I've always had tons of respect for small software developers that make creative and innovative products that are accessible to everyone, so over the weekend I took the opportunity to support a few of them. Got some great products without burning a ton of cash. Here's a quick synopsis of what I got:

Vast Dynamics Vaporizer2 wavetable synth: This is an extremely powerful synth that is loaded with features and could easily rival the top wavetable synths in the game like Serum or Pigments. In addition to wavetable synthesis, it also has granular and additive synthesis modes. I got it on sale at a price of around $35usd (approx. 1/5 the price of Serum).

https://www.vast-dynamics.com/?q=Vaporizer2

Dymai Sound Proclethya: A very cool and straightforward analog emulation synth. Has a very warm, rich analog sound to it. Not the most feature-heavy synth out there, but for the most part it is sonically comparable to something like u-He Diva. Got it on sale for about $20usd.

https://proclethya.com/

Thenatan Brain Intelligent Synth: "Intelligent" might be a strong word for this one, but it is somewhat decent at randomly generating presets. The features and factory presets in this synth are nothing extraordinary, but still decent and potentially usable. Overall, while this synth isn't a gamechanger, it is still a fun tool to experiment with and well worth the $10usd that I paid for it. I also bought some Serum skins and presets from Thenatan for dirt cheap that were very well done.

https://www.thenatan.store/shop/

 

Vital is free! I would recommend ppl not to buy any plugins until they made a good song and those plugins are in use

otherwise spending spiral begins

 

surge is also free, and more powerful than any of those. but yeah, if you are going to use retail synths to create professional works you should pay for them. good of you to support small developers.

 

100%. Especially Nebula devs as they are very cheap, super HQ analog emulations (the closest imo) and a whole lot better than a lot of big names devs that charge hundreds of dollars

 

The term "innovative" is used a lot nowadays.

 

thenatan used to make skins, i thought he was around here? good job sharing the love

 

Not sure if this comment is intended for me personally or not, but nevertheless I would generally agree. Vital is a great synth and I use it very often, but Vaporizer2 has some features Vital does not and is a great value. "Spending spiral" or not, developers only stay in business if people buy from them and that is half the point of this thread.

Personally, I find the Surge gui/workflow to be absolutely dreadful. Otherwise, you're right it is a good synth for free.

 

Idk if Plogue is a small developer (I guess it fits the term) but I just got OPS7 ($24), Chipsynth SFC ($19 I guess) and Chipcrusher ($19). If that ain't cheap for top notch, best in the market simulation of the corresponding hardwares, I'll be dammed. Only big company I ever bought anything from was Izotope (Trash 2, for $10).

Also, those Fuse Audio Labs plugins are masterpieces

 

Last edited by a moderator: Nov 28, 2021

not to distract from your intent OP, but you said supporting small developers...
I see that its more of promo for the ones you like, which is good thing too

 

Oh Boy!
another person telling me how to spend my $

 

to be sure, most of todays soundware are small developers. give or take their budget. is a synth maker with two full time employees plus the dev himself considered small?

 

VAST Dynamics - Valporizer 2 VSTi

- The ‘ Energy ‘ Soundbank by HO for the VAST Dynamics - Vaporizer 2 VSTi
https://audiosex.pro/threads/the-en...for-the-vast-dynamics-vaporizer-2-vsti.43435/

- The ‘ Transformation ‘ Soundbank by HO for the VAST Dynmics - Valporizer 2 VSTi
https://audiosex.pro/threads/the-tr...for-the-vast-dynamics-vaporizer-2-vsti.43869/

 

Well yeah, they are small developers that I am supporting by buying their products and by recommending them to others.

Would you expect me to make a post like this about ones I don't like?

 

VAST is a great dev, they have updated Vaporizer tirelessly over the years, many great features and bugfixes. Also the DRM is painless and hassle free (keyfile IIRC). I personally never liked the sound of it though so I moved on but if you're into wavetable stuff, this can be really nice.

Thank you for Proclethya recommendation. Sale seems to be over for now, it shows full price. I'll bookmark it. Also nice, only serial number protection. Love this.

@FLRIZDARKK can you elaborate on this? I am not acquainted with the Nebula system.

@BEAT16 cool that you made soundsets for this! Awesome

 

Check the Dymai Sound Facebook page, they had a discount code posted there a few days ago, so you might check and see if it still works.

 

I can't recommend spending money on thenathan stuff.
He was one of the reasons that VST skins got commercialized as he sold his skins for ridiculous prices.
He even did that with skins that were created using a free random skin generator website as of
my knowledge (these skins got removed from his shop later) and sold skinned binaries of some VST's
while modifying other dev's binaries is a thing you shouldn't make money with.

Before that time skins were mostly free and you (we) were able to donate some bucks to skin creators,
which I did a lot. Nowdays his "intelligent" VST's are basically sample players with a fancy looking interface
on first sight (took a quick look behind one of those products) so before you think spending your money on these,
donate some bucks to the creators of Vital, Surge, etc. cause these products are the real deal.

 

Most of the skins on his shop go for $2.37 usd, I don't think it's fair to call that "Ridiculous".

I'm also well aware of what his plugins are, and I'd say they are priced adequately.

 

The prices were ridiculous in the past ($15-20/skin), didn't check his sale prices when I wrote the 1st post
...and $79,50 for an animated brain and some samples + effects isn't a good price if you compare to other
free or commercial alternatives. I mean for 50 cents less you can get a serious product from Audio Damage.

 

The $79.50 is like MSRP at Thenatan store. I never see that price applied, neither at his store nor on ADSR (and various other places he sells). Prior to the Black Friday deals, the average price on that site ranged from 5 to 40 something bucks. Literally, Thenatan products are always on sale year-round. I bought Vybz and Tape Piano (2 awesome pieces of plugins) and they each were priced at $29. I've been following Thenatan over the last 4 years, and it's been fairly priced products coming from him that whole time. So, If he used to be an expensive developer prior then I've escaped lol.

 

Nebula is a engine to develop sampled based analog emulated plugins (mostly effect plugins). Those effects are released as libraries (like Kontakt in a way). While Nebula itself is kinda expensive now (unless you’re going the other way), the libraries are cheap (from 10 to 100 MAX - 100 is usually for large collections) and very HQ. I use them on the regular to spice up my mixes.

The emulations are terrific, way better than even Acustica’s own Aqua plugs.

Look into AlexB, TimP, Analog in the Box, Cupwise’s libraries. They emulate rare and common hardware like the SSL bus comp, Neve pre amps and eq, Pultecs, etc. All of these are very cheap compared to other manufacturers (including algo plugs)