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The VST/plugins thread

44K views 75 replies 28 participants last post by  alessandroarzilli 
#1 · (Edited)
I propose that, aside from having the ampsim thread, that we also have a thread for free (or cheap or whatever) vst or other plugins.

I'll start.

First of all, of course we have Stillwell Audio, who have a mishmash of different plugins that are already ridiculously cheap, but even CHEAPER if you use them for Reaper! How great is that? The ones that I use a lot are:

The Bombardier Buss Compressor


The Vibe EQ


The 1973 EQ


There's a ton of them. You really can't go wrong, and if you want, they have unrestricted demos of every plugin! Check em out if you haven't!

There's also the Antress plugins. There's a couple different series of these plugins: the general plugins, modelling edition, and special edition. I haven't played around with them too much, but the modelling edition plugins are kinda cool. They are modeled after older rack units, such as:

Seventh Sign (based off of the 1176LN Compressor)


Fire chainer (Fairchild 660)


Black Dragon (Pultec EQP-1A Program Equalizer)


Pretty cool stuff. Give em a go.

Another set are the Bootsy effects from Variety of Sound. Again, a nice little set of a bunch of different plugins. I really like to use the Boot EQ mkII on synths and sometimes vocals. You can get a nice, but subtle warm sound out of it.



Here's the Kjaerhus Audio Classic Series plugins. There's a couple other plugins on that page, but I've only ever tried the Kjaerhus ones. for being free, they're pretty good. And also, like the website says, the limiter is pretty solid for mastering. I tend to use Ozone (not free or cheap :lol:), but if I'm writing music for a movie or something, and not recording a big rock CD, I tend to just throw the Kjaerhus limiter on the master bus. Pretty solid.

Quick little mention to the Nebula3 Free plugin. I haven't tried it yet, but supposedly it's supposed to be pretty beastly for a free programs. What I've gathered is that it's supposed to emulated different types of hardware. Pretty interesting stuff.

Then there's the GVST plugins. These don't look like much, but they seem to be pretty powerful. You can pretty much get a little of everything from this bundle, including:

a ducking delay:


a multiband compressor (my favorite type of plugin ever):


pitch correction:


a synth:


and granular resynthesis!


And of course, if you don't use Reaper, but use VSTs, download the shit out of the ReaPlugs. Pretty simple things, but amazing for the plugins that come with a cheap DAW like Reaper. Personal favorites are:

the ReaComp, which you can use for side-chaining and all of that fun stuff!


ReaXcomp, a multiband compressor


ReaFIR, which can be used for EQ, compressor, and can be used to filter out unwanted noise!


If anyone has anymore to add, let me know and I can just add them into the OP.

:cheers:
 
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#48 ·
Hopefully one of you guys can help me here...

So I've been looking for a good, solid compressor for a long ass time now. I would say nearly a year. Don't get me wrong, I have some nice ones, both paid and free, but they aren't really what I'm looking for.I keep finding plugins that are purely cold and digital, or try super hard to replicate old hardware and color the shit out of everything. What I'm looking for is something in the middle. Something that you could use subtley on vocals, but could also dominate drums. I guess I want to start by asking if anyone here has a compressor that they love to use? It could be whatever, I am open to all suggestions. Any one have any go-to comps?

Has anyone tried Voxengo's Deft Compressor? I'm thinking about demoing it, but I'm afraid it's just going to be another modelling compressor, and would be better used on a mix buss.

..or I could be putting way too much thought into this...
 
#49 ·
Stillwell major tom comes to mind. It also has a bit of a mind of its own, and the 'decisions' it makes arent often suitable, but its handy. Its colour-ish. Not major. Hehe.

Stillwells buss comp, bombadier, has options for clean through to heavily coloured. In that sense, its the closest thing I've found ITB to a distressor (though dont be misled by that, they dont sound alike, its just there arent many that can be both transparent and fugly).

Antress seventh sign is an 1176 sim thats actually really good. I've been putting it on vocals all over the place.

Soniformer is the single best plug you can buy. End of, case closed. It can also be a clean 1-band comp, and is great for it, but, dude, 32 band MBC/MBE (it expands as well). Its AWESOME, and awesomely powerfull.
 
#50 ·
O yea, I've demoed soniformer before, and it blew my nuts off! It's definitely one of the most amazing plugs out there, but I never thought to use it as a wide band comp. I'm going to have to try that out.

I was never really happy with Antress plugs...even tho I posted them on the first page :lol:. Maybe I'll give em another go. It has been a year or so since I've used them...

And actually, its cool that you mention Major Tom. I toyed around with that about a week ago, and it's fairly close to what I've been looking for. I'll play with it a bit more and see what happens.

Thanks for the suggestions! :yesway:
 
#67 ·
Physical iLok 2 dongle is needed. If you buy Slate VCC (can be used in Slate VMR) for $169 you're basically getting an iLok for $30 off. The shimmer is pretty sweet considering it's free.

I really want to get the Slate VMR since I've been spoiled with UAD's library but without my Apollo Twin hooked up they wont run. So I wanna get the VMR for whenever Im not home or away from my Apollo.

This is what I like about the VMR setup:
-cheap
-low cpu usage so you can run a ton of instances of it
-no lagging when rearranging modules
-visualization of all modules at once
 
#68 ·
Here's a few nice ones I really like, these are all 100% FREE.

Flux BitterSweet: This one is a transient designer. I've got the SPL Transient Designer too, which is sort of the industry standard I suppose, and I like them both. They definitely have different flavors to them, so I'd highly recommend grabbing BitterSweet even if you've got a transient designer you like already.



AudioAssault KlipFreak: Decent clipper plugin. If you haven't used a clipper before I'd suggest looking up some tutorials on them, they are great for leveling out performances, giving you headroom, balancing frequencies a bit, I use clippers all over my drums to give them more punch and consistency.



[AudioAssault]404 error | Audio Assault HeadCrusher[/url]: Pretty nice saturation plugin. If you don't already use saturation you're missing out! It can be used to add color and flavor to a flat sounding snare, it can add grit and aggression to vocals, it can add organic/analog glue to a bus, fatten up toms, it's an essential tool in my toolbox. This particular one is a Decapitator clone. There's also a paid version of this plugin that gives you more options to make it more like the original Decapitator plugin.

 
#69 · (Edited)
EDIT: just realized that this isn't the vst amp thread. Mods, please move if necessary.

Hey all. I'm getting some decent sounds using the lepou amps and using some own hammer IRs, but for some reason the sustain and substance seems to disappear in the upper register, like the signal is super weak. I've turned up the input to the point of clipping, but only minimal improvement. All EQ off as well.
 
#72 ·
Slate Digital VST plugins & bundles....anyone using them? Favorites? I'm looking to invest in a bundle for console strips, virtual compressors, tape machine, etc., & the Slate gear seems killer. Looking for feedback (no pun intended) from producers, engineers, recording guitarists who love or hate it.
 
#75 ·
I guess I'm in the same boat- a guitarist first & foremost. Someday it might be nice to record my own e-drums but I've got a long way to go until I'm at that point so I'm using EZ Drummer 2 and many MIDI groove libraries. My thinking with drums for my tracks is to take any one of the MIDI grooves from a given library and just make small tweaks in the MIDI Piano Roll to personalize them. The tweaks themselves are just things I tend to like when I'm listening to other drummers on songs- maybe it's a cymbal on the "and" of a beat or a disco hi-hat pattern for 2 beats at the end of a verse line, etc. I also feel that it's pretty easy to change up some stock beats simply by changing up the kick drum (adding/subtracting a kick, make it a double kick flurry, etc) or weeding out the ghost notes you frequently find on the snare. The Toontrack beats usually end with some sort of mini fill to end the pattern but I'll exclude the normal ending with a different fill maybe for the second verse or just before switching to a different song section.

I don't have Superior Drummer but EZ Drummer also has a search functionality so if you were looking for some sort of snare centric fill, you can search on that & then sort the results based on measure length. You can also search by mashing out a rough kick/snare pattern and it will search for grooves that match that basic structure. Because Toontrack groups patterns into "songs", I find that it helps by making a note to remember where you pulled it from so that you can head back to that group of grooves quickly to find components that already fit together. I use Reaper so I do this by right-clicking on the MIDI clip, select "Item Settings" and then "Item Notes". In that dialog, I type something like this: "Indiependent->Uptempo 4/4->Horse->Intro" where Indiependent was the MIDI Expansion library, Uptempo 4/4 was one of the tempo options and Horse is one of the songs within that tempo option.

I don't know if any of this helps but it has worked for me.
 
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