Really, the bottom line is, that if the song and performance are good then you are 95% there. Having 8 different compressors and 12 different equalizers won't make it a better song and do nothinot to improve your chops. Your DAW of choice has competent tools and is way good enough to learn with. When you choose to buy others, pick wisely for the tools that suit your needs. Hoarding clutters you mind and hard drive and can tend to keep you off task, the task of creating the sounds in your head.

 

I have been seriously considering this lately - With Logic Pro X - I have tried it and found that at point's it became difficult to achieve certain results without calling on some 3rd party plugins - So my advice to you is: Start a project and try to use only your Daw's built in plugins - When you get to a point where you feel your goal can not be met with those core plugins alone - Introduce your first needed 3rd party plugin - Then carry on working - At the end of the project you'll have compiled a small list of 3rd party plugins that you have proven to be essential to your work flow - At this stage it's time to re-organise your plugin folder so that it relates to this new list - Simple -

I think that soon a company like: Fabfilter, iZotope, Native Instruments will create a solution to this issue and release their own Digital Audio Work Station's

 

And back in the real world, very few of us here have access to high-end monitors when mixing our music. And most of us post our output as compressed audio to sites like Soundcloud so please stop bullshitting about a particular EQ or compressor "colouring" the sound in a specific way. Unless of course you were the engineer on the last Coldplay album.

 

Great advice here especially Cav Emp organising folders into types of effects, now why didn't i think of that.

Neo Lover, Ive been pondering why Native instruments don't make a daw, I think they eventually will as I sold my Maschine and replaced it with Push because I hated the workflow, machine vst nested inside my main daw seemed confusing and counter intuitive.

 

True, most of us do not have high end monitors, and yes, there might be only subtle differences that can only be discerned prior to Soundcloud's compression scheme, but I for one am looking for these difference many times when I am storyboarding a song. When recording with microphones, choices can be very important when both tracking and/or mixing to enable me to create space and noticeable differences due to the limited choices I have when it comes to my supply of microphones, preamps and the size of the room that I have. Keeping it simple at the mixing stage is important to me, and every little difference adds up to a number greater than the sum of the parts later on. It is akin to the old adage, "A place for everything and everything in it'so place". I must satisfy my own needs and tastes first, secondly I must make it sound good on many sound delivery systems, and thirdly, I must bow ultimately again to the first, as my music is me in a different and abstract way, an extention of my being.

 

Here's another nugget of advice that really takes this from 'oh neat' territory into 'holy shit'.

I see you have Push, so you must be an Ableton user like me (btw I agree about running a sequencer inside a sequencer. too much to think about). Live is the only DAW I know of that allows you to use shortcuts to your plugins. This means you don't even have to move or copy your plugins into a new folder to organize them, but rather create a new folder with the structure you want, and fill it with shortcuts to your plugins. The best part? Ableton will still load old projects with the old folder structure since the shortcuts are pointing to the same path.

 

Great idea – do it.

I've reached a similar "critical mass" with plug-ins (using Logic), and am now discarding those which I tend not use to or have never used. I also consider what I'd do if starting from "ground zero" with Mac/Logic – which AUs I'd keep due to LPX's not having them or the stock AUs' not performing as well. Some plug-ins are so specialized that no stock Apple AUs would suffice for what they do.

In order to streamline workflow in regard to AUs, especially if one has "too many," starting with version 10.1 of Logic Pro, one can organize AUs into categories and sub-categories which make intuitive sense to onself:

This also puts the inventory of plug-ins into perspective; advantageous for weeding them out.

 

Yeah Live all the way ! Works a treat I'm assuming iv'e done it correctly on mac btw: In plugin folder in Mac Library create a new folder and then nest the category folders inside it that then create aliases for the plugs, back to ableton prefs, file folder tab , select 'VST custom folder' select the newly created folder?
Thanks for the nugget