Friends, after years of producing I'm at an all time low.

Opening my "favorite synth" and all the "must have" "next gen" fx plugins, clicking through 30000 presets, nothing sounds good. And if it does, the next day all magic is gone, it sounds just as it is: A lifeless meeting of sounds that don't like each other and that are not mine. I get almost nothing done. No confidence in my sound even though I did a few gigs and people even pretended to like it.

I remember when I was around 16, I installed Ableton Live and all I had was the stock plugins, I think I had Hammerhead and V-station VST and ONE sample CD: Old Akai Drum samples from the 90s that took me ages to convert to a format that Ableton could read.

What I did is I straight up produced a full length album with transitions and everything. Without any tutorial, no 100GB of the best samples available, no audio interface, no studio monitors. Not the best album but the only one I ever did.

Although it's not my kind of music I saw a video from Alarico and he said that he almost exclusively uses stock ableton and some M4L as well, even for mixing and mastering. Not even Fabfilters.

That get's me thinking. Do I really need mastering grade saturation plugins for example. I don't hear the difference between an "excellent" and an ordinary plugin anyways. Why not slap a saturator on it and be done? Good enough for them should be good enough for me?

Anyone tried deleting almost everything and focus on making music instead of refreshing sister site every five minutes?

 

One thing I have been doing (especially since my DAW makes it so easy) is going thru plugins tagging my go to's as favorites and then further organizing them from there. For my 8TB of kontakt libraries I have been creating "track presets" which are drag and drop from within my daw containing the pre-loaded patch and organizing them by sound type. Now, I dont even look at kontakt interface most times. My huge collection of kontakt patches, instrument and fx plugins has been lessened to only my essentials which are just a quick drag and drop away. Though I do have a new folder labelled "New Plugins" or "New Libraries" which I place newly installed stuff so I can audition and decide if I want to keep based on if I'll actually use it.

Basically keeping a totally separate structure away from the standard DAW directories.

I just built a new computer too and MADE SURE to not reinstall everything but went thru and ditched a lot of stuff that I just never ended up using or found to be no good.

Less is more indeed. I was feeling the same as you. Get rid of stuff. Spend some time to organize. It has been SOO refreshing for me.

 

I use LiveEnhancement suite to bypass Option paralisys. I just create a small list of plugs that I know I will use (that includes Ableton stock ones) and then stick to the RMB menu to acess them (and that's a lot faster than the ableton native method). But If I want something more "exotic" along the way I know I can access it. Is the middle ground between deleting everything and having a endless list of reverbs cause the sister site XD.

But yes, I think a lot of the plugs on the sister site are only truly relevant to sound engineers IMHO.

Gonna leave you here the fork for ableton 12 in case you want to give it a test.


https://github.com/jastro-dev/LiveEnhancementSuite-Live12/releases

 

Another thing I did was spent some serious time setting up a few clutch templates within my DAW for which I use to start all new projects. One template is my master template which contains all my essentials pre-loaded but not overly packed. All tracks color coded and busses assigned etc. Still allowing for air and space to create uniquely each time but allowing me to get right inside and go.

The other template was built for the sole purpose of idea creation. It contains a different arrangement of the daw windows with a focus on the piano roll. It only has a few essential instruments pre-loaded and NO processing FX. The purpose of this template is purely for generating short 2 to 4 bar chord progressions and a basic melody. I attempt to spend no more than 15-20mins on each one. Once I have 10 or so...I evaluate and pick the best one. But, I keep them all just in case

 

I forget the name, but I'm pretty sure there is a plugin that can fix that...

 

This goes with what I've read many times, and hand-in-hand with having something set up to immediately record when inspiration strikes.
And for creation of songs (as opposed to "creation of sounds") I've read that loading a piano and/or some other basic electric keys with few options, may be a better bet than a synth. (A synth is always begging to be tweaked).
Of course that has to mesh with your style and if techno is your thing, you probably already know the one synth you have to have

 

@fnord23
It is just buffer overflow. Too many stuff which is distracting you from the foundation. Stick to one synth and one set of plugins from one vendor. Just ignore the rest.
Dig out an old track from your first album and remix it to get selfconfidence again.

 

I got a new computer recently and vowed to only install the essentials.

I also download a trial of Ableton 12 and upon opening it up it loaded up their demo set.

I was amazed at how good the mixing and everything sounded. All obviously using the stock Ableton plugins.

It was mixed better than 95%+ people could do with the best plugins most likely.

So the answer is yes you can use the stock Ableton plugins, and its skill and understanding of mixing that will make you sound good, not good plugins.

 

Windows XP laptop for old stuff.
Mini PC for x64 and portable kontakt.


Mini PC for legit.
Over the years I've narrowed everything down to.
Massive
Serum.
Plogue.
Fabfilter.
Kickstart.
Sinevibes.
Puremagnetik.
AAS.
Reaktor.
Everything else stock fl studio. And a butt load of free patcher things.

 

Trigger Warning===Not for vegan or vegetarian musicians!!!

About your feeling that all those 30,000 presets aren't getting you there anymore, think of it this way...if (A) you were hungry and had a choice to buy a burger, fries and a coke or (B) had the ability to finess a nice medium rare filet mignon, could make a wonderful rice pilaf with fresh ingredients and made a salad of baby greens with your special mango chutney vinegarette which would you pick? If the answer is A go no further. If you chose the second option create your own presets apropos to the sound in your head and the song you wish to write. If you cannot do that then learn how to do so. In the end you'll be better for it, happier and well fed creatively speaking.

 

I've been there many times. But jokes and memes aside. Gear (or plugin) acquisition syndrome is serious issue which can kill creativity and fun.

I made (with some help from audiosex users) my own solution for this, check this thread:
https://audiosex.pro/threads/f-ing-simple-audio-plugin-manager.77617/

TL;DR: it's simple non destructive python program, which allows you to "disable" vst2 vst3 clap lv2 plugins (by adding -disable to file extension)
just disable all and enable only what you need right now. you can enable any plugin in seconds. save to presets, search by name.
source code available: https://codeberg.org/deathroit/f-ing-simple-plugin-manager


note: I realize I don't need most of my plugins when I switch to Linux. I have to work with whats available on GNU\Linux so i stick to stock reaper plugins, airwindows stuff etc. Now I try to keep all things simple.

 

Absolutely.

I do make a living from writing, recording, producing and mixing and I have a pretty minimal amount of plugins compared to a lot of people I see on forums and YouTube.

I've got the stock plugins from my DAW. The three waves CLA compressors, couple of Softube EQ plugins and the IK sunset sound reverb and Valhalla Delay, and Decapitator. That's all I have for mixing. I've never really found myself stuck and needing anything else and I work on music every day. I know exactly what everything does and can work efficiently. I couldn't imagine having hundreds and hundreds of plugins.

But I guess there's people who have many plugins and have use for them. So it's really down to the user.

 

yup, just do it

 

"Problem recognized - problem solved"

Proceed strategically:

For example, create 3 folders:
- My VSTi (Virtual Software Synthesizer) 2024
- My VST (FX) 2024
- My Samples (WAV) 2024

Ask yourself the following question:
Which Virtual Software Synthesizer (VSTi) and which Effects FX (VST) do I use every day and which Samples (WAV) do I actually need?
- Before you delete, back up all the files you are currently working with.

- Imagine that the Internet goes down completely and you no longer have access to downloads.
- Save all the treasures you have on, for example, a second or external hard drive. If you ever need something, you have a backup.

Imagine a library where you go in and see the entire collection of human knowledge in the form of books. You won't be able to read all the books, so you choose which books you want to read. That's how the internet is today too, it's a collection of every plug-in, sample and preset that has ever been invented.

The amount of data increases every day and so does the selection. Since you only have a limited lifespan, you will have to make a selection. Imagine you are in the supermarket, what do you buy? You buy what you need and actually food.

 

I deleted a load of mastering plugins and I'm still working through to stick to what I have bought and I even think that's still too much, I think the long term issues with using the sister site is not knowing when to stop and get what you "need" dont look back till you have learned it and have hit a road block with your current tools, its very easy to start as a producer and end up a plug in collector in todays age by being sucked into YT reviews and easy availability on the sister site or that was the story for me at least and all of which takes you from the core of what got you into music, you didn't dream of using fancy DAWs and GUI's you dreamt of the feeling of making music and expressing yourself through a different medium, which seems to be another pay for play industry like gaming has become now

leave music alone for a while and live some life and when you feel the bug come back jump back at it, delete and block out anything that is a distraction, plugins / social media and just enjoy!

 

The best way to avoid too many plugins is to identify what actual needs you have, choose the best plugin for that task (may even be stock DAW plugin) and delete the rest. Anything that annoys you in terms of workflow: gone.

 

Back when splice was a place to host projects they had a cool feature that showed you your most used plugins on all your projects.

kinda gave me a way to see what I really needed and didn’t. I’m sure you could run a personal audit the same way.

also is you start fresh make a new project and install the plugs you want accordingly.

As for samples loopcloud is my fave. It’s all your samples but you can make playlists/crates of the most used. Then you can dive in deeper if you need something else.

 

I think if you are just starting out learning everything, then you can have too much stuff. I think if you are disorganized, your machine can eventually start running poorly. You can have too much stuff. When individual menus have so many items they actually lag when you open them, you can have too much. So it's possible.

But it's often BS. You can have junk that you should have deleted because it is not any benefit to audio (low quality plugins). It's not "analysis paralysis" because you do not need to analyze every sample or plugin. Most people to run into this will do the same thing with half of their stuff deleted. Bad workflow does not start with "too many options".

It's a less offensive way to say it to someone, or to tell yourself; that you are not all that great at this yet. If it makes you feel better to tell yourself that you have too much stuff, have fun deleting stuff. But it's very likely not your real problem.

 

I thought about deleting everything, but in the end I just downdgraded to 4gb of ram, and now I can only load 3 plugins before running out of memory, so that fixed that. If I have more problems, I'll probably downgrade to a single core cpu..

 

Two weeks ago i updated my nvidia gfx driver resulting in a corrupted system that wouldnt boot up and long story short my only option was to wipe the pc.

After doing so and then reinstalling everything "Live 12, plugs etc etc"
Ive made a point of not reinstalling what i know i wont actually ever use, whittling my plugins list down from 500 plus plugins to just my goto ones, bout a list of 20 not including fx suites or bundles>

Point being, is that at first i viewed the whole operation as a chore!
I now realise that it was the best thing to happen to me as i procrastinate constantly choosing what plug to use
Now ive eliminated those pointless choices "Plugs i dont ever use">
"I find my workflow and in fact everything related to my programming style to have been made a tonne easier now ive not got a ridiculously long list of pointless plugins cluttering both my pc and my brain!!