Stock vs. third-party plugins: Which do you use more?

[FAS122]

Super depends. For instruments, almost always third party. For FX, I'd say it is a roughly even split.

[BONES]

Since I am a Cubase user and steinberg has the worst history of abandoning stock plugins I only use third party plugins to maintain a long time project compatibility. Paradox.....

Now that is a truly bizarre state of affairs, a very Apple-like way of treating your customers. My bandmate still sticks with Cubase most of the time but sharing projects is still pretty easy - we just name all the tracks with the patches we've used, export from our own DAW as a MIDI file and bundle that with any samples and patches the piece needs. Most of the time I can rebuild it in Studio One in 20 minutes or less and I imagine it's the same for him.

[sfoster]

Mainly 3rd party plugins (noise reduction) for Post Production.

[AsPeeXXXVIII]

The answers to your survey are very much set like one is better) worse than the other.

That was certainly not my intention, but I suppose I can see how they could be interpreted as such.

[jamcat]

Since I am a Cubase user and steinberg has the worst history of abandoning stock plugins I only use third party plugins to maintain a long time project compatibility. Paradox.....

Now that is a truly bizarre state of affairs, a very Apple-like way of treating your customers.

That is a truly bizarre statement, since Logic hasn’t abandoned any stock plugins that I know of.

[Grizzellda]

Nice thread. So I will admit it, a few days ago I got a little drunk and bought Omnisphere 3. I have been thinking about this for years, and recently made a KVR thread about it. It was like, going over and over in my mind, frankly "harassing me".

I won't download it until I get the more modern machine going, but I am no longer stressing about it. Got it, no refunds, decision made, that is it.

What a relief for a drunken guitar guy! Well there is alot here to learn, as well as Zebra 3. So, keeping in mind the thread, years ago I might have questioned stock plugs, but not now, they are all pretty good, aren't they? Studio One's (oops again, FSP!) Fat Channel seems quite robust, I think the basic "everyday level" of DSP is beyond "good enough".

I am also noticing GUI's getting really nice, realistic, which I think psychologically makes people think that it "sounds better."

Honestly guys, I think I am gonna go with MuLab 10, and the couple of plugs that I mentioned, and that ought to be more than enough.

But ya know, things in life are relative. Years ago, when commenting about computers, Bill Gates said..."well, 256 kilobytes of memory...ought to be enough for anybody."

Or something like that.

[kernaudioio]

grizzellda's GUI point is real. same processing, prettier skin, people rate it higher. worth being honest about.

my split is task-based more than preference-based: stock for anything involving clean gain decisions - EQ cuts, surgical compression, metering. third-party when i need a specific character the stock version doesn't do well, or behavior it simply doesn't have. the gap has genuinely closed for everyday stuff over the last few years though.

[Grizzellda]

Well agreed here. As for the GUI stuff, I think there may even be a scientific study about this.