I did, and I agree with 99% of your post. But you should also remember there are people who just want these different plugin synths just to play. Personally, I delete almost every Standalone Application version of any virtual instruments. I think you are forgetting about these users, because i am reminded of them every time I go delete another standalone.

 

Its totally individual dependent for sure.
I think its more of a warning if you find yourself hoarding stuff and do not make musical progress for years. That is a problem.

Its like any other mania, a distraction that makes you happy and releases endorphins cheaply. Like a drug. One joy is the result of simple consumption well below our threshold for any major effort, and the other of seeing results after methodical work.

But its all individual dependent and character dependent. Different people different situations obviously. Its just a heads-hp, you want to be a musician, you dont need to be perfect and know it all but you need to focus on grasping song construction however basic I believe. That is where the effort should be, finishing songs, one after the other until your brain starts to understand what a song or track is made of.

its not rocket science but takes effort and consistency to be able to have a mental picture of what we want and then be able to make our own path and then be able to break the rules but break rules intentionally, not randomly wondering why our brain hurts and "we" cant finish or extend/develop our songs the way we would like to.

 

Last edited: Dec 8, 2023

I update my Waves plugins whenever a new release comes out, and never use them.

 

There's an analogy to be made here with art. An artist will mix different colours from a restricted set of colours because they understand how to create new colours from what they have. They mix a certain colour for a painting and the painting itself dictates the shades and hues needed. In the music world this is akin to making your own synth or eq and other plugin presets on the fly, as you need them, sonically shaping them to the music. Imagine an artist who doesn't know how to mix their own colours, they would probably have a room full of palettes and spend most of their time hunting for colours that seem to fit the painting, even though it never really quite fits - the colour ends up dictating how the painting looks and not the other way around. To complete the analogy, many of us in the music world spend much of our time searching for the perfect preset for a particular piece of music and it never quite fits and ends up dictating the overall sound. Like Ikea kit builders let loose with a carpenter's bag, we have no idea what tools do what or how, why and when to use them.

 

No matter how many software VST's you have in your collection, small or large, just remember, you can never have too much cowbell

 

Good comparison, also like a chef that is all the time cleaning, and classifing stuf, but never have time to start a new dish.
Why there is no 2TB 3TB... SSD copied and ready to go for mac and windows w/ all stuff? Is the same as big BUNDLEs out there, but definitevely a work in common

 

Here you go...

https://plugins4free.com/plugin/332/

 

Actually, under Ableton Live now, a solution might be to only keep those for which a VST wrapper has already been released.
https://isotonikstudios.com/product-category/maxforlive/vat-wrappers/

 

u become a vst collector when u read the comments. it's good to stay in your own world for the most part. i remeber when i never had an account for the other site... ignorance was truly blissful. i just downloaded vsts that looked cool to me and made music with them.

 

There is a huge mistake most people, self included have encountered at least once - OVERKILL..
This is not meant in the slightest derogatory manner. It is geared towards avoiding the headfuck of overloading ourselves with plugins to the point where we cannot remember which one we intended to use in the first place.

It simply means we collect these all singing and dancing plugins and for the most part, they are great. Then it comes to .....which 1178 manufacturer do we use? Which SSL bus do we choose... which?....which?....which?... etc etc
Fortunately, we do smarten up and end up with our own personal swiss-army-knife set.
These are the go-to plugins we know will work on most things. There is no one-size-fits-all but there are several plugins that become reliable - to each one of us individuals i.e.

I know this to be true...because we do learn from our mistakes... sometimes not as quickly as we should...learning the hard way often means we never forget

 

Beautiful..... haha proper made me chuckle...

 

It's the equivalent of collecting stamps. I'll probably stop once I hit 12TB of them..Unless I get another drive..

 

That's a really great way of describing it.

This goes in line with what John Hanes was saying in the GS thread about how he and Serban Ghenea work. They know what they want to achieve when mixing and then use the tool that is capable of it. An interesting result of that philosophy is their main tool is the MetricHalo Channelstrip, which is 15+ years old and often can be bought for $30. Hanes said there's nothing particularly great about it - they could use something else, it's just something they're very familiar with and can get the results they want very quickly because they know it well.

Something worth trying, and I'm trying to do this, is when creating a track don't just randomly flick through presets hoping to find one that will work. Step back and think, "What will work here? What do I want?" Imagine that sound or rhythm and then use the tools you have to create it. In that way, you're developing a vision that is independent of what tools you have. I find this difficult to do as I've always been a flick-through-the-presets person but I think with practice this skill develops. I also think once you get in the mindset of knowing what you want, the need to get more plugins probably decreases.

Everyone has their own way and process so I'm not suggesting there is a right way or anything. Just suggestions that may or may not work for other people.

 

Never mind learning to listen, when you get to my age your ears just aren't good enough to hear the kind of subtle distinctions that younger people rave about.

It''s been killing me, watching all those acustica audio plug-ins get released, but I really don't need a million EQ's, channel strips and compressors. I'm going to start deleting stuff and stop hoarding the new stuff that comes out.

That said, I had to grab those Moogerfooger plug-ins that were released today. My ears aren't *that* bad.

 

besides this topic, i do this thing where i decide i'm gonna learn an application of mine top to bottom by digging
into some of the thousands of instructional vids i've hoarded beginning to end and put in the hours per day, every day. but after a couple sessions, i drop it. then many months later when i try to do it again, i gotta go back to the beginning to relearn what i've forgotten in the interim. rinse repeat ad nauseam

 

Last edited: Dec 7, 2023

My ears feel like they've been stuffed with cotton and it isn't as fun to listen to music anymore. My acoustic guitars seem to have lost their sheen and tinnitus might just be beginning to drive me bonkers with it's constant onrush of zizz. Youngsters, keep that volume low and don't stand next to the drummer batting away. Hearing loss is a big suck.

 

Ah.....G.A.S. It started decades ago. First it was guitars, amps & stompboxes. Then it was live & studio audio hardware & computers. Then it was DAWS & VST plugins. Thankfully, in my spare time I was able to play many live gigs, and record myself and other arists live and in the studio. If you haven't been able to do that while feeding your addiction.....you should probably join a 12 step program. I hear that works for some people......LOL!!

 

No. the problem is that they think they can do that; because they see other people be able to, or so they may think. The actual reason for that is because people sell ghost written tracks to people who do not know sh*t about production. Or even get them handed to them by an older friend or relative. " This is my 12 year old brother's record, can you believe that?" No, I can't. F*ck off.

 

To me, if it weren't for the plugins, I wouldn't be making music at all. See, many years ago I used to make demos. I didn't care about mixing because I figured, that's something else, my interest is in composing, arranging and producing. But I couldn't find any outside help and just moved on from music making in general. It was only this year that I found out about analog emulations of effects and virtual instruments that actually sound good and allow me to make the music I've always dreamed of making. Now I finally expect to have something released by the end of next month.