KVR Audio

dark water · Post by **dark water** » Tue Mar 17, 2020 5:40 pm

Greetings comrades,

The development and progress of effects and instrument software since around 2010 has been truly astonishing.
Now we are very much spoilt for choice when it comes to great sounding instruments or versatile effects (which sometimes go beyond the boundaries of hardware FX), and a whole raft of excellent and imaginative developers have helped to bring this about during the past decade.

However, some plugins from around 2010 and before still seem to be used quite frequently in many people's music making, although tbh I imagine that most of us nowadays use a majority of more modern software instruments and FX (probably partly because of computer OS and processing advances).

I use the excellent and free SSL X-ism still in all my mixing projects (via Jbridge to get it working in my 64 bit DAW setup nowadays) because imo it is very reliable when offering insight into inter-sample peaks.

I struggle to think of any other plugins which are about 10 years, or more, old which I now often use.
(Sure, I sometimes mess around with CamelPhat and the original Alchemy synth as well as SpectrumWorx and PSP VintageWarmer 2, but not often enough in projects to justify including them here).

Are there any old plugins that you still OFTEN use and if so, why?
(For the sake of clarity, you might include Kontakt 3 for example here if you still often use that today, but not Kontakt 5 as although Kontakt has been around for donkey's years, the updated version K5 is still reasonably new).

I would be interested to hear your replies to see if there are any older plugins which you find useful / irreplaceable despite their venerable age.

Cheers,
DW

ralfrobert · Post by **ralfrobert** » Tue Mar 17, 2020 5:43 pm

PSP stuff is quite dated insome cases, but very good solutions.

Lutin mutin · Post by **Lutin mutin** » Tue Mar 17, 2020 5:46 pm

PSP VintageWarmer 2

harryupbabble · Post by **harryupbabble** » Tue Mar 17, 2020 6:01 pm

synth1 might be older than a decade. i use that.

why? well, it's free, it has the most free 3rd party presets (except dexed, maybe), and does age always really matter?

and at the moment i care more about "how" to make a song than how the instruments sound.

and it's not a cpu hog.

chk071 · Post by **chk071** » Tue Mar 17, 2020 6:05 pm

harryupbabble wrote: Tue Mar 17, 2020 6:01 pm synth1 might be older than a decade. i use that.

It's actually almost two decades old, I think.

I use Waldorf Largo and Sylenth1 frequently (OK, Sylenth1 not so often). I surely use some effects which are that old as well.

mcnelson · Post by **mcnelson** » Tue Mar 17, 2020 6:10 pm

Toneboosters Isone; was checking yesterday, I bought it in 2009 (before the Toneboosters brand came in), and it's been in constant use since.

jeffb01 · Post by **jeffb01** » Tue Mar 17, 2020 6:18 pm

Ni Massive (it's 13 years old) sometimes. It's still a good synth. Omnisphere is 12 years old, though I don't know if that counts since they have made new versions and are currently on version 2.6 (though I think it still counts)...

experimental.crow · Post by **experimental.crow** » Tue Mar 17, 2020 6:22 pm

voxengo lampthruster ...

dark_virus · Post by **dark_virus** » Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:03 am

Lol, now that you have mentioned, I figured out that most of my plugins are a lot older than 10 years. The hardcore side of the "if it works..." philosophy.

Reasons would be: they're free, CPU friendly, no registration needed, no dongles, they're reliable, bug-free, they don't plan to stop working, etc. but most important, they're perfect for my musical ambitions.

xtp · Post by **xtp** » Wed Mar 18, 2020 1:46 am

Everything as far as I am aware. PSP VW2, Nebula3, Rhino, LinPlug RMIV, and heaps of other stuff running on 32 bit Cubase SX3, which is surprising because I stepped on the dongle by accident 10 or more years ago while changing computers and it is banana shaped now, but it still goes, running on a windows 7 64-bit operating system.

Faiky · Post by **Faiky** » Wed Mar 18, 2020 9:45 am

What's 10 years? Oh no, am I old

? Ten years ago there was actually everything you needed.

There were already Nexus (2006?), Sylenth1, Vanguard (2004?), Sytrus (2004?) and other image line synths. But I only really use Sytrus because I have the most own presets there.

I still use KTGranulator (2004), Smart Electronix Ambience (2003) - In my opinion still the best sounding free reverb and above Oril River (It's just not a mod reverb). But, as you know, that's debatable.
An aural exciter (Synthedit, but it sounds very nice and bright)
Fruity Bloody Overdrive
Voxengo – MSED
Waves RBass

Does anyone else remember the wiso reverb?

GaryG · Post by **GaryG** » Wed Mar 18, 2020 10:10 am

A handful of Audio Damage plugs, all debuted over a decade ago I believe, BigSeq2, Automaton, Ronin (lot of use). All still work perfectly though maybe cheating as 64bit versions were released.

Certainly some SE creations, Majkens Chimera, NastyDLA, bini...

NuBiPlus for any organ sounds I want.

SteveWZ · Post by **SteveWZ** » Fri Mar 20, 2020 5:45 am

Tons are 10+ years old.

I'm getting ready to load the TC Powercore plugins on a new computer.
oldies but goodies

Winstontaneous · Post by **Winstontaneous** » Fri Mar 20, 2020 7:04 am

VAZ Modular is still my favorite of all software modular synths/environments.

gravehill · Post by **gravehill** » Tue Mar 24, 2020 2:24 pm

I'm still using Korg Legacy Collection regularly. U-He Zebra 2 and some Togu Audio Line plug-ins might be old enough to qualify as well.

Are there any plugins that you often use which are more than 10 years old?