Roundup: Best software plugins in each category

  On 7/20/2013 at 2:24 PM, xox said:

The price of the Lexicon PCM reverb pack dropped for $2000 to $421 so this is my priority now.

http://www.valhalladsp.com/

  On 7/20/2013 at 2:36 PM, lin said:

 

  On 7/20/2013 at 2:24 PM, xox said:

The price of the Lexicon PCM reverb pack dropped for $2000 to $421 so this is my priority now.

http://www.valhalladsp.com/

Yes, i know about valhalla verbs and they have an exceptional value but i'm not consider them to be the best plug-in verbs (what was my intentional respond to the thread all about). The vintage versions is really good tho!

Try the Lexicon plugs IN a MIX, by mixing several tracks with them and you'll see what i'm talking about. Blending of the effect with an individual tracks/instruments is second to none. I just saw newest price = $324 and while that's still much for a reverb the company is very solid and one can be sure he's buying the best of the best with a support that's gonna last. ;) I'm a sucker for a good reverb/spatial effect and so it very important to me.

  On 7/20/2013 at 3:48 PM, xox said:

 

  On 7/20/2013 at 2:36 PM, lin said:

 

  On 7/20/2013 at 2:24 PM, xox said:

The price of the Lexicon PCM reverb pack dropped for $2000 to $421 so this is my priority now.

http://www.valhalladsp.com/

 

Yes, i know about valhalla verbs and they have an exceptional value but i'm not consider them to be the best plug-in verbs (what was my intentional respond to the thread all about). The vintage versions is really good tho!

Try the Lexicon plugs IN a MIX, by mixing several tracks with them and you'll see what i'm talking about. Blending of the effect with an individual tracks/instruments is second to none. I just saw newest price = $324 and while that's still much for a reverb the company is very solid and one can be sure he's buying the best of the best with a support that's gonna last. ;) I'm a sucker for a good reverb/spatial effect and so it very important to me.

 

That was "if" you didn't know Valhalla's ;)

I've never tried the Lex.

Another great soundong expensive verb is ERS EMT 250. Limited in its feature set but sounds lush.

EQ
Compressor
Limiter

Spectral Manipulation
Pitch Shifting

Meldaproduction

Delay
Reverb

Flanger
Phaser

ValhallaDSP, Fruity Convolver

Distortion/Saturation

Ohmicide

Unique (uncategorized)

Edison, Harmony Improvisator, Silent Way

SYNTH:

Subtractive

Vaz Mod, Diva

FM

Sytrus, FM8

Additive

Harmor, Morphine

Physical Modeling

Chromaphone, Sakura

Unique (uncategorized)

Omnisphere

SAMPLER:

Drum centric

Battery, FLS

Melodic centric

Kontakt

Unique (uncategorized)

Granite, Hourglass

is till find myself pretty disappointed with the sound of most IR reverb plugins. Is it more based on the quality and realism of the IR or the reverb itself? Every single preset I tried in Altiverb sounds too digital for what I'm looking for. Has anybody used an IR reverb that sounds actually like a real room? I don't need long reverb tails, i just want to do a convincing acoustic instrument room recording type sound. I remember Sonic Foundry Acoustic Mirror having more 'realistic' sounding options, but when i say realistic i just mean it sounded convincingly placed in a real space, it didn't necessarily make for a good production reverb

daw:

Reaper

FX:

EQ - reaeq

Compressor - reacomp

Limiter - JS: LOSER/MGA_JSLimiterST

Flanger - kjaerhus classic

Phaser- kjaerhus classic

Delay -readelay

Reverb - reaverb

Pitch Shifting - reapitch

Noise Reduction/Restoration -reafir


SYNTH:

FM - mda

Additive - reasynth


SAMPLER:

All-around sampling -reasamplomatic5000

there are literally too many plugins, trust me, i looked. just use whats in your daw!

Missing category:

Drum synth: Drum spillage

  On 7/20/2013 at 1:11 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

one thing I'm noticing is the extreme lack of diversity in the sampling arena. It seems like very few people use anything outside of Kontakt or Abelton drum racks. Not that there's anything wrong with that ;) but it's been a long time since those came out and I'm surprised no one has made anything that has really caught much attention since.

THIS. Holy shit the software sampler scene is really poor actually. Kontakt is basically the only option, and I really don't like kontakt much at all. You can't even buy it just as a sampler. You have to also buy like 92387 fucking gigs of shitty multisampled libraries I'll never use. :p

man these new soundhack plugins (thanks thorsten for reminding me) are blowing me away. 'spiralstretch' and 'pitchshift' are pretty phenomenal. COmbined with trying out Vahalla's stuff for the first time, I think I'll have plenty of instant-ambient tools for a while. The soundhack stuff can achieve basically the same effect as paulstretch, but far cooler and without actually stretching something in time, but you can smear something playing at a normal rate.

And I can see why some people wouldn't want to use the Vahalla reverb, it sounds great to me but it's almost harder to get a more basic bread/butter reverb sound in it than a full drone, and i'm fine with that, i prefer it.

when i was talking about lack of sampler I was imaging the concept of FXpansion Guru would be taken to another level by now. Something a little more professional and open ended. Like you can load up a 3 minute acoustic drum track, have the program slice the whole thing. Put it into categories automatically like hat, tom, basss drum, snare, crash. Then with these hundreds of little slices basically make for you on the fly your own Fxpansion BFD style kit. Maybe also have the program automatically volume detect each slice and automatically place them in the closest velocity value. So the loudest sounds would be applied closer to the 127 range, etc. OR have an option for randomization, so whenever you hit a snare drum it will randomly choose between all the slices it's already databased.

Also something along the lines of Steinberg's Loopmash but much more controllable and customizable would be very fucking useful. I still have't seen a program besides this and FXpansion Guru that try to use beat slicing in a new and useful way.

  On 7/21/2013 at 3:26 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

is till find myself pretty disappointed with the sound of most IR reverb plugins. Is it more based on the quality and realism of the IR or the reverb itself? Every single preset I tried in Altiverb sounds too digital for what I'm looking for. Has anybody used an IR reverb that sounds actually like a real room? I don't need long reverb tails, i just want to do a convincing acoustic instrument room recording type sound. I remember Sonic Foundry Acoustic Mirror having more 'realistic' sounding options, but when i say realistic i just mean it sounded convincingly placed in a real space, it didn't necessarily make for a good production reverb

Both matters. Altiverb is terrible but i think you could like Exponential Audio Phoenix Verb for natural, realistic rooms. It's an algorithmic reverb but one of the best for the job...if not THE best one.

Convolution verbs that i think are the best ones are:

1.) LiquidSonics Reverberate really great! Very versatile. ...with a true stereo impulses. The best plugin you can buy for $80 IMO.

2.) HOFA IQ Reverb you really have to try this one!

  On 7/21/2013 at 2:49 PM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

hey altiverb's not that bad.

Yah ok, not that bad. Ver 7 have many improvements over the 6 but i still prefer Reverberate of Hofa's verb.

...and Altiverb costs 10 times more than Reverberate.

  On 7/21/2013 at 5:23 PM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

oh yeah price wise it's bogus. i save my money for hardware

What you're planning to buy?

  On 7/21/2013 at 11:14 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

when i was talking about lack of sampler I was imaging the concept of FXpansion Guru would be taken to another level by now. Something a little more professional and open ended. Like you can load up a 3 minute acoustic drum track, have the program slice the whole thing. Put it into categories automatically like hat, tom, basss drum, snare, crash. Then with these hundreds of little slices basically make for you on the fly your own Fxpansion BFD style kit. Maybe also have the program automatically volume detect each slice and automatically place them in the closest velocity value. So the loudest sounds would be applied closer to the 127 range, etc. OR have an option for randomization, so whenever you hit a snare drum it will randomly choose between all the slices it's already databased.

 

that would be fucking amazon

ok, to address a couple of areas that have been getting discussed here...

Convolution Reverbs.... the only experience I have is with Reflektor from NI's Komplete and the Pro version of the convolution reverb that is part of the M4L library that comes with Live 9. I think both sound OK for my purposes but I'm never really looking to get an ultra-realistic room sound that is up front and exposed. Mostly my preference is for algorithmic reverbs that I no doubt use in a crass and OTT kind of way but maybe I'm just too beholden to late 90s warp vibe in that respect.

As for drum samplers, the reason I prefer Drum Racks in Live is the speed of use and flexibility. And this might seem really minor and petty but the fact that the drum pad names shows up in the clip window makes it so much quicker to program rhythmic stuff. It just never feels so natural when you are trying to remember if "snare4" is on E2 or F2 or what have you. So that's why Battery never really worked for me and why the update to the new version of Battery wasn't enough to tempt me into updating my Komplete to the latest version this time. The other thing going in the favour of drum racks is that I can drop whatever I want into a pad. Normally it'd be a sample, but it could just as easily be an instance of Operator, FM8, the new M4L drum synths in Live 9, Reaktor (case in point are those Autechre .ism's that I got from the RLR website years ago). I did get FXPansions Geist in a sale at one point which I've used it a few times and it does sound really good and it's interface is quite usable too but ultimately it just isn't as quick or flexible as drum racks.

Onto the topic of more general sampling and the case for why I use Kontakt so much. Essentially it is a rompler for me but one that is supported by a huge number of small and independent sample developers. With the ability for them to create custom GUI's I'm almost treating Kontakt a bit like I would a separate plugin. A good example of this is the System1000M by Tronsonic - realistically I'll never own a Roland System 100 and I probably would never want to even if I had the cash. But for £20 I get a really nice sounding synth that is just as tweakable as a lot of VST synths but it just so happens that it's hosted in Kontakt so the oscillators are sample based and the filters/fx are Kontakt's but regardless it's enjoyable to tweak and use. Or, another example would be Hollowsun's Oscillosine where it's a cheap but nice sounding instument based on vintage valve sine wave's - not the most flexible but it's inexpensive and it certainly gives a different and interesting tone to some deep Raster Noton sine drones than dialling up a sine wave in, for example, Massive.

Being honest, it's been ages since I've even bothered getting beneath the hood in Kontakt... although a good long while ago (probably still on Kontakt 3) I did have some fun programming algorithmic drum patches using KSP scripts.

That said, I did at one point consider investing in MOTU's Mach Five v3 because there was a cross-grade sale on. I was quite intrigued by some of the stuff it did like allowing you to combine samples with synthesis modules and some of it's granular stuff. But in the end I decided there wasn't all that much that I could do with work-arounds elsewhere and the nail in it's coffin was the dongle.

OK, just to finish off this rambling post, and in response to the comment on the previous page about people being secretive about plugin preferences I'd say that I'm not all that shy of discussing, in depth if it's of interest to folk, what stuff and I use and why. If my choices for favourites plugins have been relatively "safe" it's because the main things I use are probably popular for reasons of usefulness and quality of sound (well, unless I've bought into the snake oil like everyone else). I think if the conversation is to uncover more obscure or lesser known gems then perhaps another thread where we can chat about the lesser known stuff that maybe doesn't get used all that much but from time to time works out really well. Got plenty of suggestions there for plugins, sample packs, reaktor ensembles and such like.

Right, enough for now.

  On 7/24/2013 at 11:24 AM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

 

  On 7/21/2013 at 6:05 PM, xox said:

 

  On 7/21/2013 at 5:23 PM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

oh yeah price wise it's bogus. i save my money for hardware

 

What you're planning to buy?

 

 

http://forum.watmm.com/topic/79763-reccomend-some-gear/

 

 

i think you've posted in there though ha

 

I really hope it's the Bricasti cause the Lexicon you have in a plug-in format for $340, same algos as the hw.

Without the ADC/DAC though, which can make a (big) difference, depending on how colorful/transparent they are.

Yeah why not...but >>> that will cost you even more, something like one arm and two legs.

  On 7/24/2013 at 4:46 PM, Mesh Gear Fox said:

yeah i'm not so sure about the lexicon verb. i'd rather get something unique that was before the time of vsts

 

pretty off topic sorry

Compressor: Cytomic the Glue, Softube FET

Flanger, Phaser, Delay: ValhallaDSP UberMod, Soundhack Delay Trio

Reverb: ValhallaDSP VintageVerb and Room (for IR i use Voxengo Pristine Space)

Spectral Manipulation: DtBlkFX, Little Endian SpectrumWorx

Pitch Shifting, Unique (uncategorized): CrusherX Studio

Synths:

Substractive (+wavetable): VemberAudio Surge, Synth1

FM: FM7, MadronaLabs Aalto

Additive: VirSyn Cube

PhysMod: IL Drumaxx

For everything else i use Renoise

At this point there is so much amazing freeware that I couldn't imagine buying a vst...

Gersic.com

Gersic is bloody freeware heaven. Seriously, check it out. I can't recommend it enough.

  On 7/25/2013 at 9:35 AM, telefunken said:

Compressor: Cytomic the Glue, Softube FET

 

Flanger, Phaser, Delay: ValhallaDSP UberMod, Soundhack Delay Trio

 

Reverb: ValhallaDSP VintageVerb and Room (for IR i use Voxengo Pristine Space)

 

Spectral Manipulation: DtBlkFX, Little Endian SpectrumWorx

 

Pitch Shifting, Unique (uncategorized): CrusherX Studio

 

Synths:

 

Substractive (+wavetable): VemberAudio Surge, Synth1

 

FM: FM7, MadronaLabs Aalto

 

Additive: VirSyn Cube

 

PhysMod: IL Drumaxx

 

For everything else i use Renoise

drumaxx is pretty nice, i havent it explored it very deeply but can it do chromatic pitch up/down across the keyboard like chromaphone? I love chromaphone too but it *doesn't* have a kit mode, so i have the opposite problem with it. If each program had eachothers respective features that would be awesome. I just love being able to get percussion with so much 'body' out of a physical modeling device, I've played with pretty much every physical modeling synth out there and these 2 are the only things besides maybe a machinedrum that can do a properly bass heavy physical modeling kick drum. edit: forgot that Sculpture is great for that too but just not as easy to program a good quick.

  On 7/25/2013 at 10:01 AM, LimpyLoo said:

At this point there is so much amazing freeware that I couldn't imagine buying a vst...

 

Gersic.com

 

Gersic is bloody freeware heaven. Seriously, check it out. I can't recommend it enough.

this site a tad annoying only because it doesn't appear to have a mac specific search function(?)

the freeware plugin selection for mac is pretty empty out there.

  On 7/25/2013 at 10:51 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

 

drumaxx is pretty nice, i havent it explored it very deeply but can it do chromatic pitch up/down across the keyboard like chromaphone? I love chromaphone too but it *doesn't* have a kit mode, so i have the opposite problem with it. If each program had eachothers respective features that would be awesome. I just love being able to get percussion with so much 'body' out of a physical modeling device, I've played with pretty much every physical modeling synth out there and these 2 are the only things besides maybe a machinedrum that can do a properly bass heavy physical modeling kick drum. edit: forgot that Sculpture is great for that too but just not as easy to program a good quick.

 

Unfortunately no. you can only control pitch by velocity via mod matrix or via DAW's automation. Drumaxx goes bundled with Drumpad, wich is a single generator as vst, but it doesn't respond to keytracking.I can do simple trick in Renoise by assigning native Key Tracker device's output to vst's pitch parameter though.

Never tried Chromaphone, by the way.

Looks like IL dropped the ball with Drumaxx. Recently they had updated some of their plugins with 64 bit versions and there is no Drumaxx besides them.

best hi/low pass filter?

  On 7/25/2013 at 10:59 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

 

  On 7/25/2013 at 10:01 AM, LimpyLoo said:

At this point there is so much amazing freeware that I couldn't imagine buying a vst...

 

Gersic.com

 

Gersic is bloody freeware heaven. Seriously, check it out. I can't recommend it enough.

this site a tad annoying only because it doesn't appear to have a mac specific search function(?)

the freeware plugin selection for mac is pretty empty out there.

 

I posted this general sentiment (that 2013 freeware is really great) over at Gearslutz

and that I don't feel the need to buy any vst's

and I got three downvotes

then I remembered why I hate that place:

it's a site for collectors and technicians, not artists

/gearslutz rant

p.s. and furthermore it embodies the concept of the narcissism of small differences