[This topic is not intended for arguments and conflict.]

Short story: I plan to upgrade the system soon, and it will be time to build a workspace from scratch. And I realized that with the new installation, about half of the plugins I currently have installed will be useless. And I'm not just talking about software from sister site, also some of my licensed plugins. As it turned out, I don't even need many plugins from various large companies.

And now to the topic itself.

Please share your experience. Which plugins that were once very important to you have now become unusable? What have you learned over the years of using different types of soft? Which plugins have been with you for many years?

 

At this point my two most used plugins are UVI Falcon and Shade. Falcon for sound sourcing and Shade for mixing / processing. Im using Sparkverb and Relayer for reverb and delay. Ozone for mastering. Thats pretty much all I use at this point.

I love utilitarian plugins, so Shade in particular is my swiss army knife. Apart from all the other stuff it can do, I use it as my main eq, compressor, limiter, panner, m/s processor, and lfo tool. Would love to see some comprehensive stereo imaging features added in a future update.

If I didnt have so many older projects using other plugins, these would be the only ones I'd have installed on my system.

 

How accurately you noticed that moment!

Stock plugins are highly underrated. They do their job

 

I build a new rig in spring/summer time to replace a ~11yo one and I was used to think "My new rig will have more less VSTs"
I was wrong, +500 VSTs again 'cause of old projects too, even avoiding to instali a lot of them which were seldon used or not used at all
I'm stuck in a loop and I suppose not the only one

So... chosing what you have to install depends on what you have done and what you are going to do

 

Everything I've installed makes sense; bad, unusable, or faulty plugins are deleted immediately after testing. I saved everything I installed in a folder called "VSTi / VST for Windows 11" so that reinstalling is faster and eliminates the need to search for or download anything again. In 2000, the installation took 3 days; in 2025, it will take 2 weeks.

 

Perhaps the opposite?

 

If you only need 3 plugins = 1 day
If you need 1500 plugins = 2 weeks