Tons of character in these. I wouldn’t call them general use plugins, but you can get some insane effects out of them. The design and character of the site and plugins themselves are excellent, and they sound super interesting.

(Edit) I picked up all the plugins:

• Mishby: tape delay, bitcrusher, pitch shifter, grain generator. I demoed this one for the trial period and just picked it up. Excellent delay with a super unique sound.
• Dumpster Fire: reverb, phaser. I’ve used this one the most, and love the sound. I go for a bus out to add more texture to my mix.
• Backmask: reverser. Just got it, interested to see how it turns out.

[Starthief]

I’ve never heard of them, but I like their style. I’ll have to demo those

Had to pick up Mishby. The other two didn’t seem like they’d suit me very well, but Mishby can do the “beautiful degradation” thing very nicely. (Applying a random LFO to the desync rate knob, and putting it inside a chain with the mix level turned down a little, helps.) Sounds pretty good sitting in front of Supermassive

[crazeebo]

@vytis

However! Don’t overlook those built in stock plugins that come with your DAW. It is very much possible to create excellent sounding mixes with the tools you already have. Think about it in a modular way - if your stock reverb sounds too sterile, put a chorus before it, and put saturation after, then follow up with a subtle phaser and feed that into a delay. You can design some incredible, unique effects using the most basic building blocks!

Don’t overthink it!

This! Protools stock compressor Smack in Opto mode is really good. Sometimes i‘m not happy to prelisten to 50 variations of wind in my sample library-so i‘ll generate pink noise over the scene pull a resonant filter on it and animate the noise in volume and filter/resonance. This will take me less than two minutes and is more accurate than any library file👍🏻