THE SH#T FACTOR - Plugs that blew you away the first time you heard them

[stvrsz]

Novation V-Station and Z3ta and in the Modern days it is Repro 1 and 5,Legend and Spire

Yes, V-Station was pretty incredible. I still use it from time to time. Thankfully, they put out a 64 bit version.

[stvrsz]

Oh good GAWD.....such typical BS.

Kudos to the OP for sharing the the initial joy, spark and wonderment. And to you KVRaryan nazi fanbois.....get a frigging life.

Thanks for understanding and reading the purpose of the forum rather than judging after reading one line or trying to turn in into a VS. poll like everything else on KVR. It is as if you can't love more than one synth. You have to pledge your life and loyalty to a company or plug. Why can't one enjoy MANY plugs. The KILLER stuff gets old too. Why does Sylenth1 have to be killed? It is a GREAT plug.

[JJ_Jettflow]

Omnishpere 2 (.5)

[SMH]

Poly-Ana was the first plugin that did it for me. Bass like nothing else at the time. More recently RePro & Obscurium have given me that wow factor ... honourable mention for impOSCar (altho it won't run on my current system).

Thank you for your reply! I have tried Poly Ana and it sounds Great! I found the interface a bit frightening.

It blew me away when I first heard it too and it still does!! So much bass and it sounds so 'there'!! There's different skins available stvrsz..... http://www.admiralquality.com/poly-ana-custom-skins/

A demo I made a little while back of PolyanaFX processing electric guitar input....

https://soundcloud.com/smh2600/admiral- ... b-on-strat

[Chemik]

I had all this hardware and had worked to program all of these sounds and then a bandmate hooked me up with Logic back around V3 for PC and I got to play with ES2. The whole world changed for me.

Over the many years and hundreds of vsts later, I would say the only other vst that really hit me when I started messing with it was Spire. Thanks to the OP who brought up Superwave P8. I own every synth by Superwave because P8 just did what it did so well back then.

[faxinadu]

- logic's es1 and es2
- novation v-station
- tassman 4

[do_androids_dream]

Nothing really (as I'm so used to the sound of good hardware). Sylenth was and still is impressive. The Nord Modular G2 software still sounds amazing for software - nothing has ever come close to it imo.

Actually, thinking about it - Bigtick Rhino had a wonderful hardware like sound and I always enjoyed listening to it. I remember a demo back on his old website - it was kind of a dub techno track - that blew me away as testimony to the sound of Rhino.

[SciFiArtMan]

OP, I'm quite a bit older than you, and the first time I heard a Roland D50 I was blown away. One afternoon I was supposed to be doing sales for my graphic design biz (I hate sales!), but stumbled into my local music store, and they had a D50 set up in the piano area (so idiot rockers like me wouldn't beat it to death on the guitar side). I grabbed my trusty Pioneer 305 headphones from my car and sat there in amazement for hours! Eventually one of the guitar-side guys came up and said I need to leave now, and I thought, "Sure, I've been here quite a while and probably overstayed my welcome", only to learn it was 5 hours later and now 9pm closing time.

For plugins, it was ReFX Nexus 2. The pads, the orchestral sounds, the pads, the natural sounds, and the pads just melted me. Sure it's just a ROMpler, but it has some mighty impressive layered sounds, IMO!

For softsynths, it was and still is U-He Zebra 2. The pads, and the sequences, the general synths sounds, and the somewhat unique (to my ears) sonic explorations are such a delight! Great for creating new sounds and modding others' patches too!

It's funny how in "the good ol' days" a synth was mostly a player's tool. You create a sound for a passage and then use the tool for the task at hand. Now, I can get lost for hours/days just creating and fine-tuning sounds, often at the expense of creating actual music. And this we call "progress"! Ha!

[Jafo]

Absynth, waaaaay back in the day. After all the Moogs, Oberheims and DX7s I grew up listening to in the '70s and '80s (the Beatles were still together when I was born!), it took a long time for software to do something that interested me. Honorable and fond mention to Crazy Diamonds, Ticky Clav and MrRay, though.

[digitalboytn]

There have been quite a few plugins that I have installed over the years with great expectations...

But the reality bites fairly quickly after the sh#t factor kicks in

[Echoes in the Attic]

My first big moment like that was probably Absynth around V2. I was using mainly Reason and starting to get into logic and tried absynth at a music production school I was at. Was blown away.

At some point later Rob Papen Blue amazed me. I was using Logic Pro with some NI plugs back then. Then again not too long after when Massive came out. That really surprised me, especially the patch brutal electro. I’d never heard any synth sound like it.

Then about 12 years ago I tried Minimonsta and fell in love with the Moog sound. I’d been mostly preoccupied with complex synths like in NI komplete, so the simple phatness impressed me. Same with Arturia Minimoog around the same time.

I also remember sylenth1 amazing my with its smoothness and juiciness not long after that.

These days I don’t get too surprised anymore but still managed to be impressed by some analog modeling in recent years, mostly repro and the Roland cloud synths.

[wagtunes]

Blew me away?

Chris Hein Solo Violin and Cello
GForce M-Tron Pro
Realivox Ladies
EWQL Hollywood Strings
VSL Dimension Strings

And some other sample based stuff that we simply didn't have of this quality 40 years ago.

We've come a long way and I think we take a lot of this stuff for granted.

[Synthman2000]

There a have been a few moments across the last few years since I have got back into it. A real Virus being the biggest wow moment for me. Lu-SH-101, Diva, Rapid, Massive, Sylenth1, Diversion even the aging Predator at times... have all had their moments.

But overall for me it is my system as a whole now, knowing what does what best. Stability, power, control, knowing what excels at what wows me with every track I make. Virtually infinite sonic and musical scope blows me away.

It is almost overhwhelming, you could spend an entire life and still not manage everything possible or that you would want to be possible. Music and sound is a wonderful thing to be involved in.

[Wopelka]

A long time ago : Z3ta+ and Absynth

More recently : Gladiator, Zebra 2, Diva...

[stvrsz]

There have been quite a few plugins that I have installed over the years with great expectations...

But the reality bites fairly quickly after the sh#t factor kicks in

And that would be another forum entitled "biggest disappointments"