X-Bassist
Senior Member
After collecting hundreds (thousands?) of plugins from over 100 companies over the last 2 decades, I thought I would look back and see what companies would I buy from if I could do it over? What plugins do I actually use the most over a long period of time, making them much more valuable to me than the rest put together?
Surprisingly, most of them came down to 4 or 5 companies, so I thought I would share and see what other old timers have found out... so please share your experience...
1) Fabfilter - Top of the tops, I always use them for uncolored compression (C2), limiting (L2), amazing 24 band dynamic EQ (EQ3), de-essing (DS), gating (Pro-G), and Delay (Timeless 2), even the reverb is useful. For clean, invisible processing, they are my go to daily for almost anything. Add their owners discounts that get me their latest plugins for $40 or less, and I'm loving these guys.
2) Kush Audio - for warm colored sound, Novotron (compression), Goldplate (plate reverb), and Clariphonic (high harmonics) are amazing for lovely color or clarity where there was none. I use Novotron on most things musical, and Clariphonic on anything needed clarity, including dialog. They also have good 50% off sales that get me looking.
3) Sound Toys - Sound Toys 5 has a lot of the classic tape sounding delays, echoes, filtering that warms up the sound and gives you that analog feel. Not sure how they did this, but the presets are great. I've mixed many films just scrolling through presets and finding the right fit. Echoboy, Microshift, Tremolator, Panman, and Crystalizer have all given me some great fx I haven't heard elsewhere. I bought a few plugins at first, then they had a sale that gave me the ST5 bundle for $50! Great deals on upgrades.
4) Denise Audio - I started with sweeper, then got God mode, Slappy, Perfect room... very inexpensive and very creative, always a new twist on the classic fx. As they grow they keep improving the plugins, window resizing, eq control of the effect, more presets. They have the right combination of interesting sounds that can't be found elsewhere, and cheap prices that become cheaper at intro price, with subscriber discount (subscribe!) gets most plugins down to $30... the latest was $11 for me. Lunch or a new plugin? Incredible.
5) Izotope - I can't work in film mixing without them atm. Cleaning out noise, hum, reverb, mistakes, breathing, clicks, pops, crunching, dry mouth, random noises, even creating clean room fill... RX8 Advanced does eveything I need to clean tracks that use to be guides for ADR (RX Standard is also great with most of the tools you need). I think it's been almost 5 years since I've recorded ADR for a film, they always want production cleaned up. Ozone has also been great for mastering music or adjusting a lead vocal level in a mix, Trash 2 has been a decent distortion tool (with wonderful presets), and insight 2 has been good for metering it all. The few things they do well, they do very well. And their 50% off sales are a nice time to buy in.
These are the 5 I use the most. Most of the others I rarely touch, except reverbs, what I need layers of (like strings). Lexicon reverb bundle, Polyverse Comit, Zynaptiq Adaptiverb, Izotope Neoverb, Eventide SP2016, Relab LX480, Fabfilter Pro- R are all decent reverbs, but I do wish someone could come out with on that has the warmth and life that my hardware reverbs have (Lexicon 480L and 300). Someday.
Surprisingly, most of them came down to 4 or 5 companies, so I thought I would share and see what other old timers have found out... so please share your experience...
1) Fabfilter - Top of the tops, I always use them for uncolored compression (C2), limiting (L2), amazing 24 band dynamic EQ (EQ3), de-essing (DS), gating (Pro-G), and Delay (Timeless 2), even the reverb is useful. For clean, invisible processing, they are my go to daily for almost anything. Add their owners discounts that get me their latest plugins for $40 or less, and I'm loving these guys.
2) Kush Audio - for warm colored sound, Novotron (compression), Goldplate (plate reverb), and Clariphonic (high harmonics) are amazing for lovely color or clarity where there was none. I use Novotron on most things musical, and Clariphonic on anything needed clarity, including dialog. They also have good 50% off sales that get me looking.
3) Sound Toys - Sound Toys 5 has a lot of the classic tape sounding delays, echoes, filtering that warms up the sound and gives you that analog feel. Not sure how they did this, but the presets are great. I've mixed many films just scrolling through presets and finding the right fit. Echoboy, Microshift, Tremolator, Panman, and Crystalizer have all given me some great fx I haven't heard elsewhere. I bought a few plugins at first, then they had a sale that gave me the ST5 bundle for $50! Great deals on upgrades.
4) Denise Audio - I started with sweeper, then got God mode, Slappy, Perfect room... very inexpensive and very creative, always a new twist on the classic fx. As they grow they keep improving the plugins, window resizing, eq control of the effect, more presets. They have the right combination of interesting sounds that can't be found elsewhere, and cheap prices that become cheaper at intro price, with subscriber discount (subscribe!) gets most plugins down to $30... the latest was $11 for me. Lunch or a new plugin? Incredible.
5) Izotope - I can't work in film mixing without them atm. Cleaning out noise, hum, reverb, mistakes, breathing, clicks, pops, crunching, dry mouth, random noises, even creating clean room fill... RX8 Advanced does eveything I need to clean tracks that use to be guides for ADR (RX Standard is also great with most of the tools you need). I think it's been almost 5 years since I've recorded ADR for a film, they always want production cleaned up. Ozone has also been great for mastering music or adjusting a lead vocal level in a mix, Trash 2 has been a decent distortion tool (with wonderful presets), and insight 2 has been good for metering it all. The few things they do well, they do very well. And their 50% off sales are a nice time to buy in.
These are the 5 I use the most. Most of the others I rarely touch, except reverbs, what I need layers of (like strings). Lexicon reverb bundle, Polyverse Comit, Zynaptiq Adaptiverb, Izotope Neoverb, Eventide SP2016, Relab LX480, Fabfilter Pro- R are all decent reverbs, but I do wish someone could come out with on that has the warmth and life that my hardware reverbs have (Lexicon 480L and 300). Someday.
