Convince me not to buy thread

[fairlyclose]

Decades of wasteful experience speaking here

Good advice. I used to always wish I could start over with all the money I spent (wasted).

Some stuff I realise is just my taste changing over time - that's fair enough. But I have wasted so much on Kontakt instruments that did not deliver on their promise, did not have demos and did not allow resale.
Also I find I can easily imagine good music I could make with something (effect or library) and buy it on special but actually I am not going to ever get around to making the music I imagined when I bought it as really I prefer making other music and time is limited. That is probably my biggest source of wasted money

[Aiynzahev]

^^^ Yep. A totally transparent ploy to be given more options.

Oh for sure, lets get things out in the open, I will 100% be buying more plug-ins, and that's before we talk about my new crack, Kontakt instruments. I'd just like to spend my money better for my purposes. I should have stated I do EDM, trance, techno and maybe some more ambient cinematic stuff etc.

I actually went for a few years buying just about nothing at all (ok if we exclude hardware synths and monitors) But recently I've lost the plot. The summer sales hit me hard. For example, reverbs. I am a mega reverb nut. I have the NI reverbs, Valhalla, Relab, 2CAudio, Seventh Heaven Pro, Blackhole, Exponential Audio, Reverberate 3, EOS 2, and god knows what else that I've forgotten about. I feel a bit embarrassed recalling how many plugins I actually have in this one category alone. Recently however, I thought about it carefully and bought Cinematic Rooms Pro and Tai Chi. I am certain now that I can just use these two for everything, and maybe even just Cinematic Rooms.

I pretty much stopped going on forums for a long while, but lately I've been in the effects forum here a lot. I'm trying to simplify everything I have to just have a couple of plug-ins for each category that I completely love and do the trick every time. The subtleties of all the vintage stuff are lost on my music anyway, it just needs to sound great and be totally versatile for what I'm doing.

Pretty much settled on delays I think, Replica XT, Modnetic, some 201 emulations, and Eventide H3000 for multi-tap delays and I'm really happy with all these options.

For saturation/distortion I'm really happy with Elysia Karacter, though I didn't like it at all years ago when I first demoed it, I've learned a lot since then. I've demoed just about everything else out there and I'm really happy with this for just about everything (though I like Kelvin a lot)

Compressor and EQ though I don't know. Elysia Museq is perfect in sound, but I don't like the interface, it's pretty small and it would be nice to have a visualizer, and it's not ideal for surgical stuff. I liked Weiss EQ a lot, the smaller one. But I want to avoid latency as much as possible too.
Vertigo VSC-3 is perhaps the choice I could make, maybe that and Unisum and call it a day, but I don't own either of them right now.

I am thinking out loud and just crowd sourcing some suggestions and stuff here, but I think that can make for some pretty cool threads, I dunno, what else is there to talk about in the effects forum right?

Oh and as for compressors I already own? That list is probably longer.

PS I also did this thread to be open to anyone else in this situation.

don't get sucked into buying lots of Kontakt instruments, dont visit VI-Control for information, they love everything. If you have Falcon something like their World Instruments , Orchestral Suite and IRCAM Solo instruments will cover everything you could possibly want when combined with your fx and the capabilities of Falcon. If Kontakt only then Soniccouture and get when on special. Then if you need anything else like some specific Brass or percussion only buy it on special. Of course depends on the music you make but the principal is clear - DOnt get sucked in to buy lots of okay libraries, a few high end ones will save you money in the long run. Get them and really get to know them before getting something else
The pianos you get with Kontakt are enough unless you want a prepared piano.

Decades of wasteful experience speaking here

Cool. Thanks for the advice though happily I think I won’t be going down that road, as of now there’s only a few libraries that really got my attention, Time Textures by sonuscore, and Elysian by Wide Blue Sound (and it’s on sale right now damn it) and Lores and Sequis and maybe the other one Arkhis. But that’s already what, $600?

[Aiynzahev]

Maybe it'll help if you tell the thread about times you bought plugins then forgot you had them or never used them? I have alot of those - especially if they have a weird name I can't remember.

2C Audio kaleidoscope, Aether and Breeze
Klanghelm everything
Sonnox inflator and limiter (these are great just never use them)
Arts Acoustic CL1 (I wish I could still use this)
A bunch of waves stuff which I can’t sell unless I upgrade
A bunch of PA stuff I never use which is almost pointless selling
Phoenix Audio stuff
Some fab filter stuff I never use
DMG equick, I don’t know why I just don’t use it
Eventide stuff
A couple of softube plugins

I think I’ll try to sell off most of this over the coming month though. Then there’s a whole bunch of soft synths too…

Yo I saw this one video on YouTube “I deleted 800 plugins” that was awesome lol I’ve definitely not acquired that much stuff.

[BigSneezy]

Ouch. Sounds like some of the non-used stuff was fairly pricey.

[Aiynzahev]

Ouch. Sounds like some of the non-used stuff was fairly pricey.

Pretty much everything on sale or second hand though

[El°HYM]

@Aiynzahev

Are those free Monark presets still available, link seems dead?

[jinotsuh]

There's still the question of Senile Smart Comp2, and that is a much more potentially useful thing overall to me in EDM. I don't have a problem doing compression per-se, but I do find myself spending too much time with all that, overdoing it, and then needing to redo It anyway. I demoed the original smart comp and I usually liked what it was doing, it took a lot of time out of mixing. And I feel that spectral side-chain will help too.

I would say definitely get Smart Comp2, and the Softube Summit Audio EQ and Comp, I think I seen someone early saying no, well I would say yes, definitely yes, especially since they are on sale now for $49 each. If you do happen to buy 1 of them, the EQ is supper sweet, first look on Softube site, you might get the whole Summit Audio Grand Channel for less than $49 upgrade price, it contains both plugs as standalone, and then as 1 unit.

Entertain pulling back on spending on plugs another time, the last couple off weeks has been better than the Black Fridays we've had of late IMO. just go for it.

[dionenoid]

Hi all can we have a thread were we touch base with reality a little? I have too many plugins on my radar right now!

Don't buy, start subscriptions

[ATS]

Hi all can we have a thread were we touch base with reality a little? I have too many plugins on my radar right now!

Don't buy, start subscriptions

honestly I am wishing they had subs back when I was buying so much stuff. I think I would of ended up with more stuff for less money.

[dionenoid]

Smart Comp2,

Very mediocre compressor. The "AI" is pretty bad, unless you only use bread and butter sounds. Gain compensation is always way off. In the end you'll be tweaking it more than a normal compessor to make it sound good, and even then slapping any colorful compressor on it always sounds better.

[DCrown]

Smart Comp2,

Very mediocre compressor. The "AI" is pretty bad, unless you only use bread and butter sounds. Gain compensation is always way off. In the end you'll be tweaking it more than a normal compessor to make it sound good, and even then slapping any colorful compressor on it always sounds better.

I completely agree. Maybe the devs of sonible know a bit about creating software, but their plugins make me think they do not know enough about music, music production, mixing, mastering, the results of their so called AI are not satisfactory very often imo.

[jinotsuh]

Don't worry about the AI, learn how to use it

But whatever

[Plugintester]

Don't worry about the AI, learn how to use it

But whatever

AI uses whatever you give it, so
you are not actively using, you are just waiting
for a calculation process to end and finally
you have to tweak anyway,
because categorizations are not reliable,
snares sound different, guitars and also there
are thousands of different sounding rock or
pop songs

[DCrown]

Don't worry about the AI, learn how to use it

But whatever

You obviously do not seem to know what AI or the thing plugin devs call AI really is ! Neither presets won't mix or enhance your tracks properly, nor AI - better learn how to use an eq, comp or whatever

[dionenoid]

Don't worry about the AI, learn how to use it

But whatever

You're completely missing the point of this thread. So, learn to read.