Ableton Forum

Hey there,

its been quite hard to figure out which 3rd party Plugins work best in Live (9).

I've had trouble with some brands (for example causing Live to crash ten times a day) and have had to get rid of them. I love Softube plugins, but they are missing a few I would need even though I think Lives' own are great too, but there are a few that are not just technical, but very much sound dependent and those few I would like to find.

Softube stuff has been very reliable (even though we all know the trouble you can have with iLok, but still..) and very high quality as far as sound goes.

Personally I like to have as little extra as possible and from as few brands as possible to keep things clean.. After all the differences between the good ones are not that huge that you should stress too much about it. Unless of course you are producing the final product and really have the "ears" to even hear the difference. Also simplicity is appreciated and nice extra...not always possible I know.

Delay, Distortion, Limiter, Filter, maybe Gate (Lives' is good though), ... Any suggestions? No waves...sorry..:

Soundtoys? UAD? FabFIlter? Something else?

Reliability (when used in Live) and sound quality are the most important. Ease of use and maybe a "clear & good looking" interface come after. Price not an issue since I am not going to collect them but just have few and that's it.

Thanks in advance

M

I Ski wrote: Soundtoys? UAD?

Yes.

Stating the obvious and some less so: Izotope, Native Instruments. Klanghelm, Brainworx, Melda and TDR. Just to mention a few that have some great plug-ins.

Yeah I forgot I have some NI stuff myself.. maybe just not the best ones.

Maybe I should sink into their offerings more. I maybe think of them too much as "synth developers" and forget that they have great other plugins too.

I hear a lot about Klanghelm and I see they have a distortion/saturator. Have you tried it? I have good Compressors but from what I've heard the MJUC is really good (gentlle:-) and what a price...damn,..

Have you tried their products in Live? Work well?

Thanks for your help.

M

I would recommend fabfilter, great sound, great features and they are very stable. Pick the whole package.

I would also recommedn Valhalla Vintager verb and Ubermod for reverb and delay.

I Ski wrote:Hey there,

its been quite hard to figure out which 3rd party Plugins work best in Live (9).

I've had trouble with some brands (for example causing Live to crash ten times a day) and have had to get rid of them. I love Softube plugins, but they are missing a few I would need even though I think Lives' own are great too, but there are a few that are not just technical, but very much sound dependent and those few I would like to find.

Softube stuff has been very reliable (even though we all know the trouble you can have with iLok, but still..) and very high quality as far as sound goes.

Personally I like to have as little extra as possible and from as few brands as possible to keep things clean.. After all the differences between the good ones are not that huge that you should stress too much about it. Unless of course you are producing the final product and really have the "ears" to even hear the difference. Also simplicity is appreciated and nice extra...not always possible I know.

Delay, Distortion, Limiter, Filter, maybe Gate (Lives' is good though), ... Any suggestions? No waves...sorry..:

Soundtoys? UAD? FabFIlter? Something else?

Reliability (when used in Live) and sound quality are the most important. Ease of use and maybe a "clear & good looking" interface come after. Price not an issue since I am not going to collect them but just have few and that's it.

Thanks in advance

M

Not really a question of what works best. It is more of what you prefer.

Some fairly cheap ones:

Sausage fattener (saturation/compressor)
EOS VERB (thick reverb)

Popular ones I use:
Elephant (very good limiter)
Fabfilter pro Q (a nice EQ. That said EQ8 is great)
UAD LA 2A and 1176 compressors (great)
NI RC24 and RC48 verbs (great)
Fabfilter Timeless (my favorite echo)

Yeah I have the Fabfilter Timeless demo downloaded and I agree the sound is awesome... its just soooo damn complex... I mean there are 17000 knobs and you touch one it affects the 16999 others:-). If I can just get by all that and just accept that I will not "get it" ever fully then maybe yes. Sounds really great I must admit. The Soundtoys Echoboy looks so much simpler:-), but Fabfilter is without iLok which is a definitive +

Compressors are covered I have the equivalents to yours and they are very very good! Same with EQ:s no need there.

The Elephant? That I must check. Don¨t know much about it. I thought its outdated, but obviously I'm wrong...again

I just got the Klaghelm SDRR and after trying it quickly on a bass and a kick I have to say its definitely going into my arsenal of "daily" plugins. Very good.

M

I Ski wrote:
Have you tried their products in Live? Work well?

So far only the free Klanghelm. They work fine. Would have got some of the paid-for compressors if it weren't for the fact I already have 21 Compressor/Limiters and plenty of Saturation tools as well. I have my eyes on these though.

I Ski wrote:The Soundtoys Echoboy looks so much simpler:-), but Fabfilter is without iLok which is a definitive

I will not tolerate hardware iLok requirements but I must confess I don't notice the license manager iLok part of the few iLok-protected products I have (Softube and Soundtoys). I'm glad Waves are off them though.

I Ski wrote:Personally I like to have as little extra as possible and from as few brands as possible to keep things clean..Also simplicity is appreciated and nice extra...

Delay, Distortion, Limiter, Filter, maybe Gate..

The Mxxx sounds like an option, one product, modular capability, similar type of interface for all the effects and run well on my System. It can be as simple or as complex as you like, with great quality.

Stromkraft wrote:I will not tolerate hardware iLok requirements but I must confess I don't notice the license manager iLok part of the few iLok-protected products I have (Softube and Soundtoys).

I'm so glad for not using iZotope products with iLok, it's great that they're providing some options. The same here, using the license manager for those and Eventide/UVI products. No serious problem so far. But I'm trying not to add another hardware dongle besides elicenser for Cubase and Groove Agent, that's it. It's one of the reason for not using Exponential Audio products yet.

I could write a book about the issues I've had with iLok related products... and I am really annoyed that Softube use them they have such incredible stuff (f.ex tha classic channel is an absolute beast and I have the Console 1 which makes life so easy there I can insert FET, transient shaper etc). The truth is that these protection "systems" are only here to protect the companies not the users. I wonder if people understand that when I buy a product that product is MINE not the companies. The science behind the product is theirs, everybody knows that but the actual product is mine or whomever buys it.... well this is partly why I am on a quest to find more reliable products.

The only positive thing I can say is that luckily I've had good service from these companies so they have got me out of trouble but it would be nicer if you did not even need to find yourself in trouble:-)

Well the Klanghelm Saturator sound really good so thanks to you guys I've already found at least one new PI and like I said the Fabfilter delay sounds incredible, but its so...well it has a lot of stuff packed into it...to say the least.

m

I use a handful of 3rd party plugins in Live, all of which are very reliable and in most cases very low on CPU (aside from the mastering plugins) as I use an i7 MacBook Air 11" so that I always have a machine with me.

Before I go on, let me just say that the below thoughts are simply my opinion, others may prefer different products, everybody has different tastes.

I second the people that mentioned Elephant, I compared it to a number of other limiters (Pro-L, Ozone, Invisible Limiter, L2 and Xenon) and to me it was the least brittle and could be pushed hardest without killing the mix.

Ozone - because it makes it relatively easy to produce a workable master for uploading new material. It's quite heavy on CPU but when mastering you can bump up the latency to 2048 samples to lighten the load. I tend to drop U-he Satin in place of Ozone's saturation (Ozone 6 onwards can host other plugins) and Elephant in place of the limiter.

Fog Convolver as it's the lightest CPU convolution reverb that I could find (3% of a core vs 5% for Ableton's and NI Reflektor, the second lowest) and it sounds as good as the others with the same impulse responses.

EchoBoy - nothing should sound as good as this and be a plugin. If I could only have one FX plugin, this would be it, simply outstanding.

ARC 2 for room correction because for some of us, sticking big foam panels on the wall of the spare bedroom is simply not an option. I know it's a compromise but it makes a massive difference (monitoring with Mackie HR824s).

TransReckon - Live doesn't really have a transient designer and it's something I find rather useful, especially for opening up the sustain a little on the hats towards the end of the 16 bars as it adds a bit of energy just before a transition.

Valhalla Vintage Verb - doesn't use quite as much CPU as Live's built in one and is the best sounding 'character' algo reverb that I've used.

Omnisphere 2 - ok, for all of those people who are about to shout about how it's a CPU hog, you're right, it can be if you stack up the FX and use things like the granular synthesis but it doesn't have to be. Using just one layer set to a sample based source, I can play a minor 7th chord with only around 5% of a CPU core. In comparison, Sylenth uses 8% to achieve a similar sounding result. Of the many other plugins that I own (Dune1/2, Korg Legacy, NI Komplete, Zebra 2, Oddity2, ImpOSCar, Twin2, Sylenth and many others), none of them can hit that level of sound quality with as low a CPU price as Omnisphere. The only ones that come close are FM8 and Synplant but although they're great, they don't sound as good as Omni. As of version 2 it now has a huge set of synth waveforms for the synth based sound source as well as wavetable synthesis and a load of new creative effects. If I could only own one synth plugin then this would be it without a moment's hesitation.

I consider the above to be essentials, others that are almost essential are:
Kick2
Redline Monitor
Sample Magic A/B
Vintage Warmer, it's a bit cool to hate it these days and I get that it's not the best idea to put it on the 2-bus as it's a bit characterful but for drums it's beautiful.
MJUC (because for the price it sounds fantastic).

Of the native plugins in Live, hands down the most useful is EQ8 since Cytomic redid the filters. Other stars are Live's compressor, saturator, redux, Glue, the delays, auto filter, Max LFO, utility, drum rack (the only reason that Battery 4 isn't on the essentials list).

Obviously YMMV but the above works for me

joefrost01 wrote:EchoBoy - nothing should sound as good as this and be a plugin

My favorite delay as well, between that and the Permut8 would cover most of my delay needs. But there are several innovative M4L devices that I really like such as the amazing Dub Machines and Daedalus Delay. Outer Space also has a powerful complex delay network implementation.

FilterFreak might need some updates compared to something like the Drop. But to me it's still one of the most musical and easy on the mix creative filter.

So many people say that the Echoboy Rules that I guess its time to believe it:-) It looks great & simple enough.

Is the whole Soundtoys 5 bundle worth the investment or just Echoboy + saturator (maybe)?

M

The whole bundle has some interesting stuff in there but for me EchoBoy stands far above the rest. Decapitator is okay but less interesting than a number of other saturation plugins on the market. A number of the other plugins are a lot CPU heavier than EchoBoy too. Crystallizer is quite cool and buying the set lets you combine them in the rack which adds a bit more depth.

I've got the whole set but if I was on a tight budget I'd just buy EchoBoy and put the rest of my money towards some stuff from different vendors.

For saturation I've got a number of plugins, the more creative ones that I like in descending order of preference are:
Fab Filter Saturn
Rob Papen RP-Distort
Audio Damage Kombinat DVA
Ohm Force Ohmicide
but the saturation effects in Live are also pretty acceptable for most use-cases.

I only own a few filters, I think I prefer Fab Filter Volcano over Filter Freak from SoundToys but I think that AutoFilter in Live is fine, especially with the new models.

Live has a ton of very usable stuff in it and in the past I've been guilty of blowing cash on plugins that I subsequently don't use that much. The best advice I can give you is to very carefully select 3rd party plugins based on a really specific need, that way you'll get plenty of value from your purchases.

Bang for buck, I think NI Komplete is superb value if you can pick it up in the sale for 50% off. I think that the standard edition of Live plus Komplete at 50% off is better value than Live Suite.

Thanks,

like I said earlier I am quite well covered and there are just these few things that I think need to "double cover" if I may use such a dumb term...

My set up is as follows (I leave quite a lot out like the Air tech fx since I really do not use them so I list what I use):

Live suite
Push 2
Akai Advance 61
Juno-106
---
Softube Console 1 (which by the way has a great drive in itself)
---
Softube Classic channel (EQ & COMP)
Softube FET Comp
Softube Tsar 1 Reverb
Softube Saturation knob
Softume Transient shaper
Klanghelm SDRR (since yesterday. thanks for the tip:-)
Fabfilter Timeless (demo: trying to understand it, but feeling overwhelmed)
---
Komplete 8 (like I said earlier I haven't really utilized the fx at all just the synths... my bad.. gotta sink into it)
Diva
Zebra2
Dark Zebra
+ all the stuff that came with the Akai (I mainly use Hybrid & Loom)

And you so right Joe(?) I really do not want many options as far as fx go. Lives stuff goes well in many cases and is easy on the cpu, but the delay & Limiter are something still that I have to cover they are also so much "soundbased". I really don't use filters that much to really even understand what I even expect from them so I think I'll be covered with Lives own or maybe Cytomics' filter which has to work well in Ableton since they work so close together in other things...I suppose?

I have to check the Elephant & Oxford as far as Limiters go maybe Fabfilter (unless its again a overwhelming device). Echoboy seems like a nobrainer from what most of you say and I think I am covered as far as Saturation goes. The Klanghelm is really smooth and combined with the Console 1 I can basically achieve anything (and if needed I add the Saturation knob which is so cool).

So to sum up: Limiter & delay and maybe Filter and maybe only Limiter since Echoboy seems to win this race and with Filter I'm not in a rush:-)

I must also mention that its really amazing that you guys help so much and take your time to give tips.. I should have asked earlier,

Thanks to all of you

M