Any VST to improve in Ableton ?

[DiegoBenjamin]

Although Ableton DAW and its VST´s are great, is there any effect or signal modulator (compressor, delay, reverb, distortion, etc.) that could be better and you would prefer to buy a third-party plugin?

Regards

[brianwdowling]

You can do most anything with the stock plugins, and whatever additional VSTs you might use depend to some extent on your musical style and where you might want some additional choices or something to help creatively. I like Arturia's Pigments, and use it a lot.

As far as effects, I use UHE's MFM2 delay plugin, CableGuys ShaperBox for effects and Devious Machine's Infiltrator 2 for effects.

The VSTs I generally prefer, would be those which allow more complex/comprehensive adjustments and sound design.

Having said this, you can do most of this in Ableton but it's sometimes nice to have additional choices.

Thanks

Brian

[DJSpaceP]

I recently moved from Reason to Ableton Live, and although I have access to all my VSTs and Reason devices in Live, I pull them up less and less often as the weeks go on. I'm getting to really enjoy Live's consistent UI and L-R signal flow, and many of my old "go-to" plugins or Reason devices have high quality equivalents right in the Live box.

I still like the UI and sounds of certain plugins like Synapse's "The Legend", Blamsoft's "Expanse", Lectric Panda's devices or Selig's coloring EQ, to name a few, but even so, within Live's stock devices I'm finding great sounding alternatives to most of my old standbys. One interesting thing that has happened: because of Live's workflows and sound, I'm getting cleaner, punchier mixes more easily and I'm not having to open any of my old compression/maximizer plugins. Gain-staging is a little more sensitive issue with Ableton than Reason was, but even so, that has turned out to be a good thing because it's forcing me to keep my tracks more balanced and really focus on cleaning up frequency conflicts between elements.

Bottom line, my recent Ableton Live songs sound better to my ears than most of my previous Reason tracks.

Bear in mind that I'm currently on Live Standard, so those with Suite should be REALLY set for success.


EDIT: Yesterday I finally broke down and upgraded to Live Suite. WOW this is massive, especially since I'm already using the 12 beta and all the additional goodies that entails. With only yesterday's and this morning's initial digging through Suite, I can already tell that with all the new synths, effects, Max for Live, and MASSIVE amounts of packs and content, having the full Suite is going to additionally reduce dependency on external plugins. Good grief, what a value for a $255 upgrade!

I'm thinking, can I use Analog and/or Drift to wean myself away from "The Legend"? Probably. Can I use Wavetable, Meld, Operator and more to wean myself away from "Expanse"? Probably. Can I take advantage of all of these procedural MIDI and other amazing generative devices and racks to wean myself away from Lectric Panda's plugins? Probably. Amp and Cabinet might get me unhooked from the Kuassa plugins I often use for guitar and bass. Perhaps Roar and the Color Limiter with EQ Eight can help with what I used Selig's coloring EQ for. All in all, a lot of opportunities here to streamline and unify my workflow. Perhaps I'm trying to overcorrect because of the years and years working in Reason where EVERY device was its own thing, like traditional hardware. But I am absolutely enjoying the consistency of Live's more unified workflows and I have been feeling more productive (and producing more finished tunes) over the past several weeks after the switch than I've felt for a long time with Reason.

I'm not saying I won't reach an equilibrium where I still bring in certain third-party plugins, but for now I'm going to resist opening VSTs for a while and use this as an opportunity to produce music WHOLLY in Live, as a way to more deeply understand its capabilities on its own.

[H20nly]

Valhalla for reverb
I like the SSL channel strip compressor and their bus compressor a lot

But, I’m not working on EDM. Lot’s of vocals in our stuff

[Tarekith]

The only thing I still tend to reach for 3rd party options for is a decent limiter. Live's is ok as a basic tracking limiter, but for any sort of heavy mastering duties I think it lags FAR behind other options. At least in comparison to how well the rest of Live's plug ins and instruments hold their own against 3rd party options.

[dougdi]

Agree about Valhalla efx, TDR Nova GE is also a great tool for compression and dynamic eq. And they’re fairly priced.

[Calagan]

Only good advices here : Valhalla reverb (VintageVerb IMHO) is a nice complement, another limiter and/or clipper is a must, what TDR Nova does is also not covered in the built-in Live plugins (Nova is amazing and when on sale is pretty cheap : anything that Tokyo Dawn Labs is doing is actually amazing and among the cheapest you can find : I recommend Limiter 6 in particular).

Then, depending on your needs, you've got certain plugins that bring unique content/color to the music you're making that you can't reproduce in Live with the built-in content : synths (from U-he, NI, Arturia...), libraries of sampled instruments (Kontakt, Musio, Sine, Spitfire...), or colorful FX plugins like Devil-Loc (Soundtoys), Coldfire (Arturia), Saturn (FabFilter), TrackComp (DMG Audio)... etc.

Some plugins are similar to Live built-in stuff, but bring workflow improvement, like ProQ3 (FabFilter) or ProMB (Fabfilter) - I actually like the sound of ProMB much better than the built-in Multiband compressor in Live, but ProQ3 is more or less on par with the live built-in EQ.

Then, there is the holes in the Live arsenal :
- there is no transient designer in Live, and one of the best sounding one is free : Flash from WavesFactory...
- there is no de-esser, and among the ones I used (and there is plenty out there), I like Sibilant (Waves), Lindell 902 (Plugin Alliance) and TrackDS (DMG Audio).
- Some utility plugins that bring unique feature are also very useful : Metric AB (Plugin Alliance) is a true gamechanger as a mixing assistant, Prism (TDR) is very useful and it's free, DvMeter (TBpro audio) is also free and one of the best level meter (and everybody needs a level meter)...

Actually, there is a lot of content out there, and the more you progress in mixing, the more you notice the tiny difference between the Live's Chorus and the Soundtoys or Arturia's one that may bring value to your mix... So it's a never ending process...

[chapelier fou]

The only VSTs I use are :

- Guitar Rig when I need to play electric guitar on stage.
- Kontakt (+ external libraries) for orchestral sounds and piano.
- UAD plugins because I’ve got them with the sound card but I mostly use them “embedded” in the sound card (can’t remember how they call it)

Otherwise, super happy with stick devices.

[Martin Gifford]

I'm not fussy about details, and I want to keep things simple by sticking to Ableton stuff. But one thing that makes a huge fast difference to the overall sound is plonking a Valhalla reverb on the master track (sorry if that's an audio sin). It makes a night and day difference compared to the Ableton stock reverb, which sounds like dark depressing mud.

Sometimes I would like to add a lush sounding synth or piano, but once you go down that road it's hard to choose which one you want and you end up with too many. I heard a great sparkling piano, but you have to buy and install the whole package, which is expensive and takes up space.

TLDR: 1) definitely a sweet sounding reverb, 2) maybe one lush synth, 3) maybe one great piano.

[H20nly]

@Martin Gifford - it’s not a sin to put reverb on the Master, but try putting it on a Send instead. Turn it to 100% wet and then mix the Send knob of your tracks into it. That way you have more control over how much reverb is on each track vs. having the same amount on all tracks

[jlgrimes]

Although Ableton DAW and its VST´s are great, is there any effect or signal modulator (compressor, delay, reverb, distortion, etc.) that could be better and you would prefer to buy a third-party plugin?

Regards

I assume you are referring to Suite.

Regarding Reverb, Delays. Ableton is pretty rock solid here. Are there better plugins? Yes but the built-in ones are very respectful and useful here.


Distortion. It depends on application. For stuff to process drums, bass, saturators, Ableton stock stuff is decent. It might fall short on Guitar Amp Sims though and tape saturation mainly.

Compression. Also application. But generally Ableton, stock stuff is workable. Built in compressor is very tweakable and fairly clean sounding. Glue compressor is top notch for bus compression. That said for mixing vocals, it helps to have some good Opto and FET emulations and that is where Ableton falls a bit short. Not that Ableton stock stuff can't get it done, but good Opto and Fet compressors can be huge time savers and can get good results fairly fast vs having to tweak Ableton's stock compressor (that said knowing how to tweak the stock compressor very well can pay off, but if pressed for time, it might be too many parameters to tweak.) I also haven't played with Ableton's deesser settings as I rely on 3rd party here. I'd also add something like Pro Q3 is a huge timesaver as well although Ableton EQ8 is pretty decent.

[jlgrimes]

I'm not fussy about details, and I want to keep things simple by sticking to Ableton stuff. But one thing that makes a huge fast difference to the overall sound is plonking a Valhalla reverb on the master track (sorry if that's an audio sin). It makes a night and day difference compared to the Ableton stock reverb, which sounds like dark depressing mud.

Sometimes I would like to add a lush sounding synth or piano, but once you go down that road it's hard to choose which one you want and you end up with too many. I heard a great sparkling piano, but you have to buy and install the whole package, which is expensive and takes up space.

TLDR: 1) definitely a sweet sounding reverb, 2) maybe one lush synth, 3) maybe one great piano.

Hybrid Reverb IMO is pretty good for emulating those Valhalla style reverbs. They just aren't as flexible as Valhalla verbs but Hybrid and even the stock Reverb is pretty decent. In 11 they improved the stock Reverb and it sounds much cleaner. Also the Echo is a Reverb as well which gets overlooked.

I actually use Valhalla alot less since Hybrid came out.

[[jur]]

In 11 they improved the stock Reverb and it sounds much cleaner.

It actually was only a GUI update (plus smoothing on the Size param, but that only improves the sound when you're tweaking it real-time).

[Martin Gifford]

Hybrid Reverb IMO is pretty good for emulating those Valhalla style reverbs.

"Pretty good" is good. But if I can get a 50% improvement in the overall sound with just one click, I'd pay the extra money any day. The cost/benefit is extreme. Even 10% improvement with one click and one purchase is worth it.