The Most Overrated and Underrated VST/AU (Effects And Instruments)

[FapFilter]

Slightly Trigged But being respectful of your view, Why Serum?

Over/underrating doesn't necessarily have anyhing to do with the actual quality of a product. It can simply mean that there are well established de facto standards vs some more lesser known like Pro Tools, Cubase, or Logic and then there are some „newcomers“ like Reaper (which of course is not a anymore, but at one point, it was)
If Reaper had been there first and v6 would look exactly like it does now, and some lesser known / renowned brand like Steinberg came now with Cubase 10.5 or whatever the current version is, it would be Reaper that's overrated, because you simply don't need it to make superior productions.
Live, Studio One, Bitwig, etc. were also more regarded as some toys which surely couldn't be a conteder to be a replacement for some serious work.

If TAL or Xils were the de facto standard everyone and his mother were talking about when it comes to cutting edge synthesizer technology, and some small new brand like Native Instruments came up with Massive X, or Reaktor 6, it would be the latter one which was underrated, until everyone and his mother would talk about NI products instead of TAL.
Which could happen...
Where is Pro Tools now and where has it been 15 years ago?
And Cubase and Logic are nowadays „only“ some of the many great products and not THE standards that you seemingly had to use if you wanted to make music on some serious levels.

[Scrubbing Monkeys]

Underrated : All TAL stuff ( commercial )
Overrated : All Waves stuff of the last decade

Talk are some of my favorites but Waves Elements is a steal at 29.00

[vurt]

your mum. both under and over rated.

[jasonekratz]

Underrated : All TAL stuff ( commercial )
Overrated : All Waves stuff of the last decade

Talk are some of my favorites but Waves Elements is a steal at 29.00

ovox and their sampled piano are really good.

[markjames]

LoudMax by Thomas Mundt is one of my favorite limiters. Sadly it isn't supported in Mac OS Catalina and so I've switched to Waves L2 which has been great so far.

[Halonmusic]

Overrated: Serum
Underrated: Full Bucket's collection.

Slightly Trigged But being respectful of your view, Why Serum?

I've seen that mentioned a few times in this thread, genuinely curious why people seem to view that as overrated because honestly to me nobody's made a wavetable synth that can do the same things It Can IMO. The closest is Rapid and Icarus.

Pigments has a lot of promise too. i've been getting into that one since i got it on sale.


EDIT: I should clarify more, when I say no other synth Im talking mostly about that Wavetable Editor and the Easy Flexible GUI.
VITAL, honestly, the upcoming Plugin by Matt Tyhel, Might be my New Fav however so let's see how this ages.


ANOTHER EDIT: FBS absolutely makes some underated gems. Best Freeware dev in the Game.

Heh. no its just that it sounds too sterile and digital to me. And when i think wavetable, i think ppg stuff. but sure its a flixible synth and all, it just doesnt do it for me.

[Mouerg]

I may catch hell for this but the most disappointing VSTi I've used is probably Ravenscroft 275, the decay always sounds unnatural no matter the tweaking.

Underrated, I hear very little talk of Drum Forge in the drum library world, I like it quite a bit better than Slate SS5 or Superior Drummer 3, both of which I own.

As far as effects go, no amount of hype can oversell the Valhalla reverbs for me, I use them on literally every project I produce/mix.

[Spencer Maddox]

Overrated: Serum
Underrated: Full Bucket's collection.

Slightly Trigged But being respectful of your view, Why Serum?

I've seen that mentioned a few times in this thread, genuinely curious why people seem to view that as overrated because honestly to me nobody's made a wavetable synth that can do the same things It Can IMO. The closest is Rapid and Icarus.

Pigments has a lot of promise too. i've been getting into that one since i got it on sale.


EDIT: I should clarify more, when I say no other synth Im talking mostly about that Wavetable Editor and the Easy Flexible GUI.
VITAL, honestly, the upcoming Plugin by Matt Tyhel, Might be my New Fav however so let's see how this ages.


ANOTHER EDIT: FBS absolutely makes some underated gems. Best Freeware dev in the Game.

Heh. no its just that it sounds too sterile and digital to me. And when i think wavetable, i think ppg stuff. but sure its a flixible synth and all, it just doesnt do it for me.

I actually can understand this argument. Serum is absolutely unapologetically Digital.


I’ve found some success playing around with a filter called “German LP” that sounds really good, if you still own Serum playing around with some of those filters with some analogue waves and some modulation can get it to sound less digital....ish?
but of course Serum just at heart is a very Sertile Program. Never claimed nor intended to be anything less. I don’t think I could ever get it to sound like Diva Or even Massive X No matter how much tweaking I did.

your mum. both under and over rated.

Thank you Vurt

[vurt]

[SamDi]

Overrated:
-All this retro emulation stuff (I never understand why people hang on this nostalgic crap, while their idols at these times were cutting-edge)

-U-He synths: I have Diva, Zebra and Repro, they are nice and I love them. But they are not as outstanding as some celebrate them.

-Native instruments synths (except Reaktor): never got warm with the way they sound


Underrated:
-Icarus 2: just sounds bomb, but seems not to have the same reputation than, e.g a Dune 3 or a Rapid

-Pigments 2: even I underrated it, but like the synth more and more. Could get my future GoTo beside Serum

-UVI effects, especially Relayer is killer, but seldom mentioned, when it comes to delay effect discussions. The same with the other stuff

-Melda stuff: yes I know, GUI is cluttered, manuals are crap and dev makes controversial statements, but they are IMHO THE deepest plugins in the market and they sound great. Nothing to get inspired, but if you have a plan and other plugins are limiting you, Melda stuff mostly helps.

-Many stock plugins (just can speak for Logic and Ableton). When I am honest, this would be enough to cover 95% of my effect and 80% of my synth/sampler needs. And quality in the meanwhile is not really far behind the excellent high-end effects anymore.

[darkydisco]

Airwindows stuff is really underrated, on other side some of the companies that have pretty skeuomorphic GUI's are utterly overrated, Slate, Plugin Alliance and co.

Man, so many times I try Airwindows and I can’t really tell a difference. On the other hand, when the plugins are on sale, some of the PA plugins are great, like Black Box and Shadow Hills Class A.

Everyone raves about black box but I just don’t find it special. I bought it and I still don’t think it is nearly as good as decapitator/Saturn despite coming so many years later. I have since sold it, maybe it’s just supposed to be a subtle saturation kind of thing, I dunno.

[ThomasHelzle]

-Many stock plugins (just can speak for Logic and Ableton). When I am honest, this would be enough to cover 95% of my effect and 80% of my synth/sampler needs. And quality in the meanwhile is not really far behind the excellent high-end effects anymore.

Good point.
I would agree there. After many many years of hunting for "the best", I find that recently I use more and more of the stock effects and instruments in Bitwig. This has both to do with me getting a bit annoyed with the market and it's antics as well as those effects and instruments getting very very good and versatile lately (Phase4, EQ+, The Grid, Sampler)....
Another point is easy exchange with other users.

[rezoneight]

-Many stock plugins (just can speak for Logic and Ableton). When I am honest, this would be enough to cover 95% of my effect and 80% of my synth/sampler needs. And quality in the meanwhile is not really far behind the excellent high-end effects anymore.

Good point.
I would agree there. After many many years of hunting for the best, I find that recently I use more and more of the stock effects and instruments in Bitwig. This has both to do with me getting a bit annoyed with the market and it's antics as well as those effects and instruments getting very very good and versatile lately (Phase4, EQ+, The Grid, Sampler)....
Another point is easy exchange with other users.

There certainly is something to be said about compatibility. Hard to think that years down the road if you use whatever DAW and its supported that you'll have issues loading projects because of plugins.

[marzelli]

overrated in general: uhe (good plugins, good support and all, but not the holy grail some seem to claim ), sylenth1
underrated: stock plugins, uvi, cableguys, fl studio
devs thinking they release god made gifts and therefore highly overrated: kingozrecords, meldaproduction

[Spencer Maddox]

-Pigments 2: even I underrated it, but like the synth more and more. Could get my future GoTo beside Serum

Same thing here. The exact same. Pigments very quickly established itself as my 2 favorite wavetable Plugin. It’s the Robin to Serums Batman.
I’m not sure if I already said this on this thread or some other thread but with the fast rate it progress Pigments could become my MAIN synth very soon. if A few more features that Serum has get added to Pigments? It’s honestly going to get really close. It already does things Serum can’t like Granular, decent analogue emulation, and a better (and visual) sampler.


Speaking of Wavetables...

-Many stock plugins (just can speak for Logic and Ableton). When I am honest, this would be enough to cover 95% of my effect and 80% of my synth/sampler needs. And quality in the meanwhile is not really far behind the excellent high-end effects anymore.

I’m glad someone finally brought this up
Ableton suite has anything you need. I’ve sworn by this for years. I could turn off the VST/AU option in the settings and just use ableton and it honestly would be fine. The only ableton stock plugin I truly don’t like is the reverb. Ugh that reverb just sounds bad to me. Even if It’s not on “Eco” mode. The convolution one they give you in max is much better but it slams the CPU. But ableton stock stuff is Fantastic. Operator is a Gem: Wavetable, while it not replacing Serum it Pigments or Rapid any time soon, it’s a good plugin. It’s very fast, it’s effective, it works, and it’s stable. And some of its unison noise engines are really unique.
Glue compressor is a Gem.
Echo is a gem.
MUltiband too.

Ableton is my main event but this idea applies to any daw in the market.
Logic maybe even more then ableton has fantastic stuff in the box, including alchemy!
Reason is self explanatory, that program was designed to be in the box.
FL studio too. Bitwig;
They all gave alo