LEGEND:

*** = “I have enough experience with this plugin company to know that EVERYTHING they make is FIRE”



Logic Pro X Bitcrusher

***Acustica and NEBULA (3rd party Tim Petherick, Cupwise, AlexB, etc.)

Airwindows has some great stuff. Requires some digging though lol, he has hundreds of plugins.

AOM Invisible Limiter Series

Antares Auto-Tune

BABY Audio Smooth Operator

***Black Rooster Audio

Blue Cat Patchwork

Cableguys HalfTime + ShaperBox

Cradle The God Particle

***Cytomic

***D16

DDMF Magic Death Eye

DDMF Metaplugin

DDMF Plugindoctor

Denise Audio Motion Filter / The Sweeper

***DMG Audio

***FabFilter

Fuse Audio Labs + Goodhertz both have some cool stuff

***HOFA

IK Multimedia TRackS (many amazing plugins)

iZotope Ozone

iZotope RX

Kazrog True Iron

***Klanghelm

Kush Audio UBK-2

***Melda

***Native Instruments

Noise Ash MOTONE

***Nuro Audio

***oeksound

Overloud Gem Dopamine + EQP

***Plugin Alliance (everything, ESPECIALLY by ADPTR/BX/Elysia/Lindell/Maag/Neold/Shadow Hills/SPL/Vertigo

***Pulsar Modular (steep learning curve to their stuff tho imho)

***Sinevibes

SirAudioTools Standard Clip

Softube has some great stuff

SOUNDTHEORY, SOUNDTOYS, SSL - all fire

TBPRO, TDR, TONEBOOSTERS - all fire

***u-he

***UAD

***VALHALLA

***Voxengo

Waves has some great UTILITY plugins

***Wavesfactory

XFER + XLN



Acustica/Nebula and FabFilter are top 2 for me. Also Plugin Alliance. So that's my top 3. And i use DDMF literally every day. But ya gotta be careful with Metaplugin, it's super steep learning curve and you kind of NEED plugindoctor as well in order to learn how to wield it properly. Not to mention you may also need to bounce "Realtime" instead of "Offline".

 

Last edited: Oct 4, 2024

I will add:
Slate plugins full bundle subscription..is what i have in studio with all SSL plugins recently added in the SS bundle and already in the top list..

btw a lot of value money on software.

 

Nobody's mentioned it yet: Lindell ChannelX on Superior Drummer.

 

everything is god tier if you know how to use/apply it in context.

but for me:
synths:
Korg both the wavestate/opsix/modwave series as the collection series M1/Wavestation/Triton
TAL all of them(!)
GForce all of them(!)
Arturia SQ80 / Minifreak V /E-mulator2 /Prophet VS / CZ V /CMI / Synclavier
OPS-7

fx:
audiority all the mod fx + pyros
eventide all the clockworks fx
uad you know which
softube mutator, fix series, tape and dirty stuff
sinevibes superweird and superfun
kuassa all the modfx, I am not into guitar amp/drive-shit
nembrini (shimmer/phazevbe/delay3000)
valhallaDSP verbs/delay/shimmer
Relab Rev6000/Quantx/LX480/Ace/Sonsig revA

mixing: sonnox envolution
SSL BC2 4KE X-Limit
TC electronic MD4HD VSS4HD fixed all my 2bus GAS
MBS/MH mixhead

 

You basically have all Relab plugins??? For me, their prices right now are just too high. I think buying just one LX480 is close to UAD Studio Edition on sale (which would include a different, but still a Lexicon 224 emulation and 30 other high-quality emulations). I really like the way Relab stuff sounds (I have Sonsig Rev-A & LX-480 Essentials), but do you think they are really worth it?

 

its what i use next to the wave alchemy reverbs (forgot those)
I bought the essentials version of the quantx and rev6000 btw, do not need all those options that trigger my OCD from the big versions
Also Soundbetter Butterfly is awseome for ambient reverbs

 

Ah, you beat me to Sausage Fattener...

 

Has anybody mentioned Nebula?

 

Hornet Plugins
Tokyo Dawn
Valhalla
Maschine

Im good.

 

Kontakt
Serum
Fabfilter Pro-Q3
Reso
Saturate
Airwindows Consolidated
Spacecontrol


You can do a whole production not only more than sufficiently, but efficiently with these plugins.

 

solid. I would swap out Reso for Soothe, and Serum for Pigments, (although its a hard choice really) and add Nebula. Consolidated has brought a brand new life to Air windows. Really and endless suite of plugins. Some are bad, some are pointless, but many are great.

 

those wave alchemy verbs are stellar. priced more than fair as well, especially when on sale.

 

Aren't they just impulse responses with a nice interface and some additional options like filter?

 

I looked at the product info and manual for Glow. They say it uses a Hybrid Convolution/ DSP mix. Their marketing and manual do not "upsell" the unit based on "hybrid convolution/dsp" comments at all. They mention the complex stuff going on under the hood, in the marketing.

So what do you think?

 

That list is supposed to be bare bones. IMO, Nebula is on the list of nice to haves, but not necessary. Soothe is nice, but not as surgical as Reso. The workflow is a little more straight forward in Serum vs Pigments (though I do like Pigments). I use other plugins additionally to the ones I listed of course, but if I had to give everything up except those, I could get the job done efficiently and beautifully.

 

Tone Projects ( especially Michelangelo and Unisum)
Vertigo (not the PA stuff)
VarietyofSound - Free
Airwindows - Free
Klanghelm
Mixwave (especially the CA-70s)
ApulSoft
UAD
Apogee Pultec and Opto-3A
Tim Petherick (everything is worth looking for), Cupwise (his AX102 tape, M-EQ, Cuptones and reverbs/delays) and some of AlexB (SSL 4000 Console and Brown/Black EQ)
TDR (Arbiter is insane)
Goodhertz (especially Tupe)
VoosteQ (Model N is very good)
Louder Than Liftoff SIlver Bullet MK2
Three-Body Technology (Deep Vintage is the future when it comes to analog mojo ITB)
Looking for AnalogxAI new's Genesis plugin once it will be released.

 

This is a great list.

 

DMG TrackComp2

 

Ya know, I forgot about Klevgrand. I don't suppose that anything they make is indispensable but it's all very unique and cool and certainly extremely groovy to have around when you want something like that.