i was looking through this thread trying to remember all the different plugins I've had the pleasure of trying and possibly forgotten about & slayer was definitely up there as one of the worst sounding ones. It did have some practical uses for Goa type stuff from the 90s but yeah god that plugin really did sound like shit.

Either way, just so I can add something to this

...I can think of the worst wavetable I've ever used & that's that yoi wavetable in Massive. There was like a 3 month period where every new dubstep producer & their mother was using it for bass patches. Dark times indeed!

 

Last edited: Feb 6, 2020

Back on topic:
A few years back I stopped using Waves stuff to master a track, having been a habit for over a decade, & just used TDR Nova and Kotelnikov GE, and Limiter 6 to finish.
For some reason, all those tracks still sound good to me. I love these plugins.
Nice to hear Dan Worrall also uses the word 'colour', as I do, in this vid! I know certain people here laugh at me and say the word doesn't mean anything, but at least I'm in good company! lol. I know what I mean!

 

In these days when it's so easy to stubbornly refuse to be wrong, I'm redeeming myself.
@Smoove Grooves, I was wrong with the bad-assest thing. Although I've seen it somewhere I searched for it and baddest is way more used.

Ironically, guess where I most recently saw it:


Enjoy the win... I'm not that humble usually...

 

Among the commercial plugins, I think the worst "virtual instrument" I've ever bought, as well for its sounds as for its GUI, was Sampletank 2.5. It is probably one of the best competitors for the worst virtual instruments league. And also you burned your eyes trying to read the lists on the panel, lists of blue letters on mid-blue background or of red letters on mid-red background, all that in a tiny interface.

One of the worst commercial synths I ever tried was Poly-ANA, not for its sounds (which were not really bad but not really good either) but for its incredible GUI which is the best one to give a memorable headache. Building a patch on this GUI is a nightmare.

The worst sounding commercial synth I ever tried is probably Stratum, by Sonivox. Certainly the champion in highly expensive synths. Some of the most memorable ugly sounds I ever heard in my life. And for a price which is not given. Within less expensive synths you have also Einklang, by Eisenberg. I had never heard such crappy sounds. Even Lo-Fi synths ring as Hi-Fi in comparison. These two synths are probably ex-aequo on the highest step of the podium. I would give another mustard medal for Twist, from Sonivox again. This "spectral morphing synthesizer" morphed between the sound of a vacuum cleaner and the sound of a percussion drill passing by the sound of a coffee grinder.

One of the worst sounding commercial guitar gear I ever used is Guitar Rig. I can't understand how such "things" can be so popular. It has not bad effects (not especially awesome either) but it has the worst amps I ever heard in commercial plugins. Compared to some incredibly good sounding free guitar plugins (Emissary, ToneLib GFX, etc.) Guitar Rig is a joke, highly overpriced. My usual gear is a Boss GP10-GK multi-effect (& amp) pedal which is expensive indeed, but which deserves its price, and a VOX-VTX modelling amp (same price as Guitar Rig) and it's another league! And when I want to use my guitar on the DAW via a plugin I now use the new paid version of ToneLib GFX, quite cheap in price but way, way, way better than Guitar Rig in quality. It's the day and the night.

The worst piano I ever tried was the Dorian Marko Piano. Absolutely impossible to make it sound as a true piano. And true pianos have been my life since 1965. Even as freeware I don't think I would keep it.

 

Last edited: Oct 6, 2022

Twist is as basic-sounding as it gets, don't make it seem awesome.

 

W.A. Production - Babylon v1.0.0 VSTi = Great GUI - Bad Sound

 

the real question, which I guess has already been answered in the pages I didnt read is, which one doesnt sound like donkey total dung? I could swear most new plugins are getting worse by the second

 

VST3 sucks! Oldskool plugins rule! Remember this one

 

Oh man, you made my day

 

https://archive.org/details/HGFortune-FortuneCookie-2012/Fc-01-aNightCookie.mp3

 

you can tell I'm a masochist, I saw Dorian Marko Piano and now I have to know what it sounds like. maybe I can incorporate it into a stalker anomaly song lol.

I'm downloading the Osiris, I've seen you guys mention it multiple times. the one nice thing I own is a 5800x amd, we'll see how that goes.

 

Hartmann Neuron. worst plugin ever made.

 

A Few Hartmann Neuron Sounds

 

I didn't know this synth, but I think that it is probably an excellent synth made for experimentation more than for music and these weird sounds seem to be deliberate.

 

Axel Hartmann went bankrupt with his Neuron in 2006.

http://neuron.audiodsp.net/Neuron_Interview_Axel_(H.264).mp4

 

I used to have the original Neuron VST package and then the free version running on my G5 later. It's a fun if fiddly sound-design synth if you want to lose a few days making original sounds. But it's not a useful production tool that's reliable and offers normal sounds. I love it but it's unstable and a resource hog.

That's where my criteria split for what makes audio software bad. Workflow, reliability, and sound can have their own balance. Most of my worst I barely remember, because those are plugs that crashed instead of being sonically useless.

 

radium released it, no? it was memory leaking or some other problem. 100% horrible. The working synth is a different matter. They are like the price of an Ensoniq Fizmo now. (or whatever craziness). Anyway, as @ArcticStorm mentioned, the plugin and the software problems people had with it, earn it a spot of dishonor in the thread.

It's not the same as the average failure of a plugin. it was a plugin with hardware, a joystick, a story, and hype. you see a lot of fly-by-night stuff in audio. but that one is up there with the greats. Like Fyre Festival with keys

 

Last edited: Oct 13, 2022