Plugin Madness

Some people collect stamps, others garden gnomes, and those who indulge in audio technology easily fall prey to plugin madness. According to the latest listing by KVRaudio, there are currently over 3,400 plug-ins, including 393 compressors, 264 EQs, 242 delays and 152 multi-effect devices, just waiting to finally land on our hard drive.

But do we really need such a large selection and more than two equalizers, a few compressors and three or four multi-effects in everyday life? There are plenty of possible reasons for this collecting mania:

Newer is better

Hardly a month goes by without some trade magazine introducing a new "ultimate-never-before-seen" plugin and rating it as stunningly good. What was hot yesterday is hopelessly outdated today and can be deleted directly from the hard drive.

Expensive is better

Let's be honest, a plugin for free? Can't be any good. Proper software simply has to cost something. The higher the price, the more professional the result. In addition, you can rub your friends' noses in what you can afford and what they can't.

More beautiful is better

Yes my God, how horrible does that look? And you work with it? How ugly! That can't sound good at all. Here, quickly take this plugin, look how pretty everything glows and is animated funny colorful. You can adjust everything by eye and don't have to listen anymore.

Third party producers are better

When you buy a sequencer like Logic or Cubase, you can't expect high-quality effects for the little money you spend. They are mostly just dazzle and should always be replaced by good third-party alternatives. Because if the EQ plugin already costs as much as the whole program, it simply has to be better.

Collect collect collect

Without the following collection of plugins (street price around 10,000 euros) you should not dare to leave the house today. There are: Waves Studio Classic Collection, Lexicon PCM Native Reverb, Penguin Meter, Sonnox Elite Pack, Audioease Altiverb, Brainworx Bundle, Lawo Plugins...

The fallacy

Let's get a little more serious again. In fact, with plugins it's like buying a car, you're not buying the actual product, but a (life) feeling:

"joy of mixing".

The only thing that changes when you switch from brand A to B is you. However, only the emotional side and not the technical skills. At least it's an incredibly satisfying feeling to spend money on new (useless) toys.

This is the right way:

- Even though common sense will fail in the end, I would like to briefly point out the things that really matter when choosing a plugin.

- Use plugins that are intuitive to use and bring fast results.
- Don't expect miracles from new effects, if they differ only in nuances
- Limit yourself to a few tools that you know perfectly well

- The quality of the included DAW plugins is generally very high. The only reasons to buy new ones are missing features or bad handling.

- For a lot of money you often get very little added value. Freeware and cheap bundles are hardly inferior to the expensive ones.

- Last but not least: already 10 years ago you could make ingenious music with the plugins of that time. Technicians from the "analog era" would have been happy to have a workstation with internal plugins from 2005.

- If the mix doesn't sound right again, the problem is usually in front of the plug-in.

Source: https://13db.de/wissen/pluginwahnsinn/