Yeah totally agree Process Audio have made some really useful plugins lately

 

This right here. The most I've paid for any of their plugins was $50, and that was the SSL Bundle with both the channel strip and bus comp. Everything else I bought for about $40 or less (thanks for all the vouchers after buying stuff UA). Most I didn't even pay $10 for. They are constantly on sale, if the ones you want aren't, give it a couple weeks and wait them out.

Don't listen to all the BS people spout about iLok either. Do a demo and try it out for yourself. Been using iLok for over 15 years now both machine and dongle activations, only time there is ever an issue is if iLok's servers are down, and I have never been in the middle of a session when that has occurred, so I've never lost a minute with them. The UAD stuff is great, the folks that invented the 1176 and LA2A/LA3A still make the best emulations of them.. The SSL stuff was done with SSL. The API stuff was signed off by API.. Manley gave them all the information they needed for the Manley plugs, etc, etc.. You really can't go wrong there. Just don't get sucked into the bundles. Everybody whines about being trapped with them, you don't have to buy them. Get the individual stuff you want/need and be done with it.

 

While I don't have the neumann Monitors I have recently switched to using neumann ndh30 headphones and you are right once you can hear better you use less plugins.

 

Sugar and Bloom have some similarities, but are quite different, in sound, features, and behavior. I own both, if i had to pick one, it would be bloom by a mile.

Sugar is great for exciting things / saturation and somewhat for tonal shaping, but not really. You cant cut frequencies, only boost. Bloom is great for exciting things, tonal shaping AND dynamics processing, even combining them all into one process in a way. I could, in theory almost mix an entire song using just bloom. You could not say the same for Sugar.

To me, bloom is far more versatile of a tool. Sugar is more comparable to Waves Factory Spectre, or even Waves Vitamin.