Long time lurker, recent member and this would be my first post.
TLDR : I have too much plugins, I'm selling most of them to only keep a few and buy Omnisphere and a Ableton Push 3.
Sorry for the long post, I felt it best to be extensive as it's my first post and I'm about the sell plugins.
A little bit of background.
I'm mainly a guitarist, that extended to keys and then to music production using Ableton in my 20s. After a seven years long hiatus, I got back into music production late 2022. For reference the music i tend to create : Rock, RnB, NeoSoul, Funk, Pop, EDM, Prog, a few artists I particularly like : J3PO, Anomalie, Vulfpeck, Louis Cole, Jacob Collier, Plini and on the older side : Prince, MJ, Toto, Max Martin's productions. So, the first thing I did was buying the latest version of Ableton Standard as I was already very familiar with it, i bought a small controller ( Akai MPK Mini Plus ) and then started the rabbit hole...
Being constantly lurking on forums for the latest news about plugins ( FX, synths, etc ), watching reviews on YT and demoing products, and regularly checking the various discounts available for the products that interested me. I slowly started to accumulate a certain number of plugins that I'm realizing are not being helpful to me actually making music.
I'm sure this situation will be familiar to some of you, and I vividly remember reading some people here warning about accumulating plugins, especially in the early process. I guess i fell for it
I came to the realization that I'm being much more productive by using only a few tools. As an example : the most complete track i made was one of my first one, when I only had stock plugins included in Ableton Standard and a free synth from Native Instruments ( Hypha ), and some free orchestral librairies ( BBCSO ).
I now find myself with option paralysis, as I own tools that are sure great ( or are supposed to be ) but always endup fiddling with them, especially the several synth I own where I basically spend my time building presets from scratch and then noodling over and over.
When it comes to synth, the first plugin I bought was Arturia Pigments 4. Great piece of software that I thought would probably be the only one I need as it can do VA as well as Wavetable, Granular and Additive. An All in One powersynth. Unfortunately, I was never satisfied with the sounds i got from it, especially on the VA side. The fact that you can modulate so much and approximate randomisation in oscillators, filters and enveloppes using the functions can really help adding the " analog vibe " to it. So of course, I started demoing other plugins who where more specialized in old hardware synth simulations.
Here comes Softube, with their 72, 82, 84 emulations. I really enjoy the fact that their models are " naked " ( Without FX ) and that they captured the flavour of analog gear in a very pleasing way to my ears. Added to the simplicity of old gear : twist some knobs, adjust enveloppes and filter and play !
As a synth enthusiast, I started lurking for other great emulations ( Oberheims, Prophets, etc ..). Brainworks Oberhausen was my first Oberheimy purchase, i tried it, loved it and considering the price ( 19 € ) I didn't look twice.
Then came a great discount for Arturia V Collection 9, that would let me access the auratory pleasure of dozens of old synths : Prophet 5, OB Xa, DX 7, MS 20, Jupiter 8, CS 80 etc...including ones I knew I would never use. I tried the ones I was mostly interested in and I will admit that out of the box, I felt that they sounded a bit thin. I didn't want to stop at that so I spend some time actually testing it and I realised that the presets volume was actually lower than the level i'm usually used to when I play with other synths. Creating basics patches ( Brass, mono basses and leads ), I realised that they were actually great sounding plugins. The addition of parameters to imitate electric imperfections due to the age and use was icing on the cake.
The last synth I bought was UAD Opal Morphing Synthesizer. I convinced myself that it was UAD quality and that I should take advantage of the 50% discount they offered + the voucher they gave. For my uses, Pigments is equally capable sound wise, the main difference being the morphing between filters, and the different possibilities to distort the filters.
On a related subject I was always interested in controlling my soft synths. Unfortunately, considering the variety of synth parameters, and the relative scarcity of synth controllers I couldn't find the one to control them all easily. Maybe an actual hardware synth with dedicated knobs and sliders would fit the bill, plus the extra of having an actual sound engine under my hands ?
Well I did... after battling between the Hydrasynth Deluxe and the Novation Summit ( 2 differents beasts, one being 100% digital and the other being a FPGA Hybrid ) I decided to go with the Summit after listening to hours of reviews and sound banks demos, plus Novation add a refurbished version more accessible price wise and I couldn't fit the Hydrasynth Deluxe anywhere.
Sound wise, the Summit is greatly satisfying to my ears, a joy to play and sound design with. BUT, it's not the best controller for soft synths compared to a Hydrasynth. Indeed a lot a encoders on the Summit are NRPN, and unfortunately most soft synths can't received the values sent by the synth properly. Example : the filter Cutoff actually sends two CC values, trying to map it to the Cutoff on the Softube Model 84 makes it jump between values, ie : unusable. Sure there are some Mac apps that can translate incoming CC values but I dont want to have to tweak things to make it work. I wish I had done some more research on this particular aspect of the Summit, because the Hydrasynth has plain CCs coming out of the controls. Nevertheless, I managed to make a custom controller mapping for Ableton, as Ableton understands NRPN but it's definitely not the best experience.
Until recently, when I learned about the Hardware mapping functionnality in Omnisphere. Could this be the game changer ?
I'll admit I had never properly had a look at Omnisphere, the plugin being there for so long in the software synth business, I mistakingly thought it would be outperformed. Luckily forums, and KVR especially are full of interesting ressources and people who share their knowledge and insights and I thought I had to give it a try. If only there was a trial version...
Let's just say I found a way to try it..oh boy.
Novation Summit is one of the hardware synth supported with Omnisphere. They did a fantastic job at translating the controls of the Summit to Omnisphere, even down to the FX Section. It is so far everything that I need. It is of course not a 100% hands on control, but it is miles better than what I currently do.
Regarding the quality of Omnisphere, I can't grasp how, but it does sound glorious to me. Even just building simple patches, adding a random soundsource and tweaking, just works great. Of course it sounds different that the Softube emulations or Arturia V Collection, but I am honestly having a blast using the oscillators reproductions that it provides ( Juno, Prophets, etc..) as long as the filters. So much that it's the only synth I played the past weeks because it just fits what I hear my head. And I have barely scratched the surface of it, it does much more than that and from what I understand, hear and see of it, it's the powerhouse that I will probably keep forever in my journey of music production.
This journey into trial and error led me to the following statement and course of action when it comes to synth : I need to limit myself and use only a few tools that I know will suit all my needs, that is : a great soft synth, that i can control with a great hardware synth.
The other side of plugin hoarding is the tools : compressors, reverbs and whatnots. I won't go to the same extent as the synths but the statement applies here as well. Ableton stock plugins are great, I only need a few other ones and a great way to control them. The answer to that is Ableton Push 3 ( Or a used Push 2 depending on the reviews after the honeymoon period of the first hand owners ) The plugins i will keep are Arturia FX Collection 3 and IK Multimedia TotalStudio Max 3.5 ( Mainly for TRacks 5, Mixbox, Hammond B3, Sampletron )
BTW, english is not my first language so apologies in advance for the potential mistakes or bad turn of phrases.
Hopefully you had a good read,
Have a good one
