What fx do you put on early to mid 2000 VST synths to beef them up?

[h66]

The great music of the "early 2000s" was still hardware?

[Uncle E]

Yes

[sin night]

What fx do you put on early to mid 2000 VST synths to beef them up?

What daw / system are you using to run those synths? Are you running them in a old daw? Or are you using just the very few synths that have been updated to run on current systems (for example some of the old Korg emulations)? Or are you exporting the raw tracks from an old daw and mixing in a current one?

I’m asking because that changes the answers to the original question. If you have access to modern tools, you would just use them as usual, perhaps taking care of some shortcomings of the old synths; while it’s a whole different thing if you need to run old effects as well and replicate a setup of those years.

Also, the style of those years was different from what came after.
The tools available, the daw changing (for example Cubase was being rewritten, so there was a change from vst to sx series with big improvements on the audio side, then Ableton in its infancy…), the computing power still doubling about every 18 months… and the tech available dictated what you could do.
Distortion and saturations were still “bad things”, you’d want computers to make things “clean” (but you would get tons of different artifacts when pushing what was available at the time, don’t worry!). I don’t remember reading reviews of saturators and such in the early 2000 magazines (or maybe they were not so “under the spotlight” as in the following years). When tools like Inflator and PSP Vintage Warmer were released, things changed (by the way, I think Cubase had a “tape emulation” before them, probably other daw had similar tools…).

[DJDJ]

When I think "beefing up a sound", I tend to lean toward saturation to add harmonics, possibly EQ, and a dynamics plugin, possibly a good OTT style plug.

[metalifuxx]

One Ping Only to make it tarnce.

Does it sound like a Virus?

[whassup]

One Ping Only to make it tarnce.

Does it sound like a Virus?

Those were the topics back then. Beefed it up.

[dms123]

Saturation plug-ins are my favorite for beefing up the sound of digital synth plug-ins, in general.

I’ve tried a lot of different ones but my favorite is Soundtoys Little Radiator. As long as I leave, the bias control turned off I can add a lot of “weight” and punch to the sound without any actual break up/distortion/fizziness.

And then the built-in mix control is cool for further dialing in the saturation as well, when used on an insert.

[ATsoundstorm]

I like Plug and Mix stuff. Works great for me.

[Uncle E]

Universal Audio 610 is free right now and is great for beefing up synths:

https://www.uaudio.com/products/610-collection

[Ah_Dziz]

I use a waveshaper and some eq

[coffee or coffee]

the same you'd do with any synth hardware or software- stack a couple of those shits leaning into a preamp and be generous with chorus delay, flange, etc,

[Zeisner]

Weighted distortion, dynamic EQs, parallel comb filters. Very similar to playing back sounds on speakers and re-recording them with a microphone, just with a twist.

[Monsieur_FyP]

Universal Audio 610 is free right now and is great for beefing up synths:

https://www.uaudio.com/products/610-collection

Indeed !

[mumpcake]

One Ping Only to make it tarnce.

Does it sound like a Virus?

Maybe the OP just needs to use Z3TA with the Virus mod. Bonus points if they run it through Sausage Fattener.

[dark water]

..