This one is on my very short list of "get to know inside and out" ...any tips or insights to share?

 

You should check out Klanghelm TENS, up there with Primavera if not slightly over taking it for me. It's all AKG springs, slightly different sound. Can go very short with the timings which is sick.

 

Arbiter is one of the greatest plugins of all time. Insane.

His new SSL AI brown and black are my new go-to's

Very powerful tool, well worth learning.

 

Thanks for the heads up, I'll try it.

 

Maat plugins. Can't use them at all for music.
But they're so fuckin' CPU intensive they are my go-to for stability test when I overclock my CPU

Spoiler

 

Last edited: May 21, 2025

PSP Pianoverb
I used it in a metal mix on a bland synthetic choir with good results. Generously blended, it added a lot of resonances, making it bigger, wider and deeper without feeling too 'reverberated'. I had tried Pianoverb aeons ago, when it first came out, without being impressed. Two years ago, I stumbled on a fresh release on the sister site and the idea of using emulated vibrating strings to pump some life into this flat synth suddenly appeared. And it worked. I used several instances with different transposition values.

 

PSP have made great plugins for a long time. If they weren't so tiny on an enormous modern monitor, i'd probably still use lots of the old ones. PSP Vintage Warmer was on everything when it first arrived.

 

The preset will not help you at all.
in the main windows you have an option DYN/TRANS which let you be more or less in Dynamic mode or transient mode. In transient mode keep the attack full open ( to let the transient thru) in dynamic put the attack fully close to chop a chunk of the material if that make sens.
start by using one band (hpf or bpf) ratio infinity range 24 db , and play with the treshold. The delta (diff) is your friend.

 

Ableton stock plugins. After having and testing gazillion of plugins (including all kind of weird KVR free plugins) I surprisingly for myself rediscovered Ableton stock plugins. And by grouping and assigning macros there really are no limits to what can be achieved with them.

Imagine my reaction when I found that Ableton filter is cleaner than Fab Filters Here's a test - put a distortion after the filter and then slowly open it up, there will be audible phase smearing in FabFilter and no smearing with Ableton (clean mode, other modes introduce audible artifacts in certain positions, but the clean mode is literally clean all that while not being linear phased)

Or Drum Buss, there is no drum loop out there that won't sound better by applying it. Can be used as a buss compressor in general but on drums particularly it's just killing it.

 

PSP Wobbler is a cool modulation effect. It gives a nice 70s vibe. Not a vital plug in, but it really adds something on the right source. It is more useful and interesting than what I expected. With a fast rate, it brings surprising results.

 

Ableton's built-ins are great for sure. Now that you mentioned it the improved Autofilter in 12.2 is a total killer. Follow that up with Roar for some saturation and it's something else.

 

I can probably substitute any plugin I own with something else, so I'm not sure anything really fits the full criteria..

But as far as being surprised, I would say Audiority and Safari's "pedal" plugins probably I went in expecting to not care and ended up really impressed by both.

On the note of something I use all the time on every song.. SSL Native Bus Compressor. But that's probably the boring answer. Haha

 

Rob Papen Punch2. my friend was using it and at first i was roasting it for how ugly the GUI was but after i watched him use it for a bit, i was sold - i havent found a drum plugin like it, definitely the best sequencer ive used also, so easy to set up varied sequences. the sound design options and the ability to use them with samples is cold asf too

i do wish they would update the GUI still but the sequencer + sound design options are the best ive seen in a drum plugin so far in life. havent found anything to easily replace it since