I have an overload of plugins ive bought through the years. Too much. If you were to keep your hiqhest quality workhorse plugins for each genre of plugin (comp, reverb , etc) what would you keep? The things you actually couldn't live without. Like a specific plate or convo reverb. ex .maybe a specific voxengo or dmg limiter? maybe logics stock eq?

I just tend to overthink about things (especially digitally) that would degrade the quality of what im intending. ex. adding saturation for coloring - the fear of aliasing etc.

My philosophy is great compositions and arranging can get you 90% of final master if done right.

Id rather have live instruments or the highest quality vst instrument with sonic options than all the decorative plugins in the world. So trying to weed out the bs and keep the top shelf bad boy workhorses

anyways kind of a shit post but if you know what im trying to say then Id love ur thoughts.

 

I had the very same problem when I first started out and wanted to learn and get better. I would go on to forums, watch videos and assume that I needed every single plugin out there and that's why my stuff didn't sound as good.

Damn was I wrong. I also tend to overthink things like crazy. So I did a few things to force me to stop.

Honestly, the best thing I did over the years was learn to use what I have and only what I have. So now, I ONLY use stock plugins for mixing and mastering, even when I do it for other people.

Let me tell you, the quality of my mixes and the ones I do for other skyrocketed. It forced me to focus on my skills and not worry about the tools. I also sometimes force myself to use a single sample pack, or a single synthesizer per track. Again, this is to force me to get creative, improve my skills and not waste time on things that don't matter all that much.

So the plugins I can't live without are the ones that are in my DAW (Ableton Live in my case).

 

Basics please or you end up an Hoarder!