Iz 'Strine fo beer, mate.

 

Audjoo Helix probably still has the best voices vs CPU ratio. Also Sylenth1. I could use both of those synths on an old laptop with many instances and relatively low buffer size.

 

It's actually not that hard to work with limited CPU/RAM. Do all your in-the-box MIDI composition at 44.1 kHz/16-bit. When you're done composing your MIDI tracks, turn all your VIs off, switch the project's sample rate and bit-depth to your desired quality and lay off your VI tracks one at time to audio, then either disable to delete all your VIs. Instead of sticking reverb on every track, like a lot of you guys do, do it the old-school way and set up auxiliary sends for reverb. This way, instead of using twenty or thirty reverb plugs, you're using like two or three. Turn about twenty of your compressor plugs off and only use compressors on things that need it, which should be: drums, guitars, bass, vocals.

This whole "I should be able to play thirty Omnispheres inside my DAW at the same time while I'm Facetiming!" argument is a weird thing to be indignant about.

 

Conspiracy theory much?

 

Reason 5 could use without any problems hundreds of synths, sampler and fx before overloading. It was very impressive. Too bad that recent versions are not as well optimized.
About using old vst instruments - they will generally use the same amount of processing power as their modern versions when you use higher sample rate in your projects unless you don't mind digital artifacts (this won't matter unless you are composing 80s synth music with lots of filter sweeps).
Turn off all the built-in reverb and delay effects. Use group and send fx in the mixer. Bounce to audio, then re-import and delete the instruments.
Most vsts and environments (like Reaktor, Max, PD, many DAW hosts) are hopelessly outdated and can't use well "modern" (and by modern I mean even 10+ years old) hardware.
Use Reaper (Ableton and FL are CPU hogs, in general, despite being super popular among the EDM producers), disable internet connection, turn off your antivirus, firewall and whatever you is running in the background.
Omnisphere is a junk synth (considering that every single thing it does is done way-way better by other companies, including the sample content), but some of the presets are very good and there are lot of them (probably too many).
Kontakt 5 has no alternative, if you want the same level of sampled detail, the only route is modeled instruments and these are even bigger CPU killers. You can use older romplers (many hip-hop guys use low quality soundfonts and noone cares about the fakeness of the sounds, so whatever)

 

ArcticStorm's observation was mine as well when using Abletone (when I was testing out a bunch of different DAWs some while back.) I was actually found it odd that that hadn't been mentioned as a downside to Ableton in any of the videos that I watched. On the flip side, call it shameless proselytizing of ones Daw of choice, but when I got comfortable with S1 and started monitoring it, I was kind of surprised at how lite PresenceXT was on my CPU.
Another thing that isn't some Secret Wizardry known-to-none, but is something that I find a lot of people forget about, is their Paging Files/Virtual Memory. By default, it's usually set at around 5k, but I have mine knocked up to 12-13k and it makes a huge difference.

 

Such an exaggeration. 20. I only said 20.

 

The point is that Libraries does not use cpu, they use memory RAM

 

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As for paying : Korg M1,SYLENTH,Z3TA+2,PURITY,DUNE,LINPLUG VSTS