Favorite plug ins, worth buying 🙂

[mattlowery]

My advice is to spend the extra $100 and get the whole kit and caboodle. I know it’s more money, but I can’t think of a set of tools I use more regularly than Soundtoys.

[bodydouble]

Out of curiosity, which effects that are included in the complete collection would you most miss in the Effect Rack collection?

[bereenondo]

I’ve been using Soundtoys for 8+ years (I’ve got the complete bundle) and pretty much use only those included in the Effect Rack + Little Plate. I never really understood what the “Little” versions of Primaltap, Radiator etc. really bring to the table, other than maybe lower CPU cost.

[unicity]

More Soundtoys love here. If you can stretch for the whole thing it’s worth it! I sold a DP/4 to fund purchasing the bundle on sale years ago and have never regretted it.

[discreet-cowboy]

+1 buy the whole bundle, it’s so worth it. i might be in the minority here but i don’t actually use effect rack as much as i do the individual plugins for different purposes.

i like having the option of the “little” versions for a lower cpu load when doing more basic applications- especially when working in a large session.

[level1]

Thank you all for the feedback. From the complete bundle I would miss Little Alter Boy and some other Little versions of plugins that are already included in the Effect Rack. Except for Little Plate that I already have. But what was making me consider the complete bundle over the rack is that I’m too used to add utilities in between effects for gain staging and that would make the rack kind of pointless. CPU usage is another point for consideration. I will probably go with the bundle, but I have some youtube checking to do.

[unicity]

Speaking of feedback…the only real plus I’ve found to using the Soundtoys effect rack (at least as far as Ableton Live is concerned) is that you can easily set a feedback loop with your chained effects. That doesn’t really change the fact that 99% of the time when I’m combining ST plugins I just use Live’s audio effect rack instead.

[Smapti]

Something I’m curious about regarding Soundtoys – what makes them preferable to other delay/distortion/etc plugins? I have plenty of plugins that cover similar territory, so I’m wondering what Soundtoys might add that I don’t already have. (My go-to delay is Valhalla Delay and I would be impressed to find a delay better than that, if there is one.)

[level1]

I only have a few plugins and Ableton Live Suite. I usually buy single plugins simply because I don’t like having too many options. I don’t think Soundtoys is necessarily better, but I’ve heard very good things about them and having used Little Plate a lot, I guess it’s a safe bet. I was looking for EQs (Sie-q) and saturation (Decapitator) mainly and loved what I heard of PrimalTap. The thing is the price for three plugins equals the price for the Effect Rack bundle. But if you already have plugins that do all of this, you’re not missing anything important. They do offer 30-day free trials, so you could check them out.

[makamqore]

I used to use the Soundtoys delay, but don’t anymore now that I have the Valhalla. There’s subtle differences in the tone colour of the drive circuit and how it interacts with the feedback, so the sound will never match 100%, but I can’t say there’s a “sound” that I achieved with the soundtoys that I was unable to get something similar or “better” with the Valhalla. But I’m a bit different than some DAW users; I’d rather have my one flexible and usable delay plugin then be faffing about with a bunch of them (same goes for every other plugin type for me).
Decapitator does do something unique… or at least I haven’t found anything that really gets to that same sound (though I haven’t kept up on plugin devt and smaller companies in the past couple years).

[LLK]

I think most of the soundtoys love and where I’d say they shine over other brands is in the way they emulate analog distortions various drives etc. Radiator, Decapitator (which has things like good culture vulture emulations), Sie Eq etc. To me are the area where they’re better than other plugins maker. Other than that their gear is appreciated and considered high quality because it emulates past gear really well while bring a few digital tricks to it (typically Echoboy and Filterfreak 2) so they’re enjoyable for that especially by people used to the hardware units they emulate and who know what they expect from it. But I would say they’re not better than the competition no, less versatile in a way, and also I’m not a fan of the skeuomorphic UIs that I find cramped in many ways compared to Valhalla, Izotope, Fabfilter or AD.

Wonderful toolbox nonetheless.

[varispeeder]

@level1

Unless I’m missing something.

the other nice thing about getting the complete bundle is if you ever share sessions with someone who uses them, it will open up correctly.

@Smapti

Something I’m curious about regarding Soundtoys – what makes them preferable to other delay/distortion/etc plugins? I have plenty of plugins that cover similar territory, so I’m wondering what Soundtoys might add that I don’t already have. (My go-to delay is Valhalla Delay and I would be impressed to find a delay better than that, if there is one.)

Being able to drive the input and output stages make them respond “like hardware” in a way that is rare for plugins. And they all have distinct characters and/or unique features that make you gravitate towards them for certain tasks in the same way you do with hardware. The bundle is definitely far more value than the sum of its parts might suggest.

[wblamkin]

has anyone tried out/looked at Vital, Matt Tytel’s new wavetable synth? It looks incredibly feature rich, and is even more impressive in that it’s fully usable in its free version. I haven’t tried it myself, the official release is next week, but I know there’s some early access going around as well as a closed beta that’s been happening for a while. Was considering picking up Arturia’s Pigments 2 on sale, but not sure if I should hold out and wait for this one!

[eblomquist]

Looks very cool, thanks for the tip!

[Jos_Smolders]

I have everything by Toneboosters.Jeroen, the main developer, holds various patents on DSP design and has been releasing excellent vst’s and IOS apps for professional production. https:…www.toneboosters.com

[crunchydrums]

In effort to avoid some Morphagene GAS, lets talk grains.

I’ve been using m4L granulator 2, which is dead simple, drag and drop, and add m4L LFO’s or map knobs to any midi controller. Lots of good sounds to be had but there’s no smooth pitch bend that I have seen (If anyone could help here this would be a game changer). FM is a plus but not thatttt useful.

In stark contrast, have also been using Crusher X, which is incredibly deep. The kind of VST you open a new project for because its a CPU hog but requires full attention. The randomization features are very useful and it’s kind of an instant soundscape machine. Modulation sources are really unique and the per grain control is pretty incomprehensible. I think a lot of the music concrete people here would appreciate this one if they hadn’t heard of it.

[Xylr]

I actually think that the closest thing I have found to the Morphagene, at least the way I used it, is just Ableton’s Simpler.

Get a midi fighter twister or anything with knobs and wire up some controls similar to the Morphagene’s and you can get pretty close.

Another option is the Granular Sample Player block from the Toybox Sampling Pack for Reaktor Blocks. You can sequence it or play it and get it to sound like Morphagene or ggrainer from ppooll.

I like both because they’re really simple and the interfaces are as legible as can be.

[iggy.labs]

Simpliciter in VCV Rack is also one way to play around with morphagene-like features including SOS and slicing and varispeed

Here’s an overview from Omri Cohen: https://youtu.be/bY6-Vxwdj_k

[janglesoul]

I actually think that the closest thing I have found to the Morphagene, at least the way I used it, is just Ableton’s Simpler.

Get a midi fighter twister or anything with knobs and wire up some controls similar to the Morphagene’s and you can get pretty close.

That sounds really interesting! Would you please explain a bit more of how you use it? What sort of sample do you load Simpler with? What kind of midi-notes do you feed it with etc? I obviously have some homework to do regarding the controls on the Morphagene, but if you’d have the time to tell me some more it would be very appreciated. Thanks!

[crunchydrums]

I think I could take a crack at this, I hadn’t given Simpler my full attention, but it does seem more similar to morphagene (if you leave simpler’s warping modes off) than more dedicated granular devices I mentioned above.

To sort of replicate the pitching/granular morphagene experience in the classic playback mode, I think you map midi knobs to the looping parameters, pitch bend - though I don’t think this accounts for the splice functions of morphagene

I think you could bootleg the splicing functions with Simpler’s “Slice” Mode (but I forget if this would make the looping functions unavailable, I will have to investigate…). The thing with Slice mode is that the slice being played back depends on the midi note in, so you would have to map a knob to transpose the midi note (built in midi arpeggiator allows for gate and pitch to be manipulated) in order to change the midi note inputted.

Not sure what other features im missing here. Reversing functions are more limited, simpler does playback only, so recording/SoS wouldn’t be available. But this could be a fun playground in the DAW to get a similar playable music concrete experience, I’ll definitely give it a go later.