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

[CrystalWizard]

alright, some rules just for you guys:

- follow the money
- use a blind fold and earplugs when producing
- completely avoid any and all forms of music theory
- use midi wizard
- pay people to mix and master your music
- use nothing but premium nexus 3 and omnisphere sound sets, and gratuitous loopmaster packs
- buy youtube/soundcloud views/subs/comments
- delete all comments that aren't echo chamber praise, don't let anyone who doesn't like your song have a voice

you are now mozart and don't let anyone tell you different.

Ha ha ha. I realize the sarcasm although even those rules would put you somwhere. Plenty of artists have created impelling, good art by breaking or ignoring the rules IMO. If no one had ever broken any rules music would very standardized and probably boring. Besides who’s rules are we discussing (classical -diff periods, jazz, disco, gamelan, Northrn Indian classical…)? So, you can gently push your rules up somewhere dark.
This is not to say that in part i agree with some of you comments on “dumbing down” so much software that anybody can whack out cookie cutter molded boring crap. IMO But that doesn’t make that music irrelevant to some people.

As for a blindfold i think it works to turn off the screen for critical listening on again MO.
Recommend to at least try.


Oops something OT: overrated and underrated are tough to discern. We all have different tastes and needs. All the software coming out with a fanfare and all kinds of hype and bs are overated

[DCrown]

Sonnox Inflator - don't comprehend what it is good for, no magic, no improvement of sound or mix quality

Arturia pigments - first I thought 20 minutes for demo might be too little time.
After 5 minutes I stopped demoing, to me the most uninspiring, worst sounding synth ever.

Ni guitar rig - no comment

Unisum Tone projects - wouldn't install it if it was for free. So many options and distracting features, so little improvement and effect

Imo some VSTis by AIR are underrated nowadays, because people think they are old and hence cannot be good.



Of course, that's just my experience and opinion

[walker1]

Seum sounds too friendly no character nothing exciting as it has sounded in recent years bad music compares to Virus which has character and energy Roland JP 8000 also has the magical pads and strings and supersaw which are very underrated. Understand if people load Serum into their DAW and create music but the energy isn't there.

[BONES]

Honestly, I've never thought Virus was anything special. It can have a very distinctive character at times but they have always been way over-priced for what they offer. JP 8000 was only useful for Supersaw, otherwise it was nothing special at all. I have no idea how Serum compares, I've never so much as looked at it on line.

Sonnox Inflator - don't comprehend what it is good for, no magic, no improvement of sound or mix quality

I'd suggest that's true of the vast majority of those kinds of mastering effects, the vast majority of the time. I find it extremely rare to come across an effect that actually makes things sound better in a quantifiable way. They mostly seem to just make things louder. There are exceptions, of course, but they are few and far between in my experience.

Arturia pigments - first I thought 20 minutes for demo might be too little time.
After 5 minutes I stopped demoing, to me the most uninspiring, worst sounding synth ever.

I couldn't agree more. I wanted to love it, it has such a good GUI paradigm, but the sound just never cut it in a mix for me.

Imo some VSTis by AIR are underrated nowadays, because people think they are old and hence cannot be good.

Hard to argue against this, either. They might be over-priced at full retail but when they are on sale they are awesome value.

[Ploki]

Sonnox Inflator - don't comprehend what it is good for, no magic, no improvement of sound or mix quality

Arturia pigments - first I thought 20 minutes for demo might be too little time.
After 5 minutes I stopped demoing, to me the most uninspiring, worst sounding synth ever.

Ni guitar rig - no comment

Unisum Tone projects - wouldn't install it if it was for free. So many options and distracting features, so little improvement and effect

Imo some VSTis by AIR are underrated nowadays, because people think they are old and hence cannot be good.



Of course, that's just my experience and opinion

Unisum is pretty unique as far as compressors go. It's not the easiest to work with, but it has a very unique character that i find indispensable, i often use it for mastering.

[DamienF]

Imo some VSTis by AIR are underrated nowadays, because people think they are old and hence cannot be good.



Of course, that's just my experience and opinion

and the CPU usage is very low

[sacer]

D16 lush is most underrated and Roland cloud is most overrated, especially by Roland and their price

[Zero85]

For me overrated is Sublab.

[martiu]

Sinevibes and Bleass very underrated, nice clean UI and great sound.
Pigment overrated, it is very capable hybrid with clear interface but the sound is a bit blunt and it is clunky, with heavy cpu usage and long loading time.

[zerocrossing]

Arturia pigments - first I thought 20 minutes for demo might be too little time.
After 5 minutes I stopped demoing, to me the most uninspiring, worst sounding synth ever.

5 minutes is barely enough time to find the init patch and go though all the oscillator modes. Did you just scroll though a few presets and decide the sound of the synth based on them? If I did that, I’d probably own almost nothing. The only thing I thought Pigments was really missing was a properly gritty filter, and when they added the MS20 emulation, that was that.

Ni guitar rig - no comment

Every now and then I assess whether or not I need a piece of gear. The release of Neural Amp Modeler (overrated) and Tonex got me looking critically at my AxeFX 3. (My conclusion was, the AxeFX is awesome, but unnecessary, so off it went) While I was doing comparisons, I thought I’d dust off Guitar Rig 6. I mostly ignored it when it was released. Guitar Rig 6 is awesome. Seriously amazing. Most underrated guitar amp/effects solution available, with one caveat: it’s wildly inaccurate in terms of emulation. It really sounds like nothing else. Kind of synthetic, but in a good way. So if you’re looking to get the sound of a Tube Screamer though a Plexi, you’ll be disappointed, but if you just think of it as its own thing and explore it’s effects and how you can route them, it’s pretty amazing.

[j wazza]

Fabfilter is overrated imo, makes things sound flat. Pro Q is good though

[Jac459]

Fabfilter is overrated imo, makes things sound flat. Pro Q is good though

What ?? It is outrageous.... I am contacting the police right now...

[Jac459]

Underrated: definitely Spire and Predator 3...

Oh, and Falcon... People think it is only very good when in reality it is actually awesome.

[j wazza]

Fabfilter is overrated imo, makes things sound flat. Pro Q is good though

What ?? It is outrageous.... I am contacting the police right now...

Not saying they're bad but overrated

If you want an analog sound with 3d depth then fabfilter doesnt help with that imo, even though it says its analog modelled, and its often a hindrance to that in my opinion

The guis are great though ands it's great if you want a clean digital sound. They work well on real instruments but badly on analog synths

[Jac459]

Fabfilter is overrated imo, makes things sound flat. Pro Q is good though

What ?? It is outrageous.... I am contacting the police right now...

Not saying they're bad but overrated

If you want an analog sound with 3d depth then fabfilter doesnt help with that imo, even though it says its analog modelled, and its often a hindrance to that in my opinion

The guis are great though

Yeah... The GUI are great and that does matter to me... I have Saturn 2 and Thermal, both are great sounding and have a great UI... I think Thermal has some even better presets than Saturn 2, yet I almost always go to Saturn 2. Because I have so much control, I boost exactly the bands I want, the way I want. It is simple and immediate.
Same for Pro-R, I am not impressed by the reverb sound, actually I like Neoverb as much if not more... But I am always finishing with Proverb, again because it is so easy and intuitive, you want a bit of proximity ? Reduce the distance, filter exactly the reverb frequencies you want, increase the decay on specific frequencies...
At the end they become tools that I am using always, not because fancy but because they are so crazy quick and intuitive...
I could say the same for Volcano, I agree, the sound of Arturia MS20 is as good (at least), but again... you can do so much so quickly with Volcano...

If I want fun effects, I go to output, or Kilohearts, if I want something done quickly with the thing I have in mind, it is 100% fabfilter.