What are your top five favorite FX plugins that really helped you in your music production ..?

[joachime]

Saturation
Plugin Alliance Black Box HG-2 - The first saturator I feel comfortable with slapping on the master buss.
EQ
Fabfilter Pro-Q - I used Voxengo Gliss-EQ for ages. But once I finally tried Pro-Q, I never looked back. Great workflow improvement.
Multi-tool
Izotope RX - It's such a versatile tool. I often use Leveller on vocal tracks. It reduces the need for compression and de-essing.
Glue
Soundtoys Devil-Loc - My main glue tool. Perfect for parallell processing of drums.
Multiband
Voxengo Soniformer. Really transparent when using it moderately. It's been on my master buss for ages.

[s28]

scored my first multitrack in 1991. not sure i've used five effects in the last decade.. so for contrast

#1 is definately host eq

stereo delay on everything
reverb (xoxos) just ok reverb, but low cpu
MDA dynamics (ancient, no oversampling, i don't push it)

occasional gate and phaser i can recall. does this correlate with most skill development, dunno, but its gelled that way for so long it probably represents something.

i coded some wild effects, like a fft cascade, but in composition, i've only used the demo .wav i recorded with that effect

I like this post. Are you recording hardware+fx on the way in or just making music with a really stripped back setup?

[Tappistry]

Plugins, which really help me:
Airwaves consoles
Blue Cat's gain suite - grouping and reversing are heaven send
MMultiAnalyzer
TB Isone with TB Morphit

Forgot to list the Gain Suite plugins in my original post.

[_al_]

Mnoisegenerator
Zebrify

Honorable mention to Pro-Q, although I can definitely live without it

[xoxos]

I like this post. Are you recording hardware+fx on the way in or just making music with a really stripped back setup?

nah, my particularity (synth dev) is method as expression. some kind of memetic/intellectual minimalism

imo teh "first, learn to EQ" part of my experience is worth articulating, but for me making recordings drifted too far from the concept of sensationalism. i like my work to be transparent, where you can see how it fits together, even if that makes it boring. can't recommend it as a modality but there you are

[dangayle]

imo teh "first, learn to EQ" part of my experience is worth articulating

I'd like to know more about this philosophy.

[xoxos]

principle attributed to kilo 4-3, admin of dancetech.com, before vst, facile spectral analysis.

[dangayle]

principle attributed to kilo 4-3, admin of dancetech.com, before vst, facile spectral analysis.

Let me see if I can translate what you just said:
"The principle that I alluded to can be attributed to kilo 4-3, admin of dancetech.com. It comes before using any VSTs or superficial spectral analysis."

Did I get that right?

[DrFolder]

For me its:
Pro Q
Presswerk
Molekular (and Reaktor)
Wormhole
Triad (recently)

[CrystalWizard]

Hmm, just 5?

PSP Vintage warmer 2 or MasterComp
TB Reelbus
TB Barricade or PSP Xenon
PSP Echo
ValhallaRoom and/or Plate

First three on master, last two as fx sends. Vroom probably gets the most use. I don’t use any of them on everything but quite a bit. Reasons: they sound great, are flexible for my uses and a previous post the people behind these three companies are great. Since most of what i do is ITB, i don’t use much actual compression. I have started to use the in built reverb and eq on some of my softsynths.
Lastly i use either my DAW eq (Reaper or Ableton live), or PSP Neon.