Say you're broke...

[ghettosynth]

Still, you either didn't get the point of the question, or you are being difficult just because. I assume you have some commercial software.

You must be new here. I get the point of the question, it's a popularity contest. In another fifty pages we'll have seen all of the commercial reverbs as being "essential" to someone's workflow.

I have lots of commercial software, and plenty of hardware. I don't "need" any of it and, today, if someone is broke and wants to create music, then I don't think that they "need" any of it either.

If you take away the nonsense hypothetical that's trying to cast consumerism as need, then all you're left with is yet another take on "what's your favorite plugin?"

[martiu]

sorry but i have hundreds of dollars, not broke at all

[ghettosynth]

sorry but i have hundreds of dollars, not broke at all

That's enough for like 10 plugins!

[ahuman]

If you don't want to spend much money for making music, you better ignore the whole plugin game completely and invest one time in one of the many DAWs with a good collection of stock tools and settle with that. And then you need to learn how to archeive what you want with the tools you have. And if there is a specific reverb tone or synth sound, that you can't create with your tools... sample it from somewhere else.

[NikkiA]

Do people not know that Convology XT is free?

Yeah, totally free - except it isn't in the slightest.

Please don't misconstrue this as humoring your shitposting, but I'd like to hear your tortured logic as to how is it not free? You create a free account, request a free serial number, and insert it into the plugin and it does it's thing, freely.


You do not get all of the impulse responses for free, but neither would you expect to, everyone else sells expansion packs of IRs too for their non-free convolution plugins.

It accepts IRs in most common formats so you can use any free IRs you can get your hands on.

[mothra]

Only money I've put into Convology in the 4-5 years I've been using it was to buy one of their extra IR packs.. It comes with a shitload of IR's from all their packs already. You don't even need to put a dime into it.

[_leras]

What sort of music do you want to make? This would make a big difference.

Pretty sure something like sound forge is cheap if you just wanted to make sample based music.

[KBSoundSmith]

If broke...

• Reaper - $60
• free and stock plugins

$60 and done.

If, as a thought experiment, I was going to run only commercial software (no free or stock plugins allowed) while ruthlessly minimizing the total of money spent and total number of plugins, I'd get the following and buy only on sale or used (if possible)...

• Reaper - $60
• TDR Nova GE - $10
• Valhalla Ubermod - $40
• Bazille - $70
• TAL Sampler - $40

For a total of $220. If even more ruthless, drop Bazille, for a total of $150 (although that would be sad).

Alternatively, used Komplete ($200 - 250) and Reaper, for a total of $260 - 310.

[diroxe7660]

To flip this on its head, OTT and PaulXStretch are freeware plugins hardly anyone bothers finding commercial alternatives for because everything else just sounds too different from the ''originals''.

[ampetrosillo]

Still, you either didn't get the point of the question, or you are being difficult just because. I assume you have some commercial software.

You must be new here. I get the point of the question, it's a popularity contest. In another fifty pages we'll have seen all of the commercial reverbs as being "essential" to someone's workflow.

I have lots of commercial software, and plenty of hardware. I don't "need" any of it and, today, if someone is broke and wants to create music, then I don't think that they "need" any of it either.

If you take away the nonsense hypothetical that's trying to cast consumerism as need, then all you're left with is yet another take on "what's your favorite plugin?"

The idea was that it mustn't be a popularity contest. You see, if it were just "what's your favourite commercial plugin" then you would be right. But you see, your favourite commercial plugin doesn't necessarily mean a plugin you need if you must carefully choose what you want to spend your money on. For instance, I love M-Tron Pro, it's just so effortless to use, but I can easily make do with lots of free samples on the internet. Fabfilter Pro-Q 3 is a great EQ with lots of features, superior to even Nova probably, but I can make do with free Nova. But (especially at their price) Valhalla reverbs are just wonderful and it's very hard to make them sound bad.

[kidslow]

To flip this on its head, OTT and PaulXStretch are freeware plugins hardly anyone bothers finding commercial alternatives for because everything else just sounds too different from the ''originals''.

Sixth Sample Cramit eclipses Xfer's OTT in every way, while being free, and the paid Cramit PE takes it even further. They can be made to duplicate Ableton or Xfer OTT as well, if that's your thing. Sixth Sample's free plugins are first rate.

[Uncle E]

Presonus is announcing something in a couple of weeks that deals with this. Pretty much the ultimate just-starting-out solution + long-term solution. Probably worth waiting for if anyone's on the fence.

Someone should really make a synth with a proper Lexicon emulation in it, and make it work as an effect plugin. That would be the ultimate just-starting-out plugin.

[glokraw]

When Broke broke, Synth1, ProteusVX, Firebird, Surge, DecentSampler, Vital, Drumburst and MTPower drums, the IK, U-he, NI, and KV331 freebies, fed into the BlueCat free plugin collection, is a pretty nice pool to cool off in

[BBFG#]

what does broke mean ? (in your part of the world)

I was wondering the same thing. It always strikes me as disingenuous when someone who owns some fairly expensive bits of equipment (computer, audio interface, studio monitors), then cries poverty. I suspect what they’re really saying is, “I don’t feel like it’s worth supporting developers for tools that I can get for free, even if they’re a bit gimped in some way.”

The good news is, there are plenty of good free tools out there. IK is always doing some sort of group buy that brings the per plugin cost down to peanuts. Lots of people are selling used licenses for cheap.

A few scenarios come to mind.
1. Bankruptcy: and the court decides everything must be liquidated leaving you with your oldest computer and NFR licenses that can't be sold, but unfortunately can't be authorized either because of their age.
2. Divorce/Palimoney which is similar to the above except they're also watching what you're trying to do to replace them.
3. Asset seizure where someone made an accusation and everything was taken and even after they found it to be false, they only returned an earlier computer with nothing on it and the agent supervisor is now using your best stuff for themself.
4. Robbery where again, everything was taken, never to be seen again and in contacting the companies you find someone else had successfully reregistered your entire worth to them selves and they aren't allowed to tell you who that is.
And 4. Like Vurt, trying to help others.

I know by personal experience on at least two of these. And seen two of these happen on others.

It comes down to what "gets me through broke" then. So I have contemplated these as a must from time to time. I've been wondering about basic entry level DAWs as the instrument itself. Most don't include a lot at their entry level though. And I'm pretty settled on what freebies get me through without having to go through freebies wasteland now.

Of course, it's also talking about a PTSD emotional as well as a financial recovery. And I know many things I wouldn't waste another cent or moment on.

And being forced to start with smaller CPUs, RAM and the like, I would mostly look at efficient modelers for instruments. And if you've read enough of my posts elsewhere, you probably already know what that one thing is (and it has a built in recorder.)

[pekbro]

You could live in Hawaii like me. Im doing ok, but my previous $2.5k monthly disposable cash income is no longer disposable.