When it comes to my electronic music side, since picking up an Arturia Polybrute I have drastically reduced the number of vsti that I use while sound designing for an idea that I wish to pursue and in compositions. I'm working around the Polybrute these days, hearing in my head a more chaotic, darker foundation in my compositions to which the Polybrute helps me accomplish in spades. And I've my mainstays which fire up with each instance of my DAW...u-He's Repro and Zebra. Others that find their way in these days from time to time are Synapse Legend, Vital, Surge and a few Kontakt piano libraries. On the effects side my reverbs are Vahalla Plate, Room and Vintage Room, delays are Valhalla Delay, Supermassive and FreqEcho. As compressors go, Jon V. Audio's fircomp 2 is my low cpu workhorse while others are Klanghelm DC3A, TDR Kotelnikov, Molot and Limiter °6. The only plugins that I have in numbers which don't get used are Chris's from Airwindows, though there are a few like Mackity/MackEQ which I adore as a distortion, Purist Gain, Purist Fade and some of his reverbs.

There are a few scattered non-paid from the sister site like a few Fab and Gem plugins that I will use but have phased out the vast majority for ones I have bought.

Since I have a new computer this time I have finally not lost my mind and filled in all the memory nooks and crannies with gigs of stuff that I will never use, and the ones that I do check out are nuked with Revo Uninstaller which might be my favorite plugin of them all.

 

To be honest? I voted on 25% but I think it's way below this?

 

I wrote a Python script some time ago to count the number of plugins used in my Reaper projects. Change to your projects folder, run the script and you'll get a table of your plugin usage across projects. Looks like this:

Code:

   174 Kontakt
   137 reaverb
    67 reasamplomatic
    60 Secret EQ
    60 reaeq
    59 Secret EQ #2
    54 reacomp
    53 Secret Clipper
    53 TDR Molotok
    52 ValhallaSupermassive
...

Spoiler: Code for script

Code:

import re
from pathlib import Path

files = []
[files.extend(Path('.').glob(f'''**/*.{ext}''')) for ext in ['rpp', 'RTrackTemplate']]

plugin_counter = {}

for file in files:
    rpp = ''

    with open(file, 'r') as f:
        rpp = f.readlines()

        for n, line in enumerate(rpp):
            if m := re.match(r'\s{0,}<(VST|JS|CLAP) (.*)', line):
                if m.group(1) == 'JS':
                    name = re.match(r'^(".+?"|[^"\s]+)', m.group(2))
                else:
                    name = re.match(r'^".+?" (".+?"|[^"\s]+)', m.group(2))

                name = name.group(1).replace('"', '')

                for suffix in ['.dll', '.vst3', '.clap', '.jsfx', '(64)', 'x64', '64', '64bit', '.', '_', '-']:
                    name = name.removesuffix(suffix)

                name = name.strip()
                plugin_counter[name] = plugin_counter.get(name, 0) + 1

sortedplugs = dict(sorted(plugin_counter.items(), key=lambda item: -item[1]))

for plug, n in sortedplugs.items():
    print(f'''{n: >6} {plug}''')

 

this is a must LOL

 

Give me a two solid reverbs: a long lush one, and a short(ish) room one, a fast comp and a slow comp, distortion (iZotope Trash and Guitar Rig does me), some delays (at least one modulatable) and a decent EQ and I'm pretty set for processing. So I'm mostly good with built ins plus some extras.

I tend to only use processing hardware only for stuff like my own recordings (guitar, bass, vox, just banging shit into a mic), and a couple of HW synths.

But ummh, yea, synths'n'samplers... can't have enough of them. Hardware, software, malware... I WANT THEM ALL!! Ok... I could do with more guitars and basses, of course, but I'm noisy enough as it is already so no rush.

 

For remastering:

 

DAW native and hardware not included: 4 comps/1 Lim, 2 EQs, 6 reverbs, 3 delays, 1 channel strip, 4 color/FX/utility type plugins

 

i use A LOT of plugins lol. i have my go to's, but i also have random plugins categorized by what i see fit for different genres etc. I work with many different genres, so sometimes i can get inspired by different UI / workflow etc. I also find it fun to mix by "rolling the dice". Often times yields pleasing and surprising results. Lets say i need a compressor, i could just grab pro c for clinical compression, or i can roll the die, and it loads a random plugin from compressor category. Its fun for me, and makes the process more exciting and sometimes challenging. I get bored easily doing the same thing day in day out. If the random plugin doesnt work for that song, i can always revert to my go-to, 3 min wasted tops.

 

All legal plugins below I am using

Uad Signature pack
Soothe 2
SSL Fusion Bundles
Shaperbox 3.5
Filter XXL
Fabfilter Bundle
Soundtoys 5 bundle
Waves a bunch of them

Meeting all my expectations...

 

TC FINALIZER
TC BRICKWALL HD
TC MD 3
TC MULTICHANNEL LOUDNESS BUNDLE

Thats All

 

In my case it varies... I don't have much money so I go to the sister site and try to try what works best for my workflow. Likewise, this reminded me that I must make a definitive list and keep some of them, forever so to speak. I am buying my vsts as I see that I choose them often in my projects. In the same way, I am in a disagreement where what those at ACUSTICA AUDIO do, for example, makes me angry because one is ignorant as a programmer and ends up spending a significant amount of money that is sometimes used to live day to day, depending on the country where you are, and that makes me feel like an idiot (or think that i need to take my parrot and go into the sea until i can afford some good analog gear). Or for example what Arturia did with SPARK, that they abandon software that, in my opinion, is useful. Or now doing that weird thing with ANALOG LAB V... which now its "X/PRO". These actions make me very hesitant to buy again a license that is useless after a while. And those that are really worth paying for are quite expensive... we are talking about, for example, in some cases, 1/4 of the salary you can make.

 

Do you reckon that's why albums and even songs used to sound more cohesive than after Brauer or the plugin explosion?

 

if you need more than a couple plugins you should probably re-evaluate your composition or your arrangement.
sometimes instead of trying to fix things, its better to start from scratch.

 

nobody NEEDS anything other than a good compressor, eq, couple of fun FX. However, i find different tools fun to have. Taking inspiration from, or yielding unexpected results etc.

 

Shaperbox 3.
Trash 2
Pro q3
Pro MB
Pro c2
Weiss DS1 mk3
Weiss Eq1
Saturn 2
Vocano 3
Effectrix 2
Wow 2
Guitar Rig 7
Echoboy
Crystalizer
Liquidsonics ilusion
Blackhole
Soothe2
Ozzone 11 (3 modules)
Néctar 4 (3 modules)
Weiss DS
N consolé
A Consolé
Waves NSL
UAD Fairchild
UAD la2a collection
Tube STA
Shadow Hills
Purple MC 77
SSL Bus Comp
Auto tune.

That are the chosen

 

If instrument plugins are exempt, I honestly don't use many effect plugins. Which kind of surprises me.

When I was a beginner, I used to go crazy just adding tons of effects, but now I actually like doing as little as possible to the instrument parts, so that it's an honest depiction of its capabilities. I'll still EQ, compress and add Reverb when needed of course, but sometimes I try to see if I can get away with doing it raw first .

I often reach first for free plugins like Luftikus, TAL Reverb 4, Valhalla Supermassive, TAL Chorus LX, LoudMax, Kilohearts Stereo, Cocoa Delay, Chow Tape Model. Seriously, they're all free, I don't use any paid FX that much, really?!

Part of this is because opening old projects can be annoying when it uses plugins you only used once that you don't have anymore... I'm kind of selective with FX - I don't want to commit to it (and keep it installed) until I've vetted it, and FX can be harder to vet than instruments. Instruments are easier to form an opinion on. But FX is more vague. Plenty of FX plugins do the job. It has to really suck to be unusable.

I used to use MDE-X a lot, because it was one plugin with many FX built in - super convenient. But it's kind of dated now a bit.

I still have Plugin-Alliance and FabFilter somewhere, but never cared to test any of them.


I will say, I've tested a lot of FX, and there's tons of great stuff, nothing against them. Just nothing that has clicked yet.

At some point I've been meaning to look into Airwindows and Analog Obsession's stuff, as I was curious.

 

Last edited: Dec 21, 2023

I agree with not piling on effects plugins to try fixing a bad audio recording or sample. People do way too much of this, and especially when they are still making the track initially. You will just end up removing almost all of that when you start mixing.

But what plugins are these you mention, which help with arrangement and composition? Even Midi FX plugins like envelopers, modulators, arpeggiators, chord triggers, transposers, etc; do nothing but alter the midi being fed to the synth or sampler on that channel to change the sound produced. What is a plugin for arrangement and composition, Scaler or Rapid Composer?

 

sorry I don't use any plugins for arrangement and composition, for that I use my ears and my brain and my soul. if you listen the song will tell you how its supposed to go..

 

No-one does. it's a rhetorical question.

 

i do lol. theres one called "Song Sketch 2". Its a max for live device, that is actually pretty cool, and can be very simple or more in depth if needed. I dont always use it, but it comes in handy when im creating sketches in clip view within ableton. I just select a genre / template and tell it what i want and it copy and paste everything out onto session / timeline view. You have to tweak it, add automation etc, but its a great starting point.