must have plugins

[Ingonator]

OK, if you are really interested here is a list of plugins that over the years and also recently (after owning + testing tons of plugins and also having sold a lot of them) turned out to be essential for me:

- Waldorf PPG Wave 3.V
- Tone2 Saurus 2
- Tone2 Icarus (currently in Beta)
- Waldorf Largo
- Waldorf Nave
- Tone2 Rayblaster
- Xils Lab Syn'X 2
- Xils Lab Oxium
- U-He Diva
- Korg Wavestation
- UVI Falcon
- NI Monark
- KV331 Audio Synthmaster 2.7
- NI FM8
- Arturia Matrix-12V


UPDATE:
A list of my favorite FX plugins:
Waves OneKnob Phatter, Waves Renaissance EQ, Waves H-Comp, Waves H-Delay, ValhallaVintageVerb, ValhallaÜberMod, ValhallaPlate, Lexicon MPX NAtive Reverb, ArtsAcoustic Big Rock Phaser

[tehlord]

I'm going to leave my list here, and my opinion is best because I beta test, sound design, are mates with the dev and/or just plain know more than you.

Just like everybody here.

[chk071]

Ones must haves are the others least haves.

[Ingonator]

LIke expected eveytime someone start a "Best Of" or "Favorite plugins" thread some members start joking about this including starting new threads like this:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 1&t=456845

[fedexnman]

LIke expected eveytime someone start a "Best Of" or "Favorite plugins" thread some members start joking about this including starting new threads like this:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 1&t=456845

[JonSolo]

Being that the topic is "must have plugins" and not "must have synths" (which is just like favorite synths etc) I actually am going to share my thoughts (and doesn't this topic belong in a different section like Eveything Else Music?). Though I have tons of plugins, I could probably slim to just these and still make music with ease.

NI Kontakt- very versatile because of the plethora of sample libraries available for it. From synths to orchestral to guitar...Just fantastic! Probably makes it to every track I make.
Fabfilter Pro Q2- Just a beautiful EQ with enough information feedback to really help you dial in where you want to be. It is on every track I make.
Fabfilter Pro L- A great limiter that helps me bring up my tracks and even assists in the "glue" that holds them together. Very transparent too.
NI Maschine 2- Though it can be a separate entity, I use it, albeit painfully, as a plugin. It has thick rich drum and FX samples, is easy to program, and holds all of my percussion in one place. Though I am really starting to like Groove Agent, this is still my goto drum machine.
Spectrasonics Trilian- Best bass plug I have found and it makes it to many of my productions.
XLN Addictive Drums 2- A lovely drum plug with lots of great patterns in case my drum fingers grow tired or boring. It is my main drums in pop arrangements.
Rob Papen RP-Verb- Just starting to really dig the sound of this reverb. I am waiting to see how u-he does with their reverb, and the NI reverbs were a little long in the mouth for me. This one is great though I get strange behavior and have had a few lockups with it. Does not stop me from using however.
Waves RVox- It just works. I use it on most every vocal track.

[ariston]

LIke expected eveytime someone start a "Best Of" or "Favorite plugins" thread some members start joking about this including starting new threads like this:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 1&t=456845

I heard that Aldi is having a sale on a "sense of humour" neural plugin next week.

[AnX]

OK, if you are really interested here is a list of plugins that over the years and also recently (after owning + testing tons of plugins and also having sold a lot of them) turned out to be essential for me:

- Waldorf PPG Wave 3.V
- Tone2 Saurus 2
- Tone2 Icarus (currently in Beta)
- Waldorf Largo
- Waldorf Nave
- Tone2 Rayblaster
- Xils Lab Syn'X 2
- Xils Lab Oxium
- U-He Diva
- Korg Wavestation
- UVI Falcon
- NI Monark
- KV331 Audio Synthmaster 2.7
- NI FM8
- Arturia Matrix-12V

So, even tho you have only had it for a few weeks, icarus is already 'essential' to you?

How did you manage before?

[TheNickC]

Harmor
Sytrus
ZebraHZ

FL's best synthesizers because I use note slides and per note stuff a lot, it's one thing that keeps me using FL even if certain parts of it's workflow are clunky and getting worse with every new version. ZebraHZ covers almost anything else synthesis, and the Zebrify effect is nice to have too.

Aside from stock effects in FL or Renoise and Zebrify, AXP Flextron is the one effect that I use everywhere. Best free amp sim I've heard, it's stereo, and it doesn't blow up my CPU like a lot of the synthedit ones I've seen recommended in the past.

[Ingonator]

[
So, even tho you have only had it for a few weeks, icarus is already 'essential' to you?

How did you manage before?

Because i got enough experience to not need a year to see that a certain synth is great. Besides that i had spent a lot of time with it around the last 2 months (not just a few weeks...) doing both testing and sound design. I love both the sound and features included with it.

Both sound and feature wise at the moment i do not see other plugins that could fully replace it. It's not just another wavetable synth, at least for me and i had used almost any wavetable softsynth available (at least as a demo version and additionally also some hardware wavetable synths). This does not mean that other wavetable synths are bad in comparison (especially concerning sound quality), they are just different and mostly do not include the same feature set.

[Ingonator]

LIke expected eveytime someone start a "Best Of" or "Favorite plugins" thread some members start joking about this including starting new threads like this:
http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/viewtopic ... 1&t=456845

I heard that Aldi is having a sale on a "sense of humour" neural plugin next week.

I noticed that based on this thread that seemed to be intended to be serious at least 4 new "fun" threads were started and that is no longer funny IMO, just another way of spamming of the Instruments forum...

Anyway as this is KVR this is exactly what i expected what would happen when someone starts a thread like this one.

[Meffy]

"must have plugins"

Me too.

[layzer]

M1, PG8X, OBXD, ELEKTRO2, CHARLATAN, SYNTH1, OXE, DUNE BE, MICROTERA, RMIV, POISE.

[AnX]

[
So, even tho you have only had it for a few weeks, icarus is already 'essential' to you?

How did you manage before?

Because i got enough experience to not need a year to see that a certain synth is great. Besides that i had spent a lot of time with it around the last 2 months (not just a few weeks...) doing both testing and sound design. I love both the sound and features included with it.

Both sound and feature wise at the moment i do not see other plugins that could fully replace it. It's not just another wavetable synth, at least for me and i had used almost any wavetable softsynth available (at least as a demo version and additionally also some hardware wavetable synths). This does not mean that other wavetable synths are bad in comparison (especially concerning sound quality), they are just different and mostly do not include the same feature set.

So its replaced a few things you used before? The question was, how did you manage before...you must have been using other stuff to make a replacement 'essential'

Just curious. Be interesting to know what it has replaced, and why.

[Sampleconstruct]

This thread is pure masochism.