Are 3rd party plugs becoming obsolete?

[SeePlusPlus]

we have chainers, loaders, virtual studios, audio editors,
who needs daws?
for tracks and volume knobs?
many plugs, (some standalone) can load other plugs

technically, anything 'can' become obsolete, but daws will go first

[pdxindy]

Bazille

Do you use that with bitwig?

Not yet

[hibidy]

I'll be interested to see what that Bazille thing is though.

[arkmabat]

Yep . Most hosts come with great plugins these days . Even Reapers reaplugins are great .. Especially the EQ .. The strategy of having third party plugins is you can use them with any host ...

Except Reason.

[pdxindy]

Yep . Most hosts come with great plugins these days . Even Reapers reaplugins are great .. Especially the EQ .. The strategy of having third party plugins is you can use them with any host ...

Except Reason.

Which shows it is not a real DAW

[SODDI]

Yes, that's why all the major DAWS are packed to the rafters with quality plugins like Diva, Reaktor, Kontakt, LUSH 101, SynthMaster, Omnisphere, Alchemy etc, etc.

Oh - they aren't? Well, there's another theory shot to shit.

Pretty soon that plug-in tail is gonna be waggin' that DAWg.

Plug-in sales must be approaching those of the major DAWs if they haven't exceeded them already.

[digitalboytn]

I really like the tools that come with Sonar X3 Pro - all of them very useful - and you can get great results using just the included plugins....

Pro Channel is a very powerful channel strip (especially with the extra SSL Gate and Compressor) and the saturator really adds a nice lift to the tracks...

The new tape emulator also sounds great - although a 30 ips option would be nice...

There's also the percussion and vocal strips - both very good - and the linear EQ, multi band compressor - my favourite MB comp - and a host of other great tools including Breverb 2...

All good stuff...

If I didn't already have the Nomad Factory ISP3,I would have been delighted to have picked up the Blue Tubes bundle with X3 Pro...

Many people turn their noses up at the NF stuff - but I find that they work great...

We're so bloody spoilt these days,it's absolutely ridiculous...

I still have too many toys in the toolbox,but I am slowly whittling them down to the ones I really use to get the results that I'm after...

I don't need to have gazillions of plugins to massage my ego....

I'd rather work on the music and on my mind

[Shabdahbriah]

I'll be interested to see what that Bazille thing is though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SbRSHlJVyE

Here

[whyterabbyt]

While I like to think that my music sounds better these days because I'm becoming a better musician, I realize that the current technology is probably the reason. The tools available today are nothing short of remarkable, and they just keep getting better.

In the chase for "better, cheaper, faster," devs have given us a ton of amazing options. And, to stay competitive, DAW devs have increasingly included this bounty in their flagship products. And not just 2nd rate stuff. More and more are spending money on quality development. And, where feasible, actually buying or licensing premium 3rd party products for inclusion.

I'm now a few weeks into using Cubase 7.5. As with all the previous upgrades to this DAW, I will, in all likelihood, only use a fraction of the features on offer. But I find more and more that I'm not throwing a heck of a lot of 3rd party stuff into my productions. In the past, where much of the included FX were merely "servicable," we now have options like Curve EQ and Magneto II included. REVelation has taken the place of my beloved CSR, and now sits nicely in the sends buss of every project. And where I used to use (and love) Alloy 2 on every track, the preset options on Cubase's new channel strip seem as infinite as they are useful. Dialing in the right sound is now dead simple.

And the sounds? Well, the SE version of HalionSonic never really got much of a reception from the critics, but the latest rendition is very useful. And coupled with a variety of FX presets, just about anything is possible. I've bumped up to HalionSonic2, and I find that I hardly go anywhere else now for much of my instrument choices. Likewise, the current version of Groove Agent, coupled with expanded kit content and midi patterns makes for a really nicely equipped beat playground.

In many ways, Cubase has had to play catch up ball with it's competitors, many of whom have stuffed their flagship DAWs with an amazing array of quality goods for years. But I really think it has now arrived, feature-wise.

Like many on KVR, I've been doing this for years, and have accumulated a frightening array of 3rd party instruments and FX. In many cases, I have 5 or 6 unique options for just about everything. But my purchases have slowed to a trickle these days--I really only buy upgrades/updates at this point for products I already own. And, if I were just starting out today, I really don't think I would buy much more than just Cubase, simply because I wouldn't NEED it.

Thoughts?

Cheers
-B

The quality of the bread-and-butter stuff shipped with DAWs has undoubtedly risen significantly, and if that's all you need, then they'll certainly suit.

However, from observation, the plugin market for more-off-the-wall stuff seems to be expanding, as does the market for plugins focussed on reproducing specific hardware gear, or their characteristics. Notwithstanding the fact that, eg for all the delay plugins Ive got, none of them have exactly the same feature set; they pretty much all have their own little quirks and USPs.

Personally, I dont buy into the 'less is more' thing myself, and because I like having a lot of choice and a lot of variation within a composition, even though I use hosts with quite a heavy spread of supplied plugins, I tend to rely on 3rd party stuff exclusively.

[holdebolder]

but i must admit with the original poster that you can have a saturation point at a certain moment. After a spending frenzy last year i'm feeling to have a saturation point for the moment due to the fact i can actually do what i want, and with the sound that i want. Lucky me and a good thing for my monthly budget!
But being on this forum and looking at all those updates and new things, i fear this saturated feeling won't last forever. Just quit making those superb synths and stuff... you all are tempting me...

[efluon]

Everything is better with Ubik!!

[BERFAB]

But being on this forum and looking at all those updates and new things, i fear this saturated feeling won't last forever. Just quit making those superb synths and stuff... you all are tempting me...

Well, that's just it. I still get GAS like everyone else. And like I said, over the years I've acquired most of the popular plugs discussed on KVR. So while I may TALK a good game about not really NEEDING anything else, I'll easily give in to the next shiny new thing that comes along.

But my original observation is that much of what I'm actually CHOOSING to use these days already resides in my DAW. I've noticed over the past couple of upgrade cycles that this was happening, but now, especially with Cubase's expanded FX options, I'm finding more and more that I'm getting excellent results (sound as well as workflow) with the included tools.

-B

[LawrenceF]

Observation: Plugins and daws changed the game completely, the perceptual price performance ratio for the tools.

Now you can spend $200 on a thing (a plugin) and use it 200 times in the same song. You couldn't really do that before. So now, some things that were deemed by some to be a relative ripoff cost wise (Neve's, API, SSL, whatever, where engineering and manufacturing costs and really high build quality were sometimes completely ignored in those perceptions), are highly valued as plugin emulations because they're way more affordable in that form. Everyone can have a Neve comp emu or a high level Lexicon verb now, for a few hundred bucks. And with a plug, if you have one, you have 1000, because they're infinitely reusable.

That's another really big reason why 3rd party audio plugs will never go away, because people will always make expensive audio hardware and other people will always want the digital emulations of that hardware. Whether the plugins actually sound the same is still up for debate. Suffice to say, most of us have never actually used most of that hardware so we don't really know either way.

But let's be honest here, UAD wouldn't have had nearly as much success if all of it's plugins were instead said to be modeled from Reaper plugins... even if it sounded exactly the same as it does now. The allure there is partly the branding, the emulation of hardware being used by those on the upper rungs.

[The Mantra]

You can make quality music with a lot of the 1st party daw stuff but it depends on your preference and what style of music you do and how good you are with sound design.

I can see people doing EDM and hip-hop without 3rd party stuff but i cant see people doing serious film scoring and video game music with 1st party plugins.

[Tricky-Loops]

I can see people doing EDM and hip-hop without 3rd party stuff but i cant see people doing serious film scoring and video game music with 1st party plugins.

Well, that's because of the mega-orchestrations of Hans Zimmer & Co. and the fact that serious film scoring still needs real instruments or at least GREAT samples of real instruments, not the loops in Magix Music Maker...

As far as I know, there isn't any DAW with included great orchestral libraries that could be used for soundtracks.