Best VSTs

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u-he stuff is awesome: Ace, diva and zebra.

Others I found interesting:

Aalto
Fabfilter twin 2 and their effects
Alchemy
Harmor by image line

[McQ714]

I've had quite a few that I've purchased and probably 3 times that of free plugins..
Recently I've deleted almost all of my free shit. I find them to be redundant to and lesser in the quality and stability departments than the ones I've purchased from developers like:

Waves, Rob Papen, Camel Audio, iZotope and Native Instruments... I'm sure I'm forgetting a couple that I use and I know there's some other faves out there, but these are my faves.

The few free plugins that I have kept in my library are the occasional promo plugins that high-end companies like SSL and Brainworx put out and of course Glitch.

[BlackMath]

Wobble Boss
Izotope TPain Effect

[littlepig]

my $0.02.

most of us have gone through what you're doing. the next step is that you're going to have a lot of fun playing with the plug-ins but not get much done musically. then you'll find that you'll have lots of plug-ins but only use a few. then you'll delete the ones you don't use much and focus on learning two or three of them. it'll take a few weeks but that's where you're headed, FYI.

I think Tone's point here is a good one. I exactly describes my experience

Best VSTs is a bit of a vague question, what criteria are you judging them by?

Some of my favouties (criteria: well designed interface, good sound) come from audiodamage and fabfilter.

[JuanSOLO]

my $0.02.

most of us have gone through what you're doing. the next step is that you're going to have a lot of fun playing with the plug-ins but not get much done musically. then you'll find that you'll have lots of plug-ins but only use a few. then you'll delete the ones you don't use much and focus on learning two or three of them. it'll take a few weeks but that's where you're headed, FYI.

I think Tone's point here is a good one. I exactly describes my experience

yeah me too, but it was just a lead in to simmerdown's post

...then eventually you will quit actually making music at all, scorn anything new, take a generally holier-that-thou attitude about all subjects, and just scan forums for places to drop your .02 cents

I read that and felt like someone pulled my covers.

Strange thing about acquiring a lot of plug ins, you basically buy yourself more time searching for sounds your gonna make instead of making sounds.
The other day I started using Gutar Rig as a plug and I actually thought to myself, "these sound WAY better than Ableton's stock FX, they sound warmer"
That was the final nail in this laptop.
As soon as I save up 5 G's I'm going all hardware and I swear I'm gonna post a new track to soundcloud, it's gonna be SO ORIGINAL 1970 something.

[darkenedsoul]

And don't forget to visit the Rack thread (unless I missed what you meant in your post about rack extension. But there are a bunch of stuff people have cobbled/put together for interesting/useful things.

Is the Rack thread about Ableton racks?

The Rack Extension I'm referencing is a Reason 6 thing. Reason now has "Rack Extensions" that you can add to Reason to give you more devices to put in your racks. Some examples are the Buffre beat repeater by PEFF, Korg Polysix, etc... It's a really cool addition to Reason, but it can start to get expensive really quickly as most of the decent Extensions are around $80 or more

It is here: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=54296

[arachnaut]

A few years ago I posted something sort-of-related in a Reaktor forum:

http://www.native-instruments.com/forum ... p?t=120941

entitled "Paralysis of Plentitude" - you can read the thread for comments and followups.

Here's a copy:

Paralysis of Plentitude

How do you folk handle this embarrassment of riches we all have in electronic music? Multi-Gig libraries of sounds that might takes days to install and weeks to audition. A new synthesizer each month that takes a while to master. I have accumulated so much stuff this last year - Komplete, Alchemy, Omnisphere - I'll never get the time to go through it all.

I usually like to make music with my own sounds and presets - at least I have so far. But I haven't even begun to learn how to use Alchemy, beyond the basics.

Right now I've come to the conclusion that the best way to approach this is to learn enough about the software that you can gauge it's strengths and weaknesses, so that when you come to need a certain sound or effect you know where to go - then at that time dig into the software. But that might disturb the creative juices of the music-making.

What I have been doing lately is make three-part inventions - a rich-sound-generator, a frequency-domain-mangler, and a time-domain mangler in that order. The first provides a rich source, the next filters it, the last changes the timbre.

A nice rich-sound-generator is something like Collision in Live, or rachMiel's jitter ensemble. Filterscape, MFM2 and the Camel effects are good choices to the filters, and Spectron makes a nice timbre changer. So quite recently I've been exploring the jitter-Filterscape-Spectron mixture. rachMiel's glitch series and Twisted Tools Buffeater are also good timbral changers if you want glitchy sounds rather than organic sounds.

When I get some combination that I like, I map controllers to useful functions and start improvising for an hour or two - recording all as I go. The beginning is rough, but things get better as I learn the feel of all the interactions.

Then I take that two hour session and throw it away or clip out the good parts - some form loops, some make hits and stabs, some could be samples, some are nice phrases for future mangling.

After a time I make a big Reaktor sample map and throw it into one of the granular resynth ensembles.

Eventually I'll get enough material to cut and paste the things into something consistent and interesting (to me, anyway).

But so far this year I have not made anything and with only a short time left I'd like to do something good by year end.

[TheOnlyProphet]

I've had quite a few that I've purchased and probably 3 times that of free plugins..
Recently I've deleted almost all of my free shit. I find them to be redundant to and lesser in the quality and stability departments than the ones I've purchased from developers like:

Waves, Rob Papen, Camel Audio, iZotope and Native Instruments... I'm sure I'm forgetting a couple that I use and I know there's some other faves out there, but these are my faves.

The few free plugins that I have kept in my library are the occasional promo plugins that high-end companies like SSL and Brainworx put out and of course Glitch.

This is what i figured the case may be. I love the free stuff from brainworx btw. It seems like it might be best to just pick a few paid ones and leave the riffling through all the free stuff to the birds, unless a noted company releases a free plug-in.

Side Note: Downloaded Glitch yesterday. I'm looking forward to trying it out.

[TheOnlyProphet]

And don't forget to visit the Rack thread (unless I missed what you meant in your post about rack extension. But there are a bunch of stuff people have cobbled/put together for interesting/useful things.

Is the Rack thread about Ableton racks?

The Rack Extension I'm referencing is a Reason 6 thing. Reason now has "Rack Extensions" that you can add to Reason to give you more devices to put in your racks. Some examples are the Buffre beat repeater by PEFF, Korg Polysix, etc... It's a really cool addition to Reason, but it can start to get expensive really quickly as most of the decent Extensions are around $80 or more

It is here: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=54296

Thanks!

[TheOnlyProphet]

my $0.02.

most of us have gone through what you're doing. the next step is that you're going to have a lot of fun playing with the plug-ins but not get much done musically. then you'll find that you'll have lots of plug-ins but only use a few. then you'll delete the ones you don't use much and focus on learning two or three of them. it'll take a few weeks but that's where you're headed, FYI.

I think Tone's point here is a good one. I exactly describes my experience

Best VSTs is a bit of a vague question, what criteria are you judging them by?

Some of my favouties (criteria: well designed interface, good sound) come from audiodamage and fabfilter.

The criteria, aside from the interface, would change per type of plug-in depending on what the plug-in claims to be able to do. My criteria is how do the free ones stack up against the paid ones that are claiming to do similar things. For example how does the free Bassline synth stack up to something like Massive. I look at Massive and I get great tonal quality (demo version), and the interface isn't awful either. Thor has been my goto synth forever because of using only Reason. So how do any of the free ones stack up to Thor? Is there a free synth that's going to be my goto synth?

With effects it's all about quality of the sound. Does this free compressor work just as well as a paid compressor? I'm assuming there's a reason that the really expensive compressors and EQs and Verbs are so expensive because the quality of the sound they produce is so superior. So the real question is, can the free effects provide the quality of sound you would expect from paid effects.

[TheOnlyProphet]

my $0.02.

most of us have gone through what you're doing. the next step is that you're going to have a lot of fun playing with the plug-ins but not get much done musically. then you'll find that you'll have lots of plug-ins but only use a few. then you'll delete the ones you don't use much and focus on learning two or three of them. it'll take a few weeks but that's where you're headed, FYI.

I could tell right away that this is where I was headed. My productivity ceased as soon as I installed Ableton. In Reason I had already figured all the ins and outs and know exactly where to go and what to do to accomplish any number of tasks I might need. So learning a new beast is always going to halt that. What I'm looking forward to is the part where I decide which two or three I want to keep because they're so unbelievably awesome that I can't believe I got them for free.

This is kind of off subject but has anyone used Novation's plugins like B-Station and V-Station or their FX Suite? Are they good?
They seem really cool but I can't figure out how to get them to run. Says it needs a license and all that but I have no idea where to get one.

[TheOnlyProphet]

u-he stuff is awesome: Ace, diva and zebra.

Others I found interesting:

Aalto
Fabfilter twin 2 and their effects
Alchemy
Harmor by image line

Coolness! Thanks for the list

[McQ714]

you guys really like to over-analyze shit..
it's pretty fucking ridiculous most of the time!

just list your favorites and move on.. let the OP dig through and decide which of those he likes.
no need to reply and say, well it depends on what you mean by "best".
he's just looking for opinions and experiences.. not an entire thesis paper on the matter.

[arachnaut]

Download via Wayback machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/200701090742 ... queVST.zip

[crystalmsc]

u-he stuff is awesome: Ace, diva and zebra.

Coolness! Thanks for the list

we chat about it here.

Alchemy

Agree, I finally got it after using some of the amazing libraries using the player. It's a great addition to the Omnisphere on many part..like the sample mangling capabilities, 4 layers in the program level, other synthesis engines and a huge library of unique material. Between that, the Spectrasonics (including Stylus RMX)and U-he Stuff with Ableton Live Suite as the DAW, sampler and drum rack, it's like everything I need.