Hi there,

I was watching a Dan Worrall video the other day (as I so often do) where he discussed Equalizers I believe, in which he stated, that any stock EQ plugin in your DAW today is better than the "shitty analog console" EQs he initially learned to mix on.

That got me wondering if I could hear the difference between what we now universally regard as (industry standard) good-sounding plugins like the FabFilter or Pulsar Audio stuff and some proper shitty-sounding plugins that perhaps were released when I still used to piss into my diapers (say some late 90s-early 00s stuff).
Kind of like when you have always had either good or bad food, you don't know how to judge other food qualities (be it higher or lower) yourself if you have nothing to compare against.

It would be interesting to hear if some of you more mature folk here have experience with some plugins that no matter how you set them just crap more or less over the audio fed to them, be it EQs, saturators, delays, you name it.

That said, I'm not really looking for plugins that sound "badly-good"/"vintage lo-fi" which could be used to create a texture or mood but rather ones that no person in their right mind would use non-ironically if there was a better option available.

EDIT: Naming plugins like that directly would be useful (and if they are available for download somewhere) so that testing them firsthand is easier thanks

Cheers

 

Last edited: Oct 5, 2022

Saturation is the MOST difficult thing to get right "in the box".
Because our ears are very sensitive in this domain (less on bass freqs than mid/high).

So take a look into that direction

 

creative styled filters, flangers, and phasers, envelopers/mfx can be really bad. exceptionally bad. there is almost no limit. But a clipper will probably lead the pack.

 

Any specific "offenders" you know and could name so I could search up and try them out myself?

 

Well, it is almost impossible to even say when saturation is done 'right'.
Only in direct emulations can there be reasonable objectivity through comparison.
All the rest is individual taste and imaginary 'mojo'.
What i think sounds like absolute SHIT will be the the favorite of many people, even on GearWhoreBitchSlut, and similar sites.
And ...when bitcrushing is a desired effect, it is not even within my realm of taste.
The same is true for many 'creative' effects, but perhaps none more so than in the 'distortion' realm.
It is much easier to be objective with 'clean' effects.

 

Last edited: Oct 5, 2022

It is. But if you have a "Creative" effect, and it is not supposed to be downsampling, crushing, or folding; and yet it's all there wrapped up in one result... it probably belongs here.

What about say, Breaktweaker or Stutter Edit?

 

Last edited: Oct 5, 2022

I want names, I WANT NAMES!

 

Roland Juno Chorus. Even on the hardware it is shit. And it sounds GREAT!!

 

I agree with the below statements.

Because I have been dealing in clean and saturated bass frequencies much of my musical life which is decades, natural bass saturation with vst's that sounds decent emanating from a vst is rare. Most of the better bass saturation comes from older analog foot pedals. Digital distortion to my ears in the bass frequencies sounds harsh more often than it sounds pleasant.
While it is ONLY my opinion, a dedicated saturation mechanism is more likely to present a decent sound than one produced by an equalizer which theoretically should not distort, because it is designed to equalize sound not distort it. When an equalizer enters into the realm of harmonic distortion does it not stand to reason it has entered into the saturation realm?

In my opinion only, it is like individual components in a stereo system. You can control most facets in the chain individually. For me, this is preferable, having separate compression, saturation, EQ, Limiting and everything else separate. The 'combo' plugins seem to be the most notorious plugins to adjust and not necessarily better and often, worse.
Also as someone wants a name, fine - "The God Particle".

 

Pitch shifters sound trash all the time. KIA's new VST?

 

sounds great in a tesla

 

One of the first that comes to mind is Reaper's ReaVerbate. You can maybe get it to sound bearable on the right vocals, but if you are using it on drums, or guitars, or vocals that sound just a tad bit sharp it will sound like you've recorded the source inside of a steel pan. I've really tried to like it and make it useable, but it's just not a very good plug-in.

There are a lot of horrible Synth Edit and FlowStone plug-ins, but on the other hand there are also many great ones.

Analog Obsession made some really crappy ones when he started out. The ones he makes nowadays are infinitely better though.

Audio Assault also made some really horrible amp sims a couple of years back. They have also become much better now.

 

Checkout any plugin that JD Young has coded, lol. His Soundspot offerings are particularly bad

 

It would be funny to create a museum of the worst plugins.

 

whats the baddest and the worst vst/vsti you ever did use or try ?
https://audiosex.pro/threads/whats-the-baddest-and-the-worst-vst-vsti-you-ever-did-use-or-try.51894/

 

Last edited: Oct 5, 2022

IIRC, one of the first available reverb plug-ins (I think it was for Pro Tools) was pretty horrible sounding. I can't find the name of it though.

 

Most guitar amp sims, especially the cheaper or free ones, sound ridiculously bad.

 

This offends my delicate sensibilities in multiple ways! ;_____;

 

I'm not gonna judge based on 'sounds bad', but here's a couple technical notes (that may be irrelevant to you and the sound you're going for). This may have changed since I last tested these:

Reaper's ReaComp release stage is exponential rather than logarithmic. There are other compressors with exponential release out there, but logarithmic is probably most common.

Some of Variety of Sounds' plugins go absolutely hogwild on the phase in the upper freq range. You should also check for mono compatibility with some of VoS' plugins.

Some of Airwindows' plugins really, really do not like <96kHz and >384kHz. I'd also do some serious testing before trusting Airwindows compressors. Many of them have really strange release stages or the attack is fixed even if the UI leads you to believe the plugin has an attack setting or there's some other non-obvious catch.

Most saturation plugins only add odd harmonics. I'd argue you want at least an option for even harmonics if a tubier/analogier/softer sound is desired.

 

Softube Saturation Knob and Klevgrand FreeAmp are pretty bad in terms of the waste amounts of aliasing they produce.