As I came to this digital audio world relatively recently (2010), I am hoping that some of you "veterans" might be willing to share what you believe were some watershed moments in the evolution of plugin and virtual instrument development?

Synth1? UAD emulations? Nebula's convolution approach? NI Reaktor? What do you think changed the game?

I know that in my relatively short (but obsessive), time making music (partly) in the box, I feel that the Airwindows Console/Bus console emulating system of summing positive and negative distortion across all tracks and the master bus to be both unique in its approach and effect.

It's probably not an important conversation - few are - but I think it might be interesting which plugins this community puts in the "evolution" timeline, where they put them into that timeline, and why.

 

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ReBirth RB-338 was quite amazing for the time (1996).

 

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was one of the first vsti's that could receive midi-data based on steinbergs vst sdk,
so it should be up there,

but for me personally Hypersonic 1 and 2 and Sampletank are always in my heart

 

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kontakt

 

Amplitube
Guitar Rig
Jam Origin Midi Guitar
Superior Drummer
Omnisphere
Serum
Massive
Nexus
KontaKt

 

Well, zero delay latency filters are very much worth mentioning. It is definately a breakthrough in producing analog synth sound in the digital realm. I am not sure if this counts, but I consider Fl Studio the single most important daw ever (Not to be confused with the best... no daw is better), simply due to how many people started making music because of this program. I meet very few producers who didn't get into music because of FruityLoops.

 

The first "revolutionary" moment for me, was the appearance of the ASIO interface

from that moment on, everything changed...

 

Yeah Asio changed everything radically ..... I remember my very first audiocard RME Digi PST96 very well - and I still have it somewhere.

Kontakt1 was a huge experience, same with wavelab, Recycle, Stylus and a lot of others!

 

not trying to be silly but this one is very personal. this was the first bit of kit that made me realise creating music was possible. it started my obsession with digital music and probably is the reason i ended up becoming a DJ too.



yep. a playstation game

 

I remember the ones that came on multiple CDs : Atmosphere, Trillium, and (can't remember the other one), these were the first HUGE (Gigabytes) vstis.

*edit* ^^^ Phloopy nailed it, the 3rd one was Stylus, and for me, all 3 were a bitch to install and crack.

Absynth 1.0, was a huge leap forward. Discovery Pro 1.0, ReFX JunoX, Hypersonic, the DSP plugins (fx).

Fruity Loops was revolutionary for me. VST was not developed when FL was first released, but experiencing the evolution of FL from 1.0, 1.5, 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 etc... was just an incredible, biting your fingernails waitin for each new update, and experiencing ASIO and VST, for the first time, was incredibly cool. - it finally fixed everyone's "latency" issues, and we could actually move from hardware synths and midi, to playing softsynths straight into the sequencer without pulling our hair out. I had to get rid of my Digidesign Audiomedia III card and got a Echo Gina 24 w/ ASIO.

Orion was another sequencer that hung around for a little while and was really cool.

Making waves was another unique sequencer that I could get awesome 1-of-a-kind results from, as well as TUAREG 2.

Delusion Rubber duck was the shit. (before ASIO.)

Orgunator

Bram STOMPER for creating wierd one shots.

Hammerhead sequencer.

Wave Surgeon - a loop slicer (before recycle)

Sim Synth Stand Alone (pre ASIO)

The Junglist VSTi

Logic for PC

Protools FREE in 1999

The ZERO-G KONTAKT Player VSTi's : Koncept & Funktion, The Operating Table, Adrenaline, etc...

Someone already said REBIRTH, with all of the mods, not to mention the MOD editor.

REASON 1.0 was pretty groundbreaking.

GRM tools 1.0 were great

Hyperprism FX (DX plugins)

Timeworx Millinium (DX Plugins)

Novation V-Station 1.0 !!!!!!

ReFX BEAST, CLAW, plastiCZ !!!!

ReFX Z3TA 1.0 !!!!!


-------> ReFX VANGUARD <-------- huge moment in history, too!!!!


Native Instruments FM7 really opened some doors for me.

Native Instruments PRO 53 did too!!!

TC Native Essentials (DX plugins) could really pump up your tracks.

Orange vocoder, and PI warp were ahead of their time

Steinberg plugins, Magneto, Freefilter, and bundled WAVELAB plugins were hi-quality back then.

VSTs - Post 1999 :

Energy XT, Dash Synthesis DaAlfa, Delta III, Pica Drum, Albino, Alpha, JX16, JX220, Angelina, Super Quartet, Hyper Canvas,

Oddity 1.0, JX Synth, Waldorf PPG, Attack, and D-Pole, Muon Tao Pro 1.1,

RGC Square, Triangle, and Pentagon blew my mind when I first loaded them up.

Steinberg D'Cota

Tritium Bassline

TC Mercury

ReFX Quardasid

Sampletank 1.0

Revitar

Ganymed

Steiner Microcomputer

FlexFX Space Synthesizer

Plex 1.0

Orchestral 1.0

TBL

Rainbow synth

Ruction

;-) SWARPLUG

Tsunami

I got carried away, but man, there's way to many to list! What a great time it was to be into computer music in the late nineties and early 2000s. Stuff was literally released so fast, that I could barely keep up!!!!!

In my opinion, just about everything released, everyday, was ground breaking!!!! Thanks for reminding me of all of those great times!!!


* I used to get all of my stuff from '98 to maybe 2002 from BUBBA ZENNETTI's WILD LEECH RANCH, THE DEN, and VOLATILE, if anyone else remembers those places. They were the exclusive Audio sites. lol

 

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Yeeeeeeeuuuuuup!..

bluerover... calm down..


Aslo.. i recall some years back realizing.. u can drink... AND work on music... was quite the epiphany.

 

Fruity Loop, Sonic Acid, Sonic Foundry Sound Forge as they were called then, beginning of the 2000's (probably around 2002 for Acid et Sound Forge, not sure for fruity, a bit after)...I went from recording on an old 4 tracks et begging producers for prodz to doing everything myself in a quality I couldn't dream of back then...
But I'm still amazed with every new toy, today.

 

Also remember some of the hugely hyped and anticipated synths like hartmann neuron or virsyn tera and when they were released we all went like "meh"...
I also like reason when it came out.

 

OctaMED on the Amiga. At the time I had a Fostex 4-track, can't remember the exact model, maybe an X-28, so this was my first foray into 'digital' composing and recording. Sync up two Amiga 1200s and it gave you 8 tracks in all their 8-bit glory.

 

Cool Edit Pro.

 

VST (Virtual Studio Technology) standard by Steinberg in 1996.

 

Antares Autotune.

 

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Soundfonts and then gigastudio, i remember playing Dandean Oboe for the first time

 

I think the most groundbreaking thing for me was the development of digital synths, processors and effects that emulated analog as well as the release of cleanly recorded samples to use in production so our tracks no longer have to sound like complete dirt from vinyl or horrid recording techniques.

Also, the movements made by Native Instruments in developing really high quality audio products and keeping them highly relevant is something I appreciate greatly.

Thank you NI for Battery4 and it's sample library cuz without it my kicks would sound aidz...

 

PRO24 on my old atari 520ST