I guess my musical tastes are changing a bit, I just spent some time sorting through a lot of things in Ableton and decided I might as well share the list of what I think is “good” out of all the things I have - which is basically what I’m using vs what I’m not using. This is just stuff I like, you should definitely not take me very seriously!
Equalizers
I don’t think this matters so much if you find what you like, but Softube’s new plugin “Equalizers” is nice as it provides a graphical view of the response curves for any other Softube equalizer plugins you may own, particularly if you ever picked up their bundle. I used to briefly own a hardware Chandler Curve Bender, and I was surprised to see how wide those curves actually are, but it has a very nice sound, and is currently $99 for the combo. It does modern EQ’ing much like Fabfilter Pro Q, but the Fabfilter GUI is a little shinier if you don’t want the saturation and quirks. The trick with “character” devices is a lot of what you are hearing is just the volume increase, so mileage can vary.
Tape Stuff and Lo-fi
I am still relatively addicted to stacking too many “bad” tape simulators together to kind of evoke Boards of Canada if Boards of Canada was sampling Boards of Canada through five levels of recursion. I don’t actually even like Boards of Canada that much, even! Possible list of fun:
Softtube - Bad Speaker, Wasted Space, Dirty Tape
Plugin Alliance - Neold Warble
Aberrant DSP - Sketch Cassette
Waves Factory - Cassette
UVI - Satin - with the service panel open for effect, or not for just making tracks better
You can of course also just use multiple instances of the same plugin, I kind of just rearrange them at random. If you want just one, I think Sketch Cassette is the one to get for the “Cassette Type” buttons, but the Wow/Flutter is better on some of the others? I’m not sure, that may be the interface choices talking to me.
I have the UAD tape plugins and will occasionally use the Struder one on a track, it’s mostly a random choice kind of thing.
Plugin Synths
Dune 3 - everything sounds good. I had a Access Virus for two days before it tried to destroy my ears, and this is unquestionably what I want if I’m doing anything modern.
The Legend - probably the best Moog clone and sounds better than my 2015 Moog Model D Reissue. Surprisingly modern.
UADx Minimoog - runner up to Legend, but I put this in here because some people might want to try both or have some Universal Audio plugin discounts to burn or whatever. Perhaps a bit less “tight” and “modern” sounding than Legend, and a little closer to the hardware? I’d pick Legend but try both maybe.
Nexus - because I am lazy and like variety, and dislike browsing Kontakt. More for backing instruments / layers and nothing terribly fancy. Super fun and easy to just browse through thousands of presets by clicking on them, which isn’t true for other synths. If Kontakt was like this I’d use it instead, but … it is not. I don’t use the loops (but could).
Omnisphere - I dislike the patch browser, but the UX in the Sonic Extensions expansions is really good, each patch feels like a different instrument with very simple controls. I don’t quite like it because I don’t know what something will sound like, even remotely, until I try everything, and there is too much there that is kind of mediocre, but this is not true in the “Extensions” categories.
Keyscape - I like this but I don’t use it a lot. It’s easy to use if you need some background piano, though maybe not if you are playing it live. I know some people like Pianoteq for that, but it sounds thin.
Drums
Honestly I’m just being a 4/4 kick drum only person lately. The stock drums in Ableton are fine. Punchbox is good for variety. I do not have the gene for making interesting drum patterns.
Distortion
Arturia stuff seems to be the best for me at the moment, the Culture Vulture emulation Tube Culture is pretty close to the real thing and works better with different instruments. MS-20 filter is good, though I don’t care for the other filter plugins. While Dist Coldfire does sound very good (hence a mention), I don’t care for programming modulation in those kinds of plugins (or turning it off on so many presets), so I won’t be using it. I kind of gave up on Amp Sims for the moment, they are a bit too aggressive sometimes but I still think Neural DSP is pretty great. Sometimes I want to make a synth “metal” track though and for this they are solid.
Delays
Echo Cat, rather than any of the Space Station sims, just sounds better, can’t say why
Arturia’s Delay Brigade and Eternity
Chorus:
UADx Brigade Chorus, Arturia’s Chorus Dimension-D or Chorus JUN-6
There may be better things out there, I don’t use these a whole lot but probably should seeing my dumb obsession with wobbly tape sims.
Reverb:
I’m pretty picky here
100% Cinematic Rooms or Seventh Heaven, both of which are pretty clean and the highest quality out there I’ve seen, and I think I’ve tried most everything.
I’m kind of trying out Wasted Space for when you want something noticeable, rather than various more accurate Eventide clones. I haven’t had too much luck with more complex reverbs finding anything that sounds good but also doesn’t eat “tone” too much. Ambient reverb pedals are really interesting on guitar but tend to not work well on synths, and surprisingly various attempts at this in plugins are not really that good. I think Valhalla did pretty well with Supermassive, but somehow it doesn’t work out for me.
Compressors/Limiters:
No strong opinions? I do have the Zener Limiter plugin from Softube but mostly for saturation, which is a legit feature of the device with the “THD” switch to bypass the limiter. The Weiss one from Softube seems solid but I’m cautious of loosing dynamics on everything.
The End?
Ok my organizing and labelling is mostly complete, so it is time to conclude this post.
I will typically try to use my hardware synths first to avoid a bunch of preset hoping in a computer, so the synth category isn’t super big. What I have listed is the stuff I enjoy using, generally I don’t like tweaking knobs on most VST interfaces too much and it takes energy away from finishing something - at least sometimes. However, I think getting synths right is more important than getting effects right. One thing I generally don’t like is when synth patches are loaded up with effects - I’d rather make those choices with external plugins.
Current gear setup is a GRP A4, Korg Prologue, Trigon (new!), and the Model D reissue.
I am slightly trending more towards “dark ambient” and minimal techno (alternating) kind of things lately, I just have a problem keeping anything minimal so I haven’t been uploading too much.
I have some possibly interesting books on music composition and psychology that I may be sharing a bit about later.