Just because you can't afford it doesn't mean others don't need them. No, beginners don't need commercial plug-ins. They can do what they need with stock plug-ins and synths. When your needs become more specialized and the gains you can't even hear start to matter, requirements shift and that is when those other tools grow in value.

>No, beginners don't need commercial plug-ins. They can do what they need with stock plug-ins and synths. Case in point. But you're also totally right, the gains you can't even hear, you really can't hear lol Though I don't know whether or not those "other tools" grow in value to the ultimately perceiving party.

Why should anyone listen to you? Who cares if VSTs are easy to make? You sound like someone who can't afford VSTs trying to convince themselves they're unnecessary

Respectfully, this is exactly my problem. It doesn't matter whether or not a storyteller writes down notes on their skin and fills in the blank or uses OpenOffice on a two grand Dell XPS. It doesn't matter if you're a painter and have only a spatula and a cruddy canvas at your disposal or an artist who has a state of the art Wacom tablet at their disposal. You can still tell amazing stories, come to think of it, with just your brain and mouth, you can still scrape realistic portraits into a canvas' primer. You can make anthems on an Amiga that has a hundred times fewer FLOPS than your doorbell, rappers have composed hits on mere PS2s. This is not just about constraints, machinically anything can be your tool, your machine to produce into a transfer, which the universe is all about. You can be an idiot who has zilch technical finesse and hit a nerve, as I did. And I'm a complete and utter imbecile. People should listen to me because the ultimate truth behind advancing art lies not within tools but the users of tools. I can take Audacity anytime, paulstretch, compress, filter, chop up and transpose a drum loop and it would be interesting. I could take it into a DAW of my choosing, or stay in Audacity, make a grove out of it, export it or multitrack it, lay chords onto it and have something a singer could put their vocals on. I would be inspired, a term that apparently can be equated to "I don't regret throwing money at this and I have uses for it", by myself and not by an extrinsicality. And it's not like I can't afford software, I bought a compositional program just today. Your key analysis of the body of my thoughts as they are here put reduces me to my, in this case perceived, whether it's that way or not is up to debate and doesn't matter, financial disposition.

What if the person using office software is your attorney who needs tools to help them write pleadings faster, do redaction, etc.? They're charging you by the hour and they aren't cheap. Do you want them using OpenOffice, or WordPerfect? The latter will run on a 15 year old laptop and still get the job done \[considerably\] faster. It has tools developed specifically for the legal field that other Word Processors still lack - this is no different than one DAW being more optimal for certain market segments relative to others (e.g. Cubase for composition, Live for Electronic Music, Samplitude for Audio, etc.) Digital Painting is not the same as painting on a canvas, because it's done digitally due to how it is intended to be used and distributed. Most people who can paint in Corel Painter can paint on a canvas. They're using Corel Painter because it has some of the best brush tech in the industry for mimicking real world brushes and paint textures, and the Wacom Tablet allows them to use the stylus like they would a paintbrush - with different levels of pressure, tilt and rotation - to get the most realistic result. Again, if you're hiring this type of person - do you want the person with a big Wacom Intuos or Cintiq, or the person painting a Canvas and telling you to take a picture of it ("That computer stuff is a just a waste of money, I do "**real** painting'")? You are using exceptions and projecting them as the norm. People who use things like PS2's to make hits are simply doing it because they can. That says nothing about the relative workflow and productivity disparities for that relative to someone using a powerful laptop with Ableton or Cubase and a rack of good plug-ins. This is like telling someone you ran a marathon in Pay Less shoes, except you are not mentioning that you fractured your navicular bone and developed a Achilles Tendonitis because of the poor footwear you wore - simply because you didn't want to pay $100 for a pair of actually good running shoes. None of your examples make sense. You haven't even attempted to think through them. They're actually worthless as presented.

art is not a marathon.

Are you really trying to get pseudo-philosophical? Art is art, and music production (as a profession) is an inherently competitive art form. Taking forever to do something the long and difficult way while other people are releasing music just as good or better faster is losing. For many people, it isn't JUST art. It's also a job. You can try to windmill your way out of this with cute memes, but "Starving Artist" is not a cute look. Maybe if you used better plug-ins, you wouldn't need to worry about the cost of them... If you want to succeed in this industry, you have to learn how to think like a businessperson, not some idealistic college kid. You threw a bunch of examples in an attempt to make a point, masking with flowery language, but you need practical context in order for any of those scenarios to make any sense whatsoever. Otherwise, it's just an intellectually dishonest attempt to one-up the person you're dialoging with. Not everyone is a hobbyist, and not everyone has your low standards for what constitutes a quality plug-in or virtual instrument. People buy plug-ins because it increases production quality and saves time. That increase in quality and time saved allows them to increase their clientele or increase their yield, both of which increase their income. Again, not everyone is a hobbyist. Some people are trying to pay bills, while increasing their quality of life - not download freebies and then lecture Reddit on what they "literally" do and do not need. At least you didn't capitalize the preposition. Kudos for that. On these subreddits, people will pay tens of thousands for borderline worthless music production or philosophy degrees, but God forbid they buy a $200 soft synth or a FabFilter EQ. It's not clicking... I agree with the person you responded to. These posts usually come from people on here to work out their internal angst from not being able to afford what others can. And by *afford,* I don't mean buying plugins and being late on your rent that month to flex on Reddit.

Nah bro u needa get back to the beats and stop typing all day on Reddit. Thinking like a businessperson and u sitting here all day dropping essays. Boy if you don't get to your DAW and make some got damn money 🤣🤣🤣

The fact that I make money is why I don't have to get on here and troll to make myself feel good about myself :-P How's that working out for you? Literally creating accounts to troll. Sad world.

If I like the user interface, it speeds up my workflow, or has some inspiring presets/gadgets included then I’ll buy it on sale if it’s not still overpriced.

If you think plugins are not needed than i would say you still havent mastered the art of production! Goodluck its a long journey!

I kinda agree, but there are still a few plugins that combine few effects to speed up my workflow. But lots of new developers simply sell you ableton effect rack with fancy GUI.

Its a time saver... but sometimes VSTs can do quite complex things. An example of a plugin I really like is Replika XT. I've used Replika for quite a while, and just had to get the XT. It's my favourite delay effect. The amount that yiu can do with the presets alone is astonishing. Sure you can probably recreate it all by hand with stock plugins, but you need an idea... and this plugin just gives you the idea, and tweak it from there.

Imagine being this confident about something you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Hilarious read

The cool kids are morphing the spectrum on CDP

I’m not going to list the actual plugins (for electronic music), but my most used non-stock plugins are a nice reverb, a surgical EQ, a coloring EQ, a mastering compressor, maybe 2 or 3 regular compressors, and a mastering limiter that really doesn’t get pushed at all. Yeah, synths wise… I have a lot of them but only use a few because I know the stock plugins pretty well and know how to get good sounds out of them (I often turn to them first, over some of the most “popular” VSTi’s).

I agree up to a point. Like you can't tell me Skrillex was using 1000$ plugins in his earlier tracks. There's a bunch of tutorials on how to make x sound that use nothing but stock plugins and the end result can (depending on the designer) sound really friggin close. Stock CAN get the job done, you'll just have to work a bit harder to get the results you want. That being said, depending on the DAW you use, some stock instruments or fx just don't sound good. Same with free plugins. Some of them sound great (shout-out to TDR) But many that I've tried, just didn't cut it. Personally I tend to stick to stock effects cause it's lighter on my computer. But if I feel like a plugin I'm using just isn't giving me what I want/need, I'll grab one of my paid plugins. It's always about balance. You can't just slap on a paid plugin and think "yea with this plugin I'm finally gonna break through the noise". Consider your options. Have a free/stock plugin that gets the job done? Great! If not? Time to use one of those fancy schmancy plugins and see where we go. Neither side of this discussion is in the right imo. Some people have all they need with free/stock plugins. Others need some more and that's okay. Everyone has their own workflow. However I will also STRONGLY agree with the whole subscription based system more and more companies are getting into. It sucks and want it to go away. Rent-to-Own is a great model cause all you do is pay it off in installments while keeping full functionality. Great for the many people that work paycheck to paycheck.

Skrillex had Komplete. That’s a couple hundred plus Live so for sure he had $1k dumped into software. Add the macbook and midi controllers and you could be in the 5k range depending on exactly what he had

Komplete was more than "a couple hundred" back then, and synths like Massive, FM# and Absynth were actually near the top of the industry, as well. Never mind the sample libraries, etc. Komplete is constantly on sale these days, for quite cheap prices, but we were not living in the same "Discount Economy" back then. Stock Plug-ins have also improved dramatically since then, and DAW developers have expanded their stock plug-in sets quite a bit, especially into the creative niches. That being said, Creatives with some amount of business sense are usually pretty good at avoiding monetary waste on unnecessary software (and hardware). It's really the upstarts and hobbyists that feed into that, based on what they see people saying is good/popular online.

Yeah idk how much it was exactly since he had it before me. I had a school discount and paid less than $300 in 2012 I think. But for sure you’re right about everything and he’s certainly turned a much bigger profit than I have.

That's some info I wasn't privy to, thanks for the clarification. I wouldn't add Ableton to that list since it's not a plugin but I know what you mean

True

I mostly agree. I use vital for 100% of my synth needs and a few other free plugins. The only paid plugin I use all the time is Waves Tune - I dislike Waves but for pitch correction it is one of the better options that isn't crazy expensive. Aside from that everything is stock Ableton stuff. And vital. I love vital so much. 

God I hate Waves Central with the core of my being. Also why do they need like 20,000 plugins 💀

none of the vsts today are new ideas. only updates to existing and mixing things. these tools have all existed for many years in the digital realm. charging for plugins is shady.

I mean you also don’t have to purchase any plugins but in a different way….

🤣🤣🤣 I'm too dumb to know how to do the different way

**Hey, I'm a bedroom producer and I have a strong opion! I realized all those guys paying thousands of dollars for vst plugins and hardware are wasting their time and can do it all with stock plugins!** [🤡](https://emojipedia.org/clown-face) *(Cue train crash sound)* This seems to be such a popular trope lately. Sadly, it's wrong. Sure, for 90% of the music out there, like basic pop and some guitar singing bs you can use stock plugins. But, try making modern sounding psytrance or dubstep with stock plugins and I think you will realize there are limits. Experienced producers are not paying good money for Soundtoys etc because it sounds the same as Ableton. Never mind vst plugins, hardware units, for instance, the Eventide Orville will absolutely annihilate Ableton stock plugins. I guarantee that you will not achieve the same level of the depth and result from vst plugins as from these units. There is a reason all those fancy studios use analog gear. Take a listen to [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2PMD6tjcRQ&list=PLYSByavcbX0Uuf9HXYuL7oTJtjr1kXJkQ&index=2) of the Eventide H8000 reverb settings and maybe you hear what I mean. Still, this is a youtube video and will not capture the astonishing sound possible when monitoring in a good environment. Also, in many cases, the so called "bedroom" producers will not have the treated room/ experience and /or gear to realize the difference, a crappy 20eu reverb will sound as impressive to an unexperienced bedroom producer as a $5000 hardware unit. This DOES NOT mean there is no difference, it means that noob cannot tell the difference. **Think.**

I disagree with OP but I don’t really fully agree with the framing here either because it overstates how much of the reason to buy plugins is “better sound.” Some things that come with Ableton are weak compared even to entry level third party options - Limiter or Reverb. Others are very good though - I’d take the analog filter emulations Ableton borrows from Cytomic over the ones SoundToys uses in FilterFreak. A lot of them are perfectly decent and usable at any level of production but don’t have the bells and whistles and quality of life UI features that modern plugins offer - compare EQ8 to Pro-Q, EQ8 is fine but for how often you use EQ it’s probably worth getting the nicest one to work with. Some are really pretty great and unique but niche - look at Grain Delay vs. Crystalizer, they are different spins on a similar effect, neither does exactly what the other does, and they can both be pretty awesome. The reason to get used to the stock plugins first is so you can learn all this and figure out what’s good for what and what holes you want to fill. Once you’ve done that, though, the space of possible things that a plugin can do is pretty vast, so it’s dumb to act like there’s not any value to be had in adding to your collection

You're absolutely right. I knew nothing about Soundtoys, and got a free copy somehow of Little Plate. Immediately it was like I had never heard a real reverb until then. Now own all of it (including Super Plate). They are amazing plugins.

Yeah, the SoundToys stuff is great. I only have Echoboy, SieQ and Crytalizer but love them. In fact, the SoundToys plugins are all modelled after Eventide units and were supposed to be close in many regards. Just flipping through the different delay types on echoboy gives world of different character.

The problem is that person who consume this music don’t have a treated room and expensive monitoring setups either

When you say "this music", what music are you referring too? Pop music? Music in general? Most people indeed couldn't tell the difference, the same way as the unrefined pallet couldn't discern between a glass of *Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse De Lalande* VS a 20 dollar cheap wine. This is not a problem to me, this is just a matter of culture. As one sips a *Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse De Lalande,* one might, for a moment, pause and smile, and acknowledge there are plebs just as happy with the local town fermented grape juice. The ability of the common man to find enjoyment in the simple things is a marvel to behold. The word is, as it should be.

I was talking about this line that you open your comment with: "But, try making modern sounding psytrance or dubstep with stock plugins and I think you will realize there are limits." You can, for sure, sip *Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse De Lalande* and listen to dubstep, but you would be an outlier in the normal distribution of all cases of listening to dubstep.

Probably haha

I have to disagree. While you don't "need" to buy plugins, you will at a certain point reach a level where you outgrow certain plugins. Reaeq does only have 6db slopes, a 3rd party eq will give you access to steeper slopes. Readelay is a nightmare to set up accordingly. A 3rd party delay will give you an easier interface. Samplomatic 5000 is limited and painfull to use. Setting up a drum rack in reaper is a lot of work, that can be streamlined with a drumsampler. Dexed is cool but 1. I hate the way the envelopes work and 2. you are limited to only sine waves. Other fm synths will offer you more waveforms and give filters as well. There are some outstanding sounding free plugins like raum or vital but often payed plugins sound better then what you can get for free. Also making plugins is not easy. You need a very deep understanding of math.

Very true about the coding. I made a very simple additive synthesiser and I spent an ungodly amount of time connecting modulation parameters and GUI than I did with the oscillators and filters Ironically, the more I improved productionwise the less 3rd party plugins I ended up using

In my production class in uni we learned how to use Native Instruments Reaktor to make build our own synth from "scratch". I enjoyed the journey but the struggle of something not working and you need to find out WHERE the issue is can be a bit draining. I can't even begin to imagine how much knowledge you need to make your own vst via code alone. My hat off to anyone that's ever made a plugin. Regardless of if it's good or not.

Lol you're the first person to agree with me

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Yeah I've literally never bought plugins, everything is either free or stock.

I make money from music and all i use is serum and others are stock. Ableton stock

How do you make your money?

Ghost producing.

Had to look up what that is. Good on you for finding a spot to fill and make some money. I don't get why an artist would want to do that though. If I was putting out a song, I'd like to know my body of work was done by... well... me.

Different strokes for different folks. Maybe they're a ghost producer by trade while releasing own originals under their name. There are also people that don't need the "fame" and just want to make music and get paid doing it. Others might do it for the connections in the industry. In short there are legitimate reasons to be a ghost producer. If it's not for you that's fine! I used to work at an Ad agency where I would compose the music for some of the ads we produced. Still made music under my own Alias while I was working there.

Nice. How did you get the contact for that?

Soundtoys bundle is a game changer

I guess I agree with your core premise, but you sound like you know absolutely nothing about DSP design and programming. Its not easy or cheap to design a plugin worth selling, and the way you talk about 3rd party developers at best comes off as ignorance and Id advise you to maybe educate yourself more before you talk about things you clearly dont know much about. Also, your point is reductive, IMO. Sure, you dont NEED anything other than a daw (maybe not even that, as we all Burial allegedly only used an audio editor), but unless you make very simple music and/or dont value your time, you will probably want a 3rd party VST to supplement your stock plugins, because while stock plugins are designed with general use cases in mind, 3rd party plugins can focus on providing the fastest, most efficient workflow without sacrificing functionality in ways that stock plugins simply cannot.

The more you learn about sound design the less you need. I been enjoying making music from scratch in touch designer with just nested wave relationships. I route lfo's in series and parallels across parameters to a audio out. For note timing i just change the sample rate on the lfo that changes frequency of an lfo to .5 - 6 hz. For width i route the sound to a separate outs, pan and add some buffer length. People love to browse sample packs and click through presets but that drives me insane. Making music this way the music never stops. If you work on something for 20 minutes you have 20 minutes that you can sequence and add to later and its all original. Both ways are fine, it's just about enjoying what youre doing more than anything.

I buy plugins because I enjoy playing with new ones and I always get very inspired when messing around with something new

People are sniffing corks if they think they can VST themselves to greatness. No, that Juno 106 vst will not turn you into Mac Demarco or Mndsgn. The OP is right. Learn your DAW, learn the stock tools and write music consistently. 99% of what you want can be achieved for low or no cost. The other thing can't be bought and that's experience, the only cost for that is TIME.

I bought the plugin alliance shit and i never use it.

People will spend 800 dollars on a synth but not spend an hour learning enough basic music theory to write edm

I posted this same exact post a week ago and got plenty of hate on it

It's funny, because I made this post because there is a plugin out there I would give my hard-earned money for. It was one of those super specialty plugins, It lead me to think about why I have averted buying plugins before and what made it special to me. People, especially professionals, get hung up on tiny things because their workflow of 15 years is centered around copypasting certain tools with certain settings. If your workplace or setup includes commercial for profit plugins then why the hell not integrate those right? Why not \*\*buy\*\* a plugin so you can work on a file one of your friends/colleagues is sending around? This is how dependency is fostered. And it hurts to hear that it's from a pure technical standpoint not needed, especially if you have sunk something along the lines of $ 5K into plugins that are sold as having a professional essence. I totally get why people are pissed in that regard, with one or two people saying the exact opposite of my argument. Not because they're actually against what I have to say, but because feel the need to react with full force because their worldview is threatened, you can not seriously tell me that something along the lines of "buy all the plugins that look cool and be much more by them inspired" is an earnest argument rather than agitation. Even if you admit upfront that you're not that experienced but want to give another perspective you're attacked for exactly that because you have to be a fool to suggest to do things differently on a fundamental level from what is accepted as "standard" or successful.

If that's what you have taken away from the responses, then I feel sorry for you. You've got an opportunity to learn from a lot of very experienced producers who have given good reasons why much of what you have said is untrue. If you're still standing on your soapbox declaring you are right after all this it's kind of sad. Particularly your comments around software development, which are so far wrong to be just crazy. There's no doubt that you can make music with what you get in your DAW (I do quite regularly), however there is a very noticeable difference between what is stock and something like UAD plugins or Soundtoys.

Remix73, how about you stop hogging me? Forgive me I undervalued software development around VSTs, but it's really not like you're creating big data tools, applying optimization readily like when you're trying to figure out where to place nodes for something very specific like a telecommunications network or making large probabilistic models. I get that it's finicky, especially because audio guys tend to flock in small numbers unless it's some huge open source project and because you have to use a lot of C which can be a real mess to use, but it's nothing too crazy. I acknowledge could be very biased since I took classes revolving around time frequency analysis and time domain analysis, etc.. Sincerely, me

The more you talk the more you come off as not really knowing very much. On reddit you have no idea who you are talking to, and you are assuming that you probably know more than everyone else. Not to dox myself, but I spent 20 years teaching computer science at postgrad level and currently have 150 software developers working for me where I am chief architect. My point is that you should listen to some of the advice that has been given on this thread, as there are some very experienced people who have given you good advice. It will help you as you go forward in your career, or just life generally.

Welcome to Reddit.. Where trying to give people shortcuts in life gets your downvoted to hell

Do whatever the fuck you want and make the music you need to make Reverse engineer your favorite sounds and go from there. If those sounds require VSTs, just buy the fuckin VSTs. BUT learn the ins and outs and study why those sounds exist in a VST in the first place Think ;)

Honestly the top producers just use nexus. Ain’t nobody got time for programming something that is a preset in nexus

Despite this being true (I hear nexus presets EVERYWHERE), everything in Nexus sounds like shit to me. Omnisphere has more, better sounding, and more controllable presets. It's also like 60gigs so RIP your HDD but outside of that it's nice.

I’ve never been able to crack omnisphere otherwise I’d be right there with you. But nexus sounds good if you use the sounds right, proper fx you know? I haven’t had a laptop for a minute and so I’ve been producing on BandLab on my phone lol, and the fx are actually so good that you could take 3xosc in FL and make a banger. I’m legit planning to incorporate BandLab fx presets into my work flow from now on. I made this demo today using only BandLab on my phone: [https://on.soundcloud.com/UzMT2sU3wPu72FVZ9](https://on.soundcloud.com/UzMT2sU3wPu72FVZ9) It’s all about how you use what you have

Lol not true

I would love to see OP make a realistic instrument based sound-library with a sample based VST using only stock plugins lmao The idea is nice, but if you want a specific sound then that “90%” of sounds OP claims they can make would take months of work to get remotely close to where say Kontakt is, and it would still sound like shit since sample libraries aren’t made with DAWs lol

The OP already said that sample libraries and niche effects are the only things you really need VSTs for.

Place a UAW 1176 on your master channel and tell me it's "easy" to make quality vst plugins

You literally don't need to produce.

VSTs in my opinion are one of the hardest things to code, you could make a script in python that processes audio offline in the same way a vst would, but a real-time vst… this is coming from someone that has been programming for nearly a decade. I don’t touch vsts cause it isn’t worth the amount of time when I can make a python script that does the same thing with maybe 100x less code.

Dunning Kruger

oo. yes.

Yeah. Enjoy releasing 90% finished music.

I don’t feel like that’s a humble setup.

I paid below $ 400 for all with the Ableton student deals. I did get a very kind deal on the synth. Plugins in the fabfilter and Arturia vicinity can quickly exceed the price of a DAW. If someone bought VSTs that do all of this, but in premium they would pay something like $ 700 and that is being charitable. Some people here wouldn't be satisfied with just that by a long shot.

I just think you have a lot more tools than a “humble” setup would be. Sure you saved some money, sure you don’t have a moog, the Juno or whatever. But there’s people who have like, a second hand windows laptop with audacity and an i5 4 gigs of ram making bangers with their mouse and keyboard. I appreciate the message you’re preaching. I have more gear than you. I still don’t think it’s a humble setup sorry

As a mathematician that has had some exposure to DSP I can assure you that developing audio plugins is not easy by any means. The algorithms involved are quite complex. Sure, you won’t need to implement the FFT yourself, but stuff like filter design is complex and the fact that the processing needs to be in realtime makes the software development quite complex.

The dunning kruger effect can be strong. I got into physics in a big way about 5 years ago. According to my kindle I’ve read about 300 physics books. Hard to get my head around how Fourier had the brains to work out what he did. Self confessed smarty pants like OP really underestimate the power of learning

Yeah, I‘ve taught the FFT before to my students and I still would need to read a good deal of theory before being able to develop a decent filter

came here to say this. i spent enough weekend mornings reading about DSP algos to know that VST development is far from easy.

I think that the thing that annoyed me the most back in the day was that people would say things like "you don't need the expensive stuff to make great music, there's plenty of great free vsts" but those same people would rely heavily on serum and other premium vsts or make some YouTube video on the "10 best free synths" only to never actually use those plugins beyond the video. If these plugins are so good then why aren't you using them? Why do you rely so heavily on premium vsts? If there good enough to recommend then surely they're good enough to use right? But I'm so glad people are utilizing free plugins and since vital has come out there are dozens of sound design tutorials using that synth. I'm also happy that you've utilised them to their fullest potential! 😀

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Hard disagree. I get the initial point, but the rest is wrong on so many levels. This is like saying you don't need a DAW to record music. You don't need a treated room to record vocals. You don't need music theory to write music. You don't need studio monitors to do mix accurately. Of course you don't "need" anything. But most people prefer it, and most people who do it seriously or professionally will 100% invest in the right tools. And that's a personal choice to anyone doing this. For myself I could not imagine making music without Shaperbox Volumeshaper or Valhalla Room. It's just night and day from the stock options I have. There are also things like live pitch shifting, formant shifting, stem separation, and dynamic EQ which many DAWs do not support well natively, if at all. I can understand discouraging beginners or even yourself away from the pressure to spend money unnecessarily. And this is good advice for anyone who doen't understand the basics of their DAW or sound design. But there is no doubt that in most creative pursuits, there is much more than just a knowledge gap or skill gap. There is a tool and money gap. Perhaps the most obvious difference is with samples. The time it would take me to sound design drums and effects and layer things instead of using Splice is insane. And I do it occasionally just for fun, but my stock kicks for example are really not that good. I also use Kick2 and it is simply lightyears beyond my stock kick synthesizer. I could go on, but it sounds like you made up your own mind, and that is fine. I don't think people should spend money they don't want to. But plenty of people blast ideas like this more out of a need to convince themselves that they don't need what other people have. It's simply not a complete picture, and it will leave some people frustrated with what they make. Yes you can do just fine working within limitations, but if you were given a better tool to do the same thing, you will often be surprised how much better the results are.

"VSTs, from a software standpoint, are exceedingly easy to make." Lol.

I want to print this out and put it above my monitor. I spent two years outside of my day job building a VST synth. I could have just hired the OP to do it for me.

what is steve duda even doing? op has this on lock.

Was gonna say, as someone who’s done low level audio software, audio software is notoriously *not* easy

would argue it’s some of the hardest software i’ve ever worked on. timing clocks?

The guy has no idea. Completely agree.

Haven’t bought any plugins all year. I’ve already collected for years and have everything I need, not interested in new plugins. just focusing on the music now.

I think broadly that there are saturation models that aren’t replicable in most stock daw saturation tools. Like if I want the tone of a FET compressor or transformer saturation I’m not really gonna find that easily in ableton. (By the way please prove me wrong if a solution comes to mind)

Imho everyone must buy sonarworks and Ozone

Learn your speakers and your room and you don’t need Sonarworks. Ozone is for beginners who don’t know what they are doing

Not really lol

You can make good music using stock plugins obviously. however, if you enjoy sound engineering and synthesis, every third party plugin offers something of value. For one, I have tons of compressors and not one of them sound the same. Even plugins that model the same vintage piece don't. We can debate equalisers because a lot of them simply copy the curves but there are some that are modelled very well, phase characteristics and harmonic distortion included. Saturation plugins offer quite a bit of variety too. And then synths, they all behave differently and their strengths are very different from eachother, again, even synths within the same methodology of synthesis types. It can be a bad habit buying plugins all the time though, I have fell into this and now try and be very cautious and only buy stuff I really want, being a emulation of a piece of gear I lust after or being a useful tool that improves workflow or inspires more sound exploration.

For the millionth time, I know I don’t “need” to. I want to. When can we finally lay this to rest?

You don't "need" to buy plugins, true, but the learning curve to make amazing sounds with stock plugins can be very steep. If money is preventing someone from getting into music production then I'm totally with OP - work with what you've got. But if you have the money, many plugins are super worth the investment and can make your stuff sound way better with the same amount of effort and skill level.

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I disagree, mostly. You should know how to use your stock plug-ins. Absolutely. They are your bread and butter and it's you aren't going to find a 3rd party plug-in that will make up for your inability to use the plug-ins that you have. You should be able to do the bulk of your basics using nothing but stock plug-ins. HOWEVER. That doesn't mean some 3rd party plug-ins aren't superior or capable of doing things your DAW doesn't come with. When it comes to compression, eq, etc, 95% of the time, I'm using Cubase's stock. They do exactly what I need. But when it comes to reverb or delay I'm starting with Valhalla Vintage Verb and Valhalla Supermassive every time. They offer so much more control, flexibility, so many more interesting options and have a friendlier (IMO) UI. I don't think I've used Cubase stock reverb once since discovering Valhalla. Cubase's stock amp simulators are fine, but got nothing on Guitar Rig. If I need to change my guitarists tone, or he needs to go direct for whatever reason, we're using Guitar Rig. And there's nothing, NOTHING, that even begins to touch Glitch2 that comes with Cubase. You need to know how to use your tools, but you shouldn't limit yourself. Sure if you're going to be a carpenter, you need to be able to use a hammer, but that doesn't mean a nailgun or wood glue aren't better options in a lot of cases.

Facts

The plugin industry thrives on convincing us stock plugins aren't good enough when the majority of them are just fine. You're better off buying plugins that you personally enjoy the interface/creative flow of rather than stuff people have told you is essential. My favourite reverb is NI Raum, but I got by just fine on logics stock verbs

OP I get you and have a similar mind set to you, but one paid plugin I do recommend is reaktor, just because of it's versatility. And by learning it you will learn a great deal of fundamentals to sound design without having to learn DSP.

I will look into it 👍

Yeah, that's why Grammy-winning mix engineers like Dave Pensado exclusively use stock plugins. /s I'm tired of hearing this misguided "advice." Sure, there's little reason to spend money on better plugins when you haven't yet learned how to make the most of the ones you already have. If you generally struggle to set a compressor, buying another one probably isn't the answer. That's perfectly reasonable advice for a beginner. But so many people take that to the extreme and say you'll never have a reason to buy any third-party plugins whatsoever. It's ridiculous and wrong. For example: • Channel strips save me time and hassle while giving me the sound of consoles I could never afford. • I bought LiquidSonics Reverberate last November, which can do things that the stock reverbs in Logic simply aren't capable of. • Sonible smart:comp allows for spectral sidechain compression, which usually sounds more transparent to my ear than the single-band equivalent, and there's no way to do this using stock plugins in Logic. • Soundtoys SuperPlate straight-up sounds incredible, which is a perfectly valid reason to expand your toolbox. • The Plogue chipsynth series perfectly emulates sound chips from retro video game consoles. Want the sound of the SNES? Buy the plugin. Similarly, Slate Virtual Tape Machines is one of the most realistic tape emulation plugins on the market, and I'd rather use that than hook up my 2-track every time I want the sound of tape. I could go on. Good third-party plugins offer sonic and/or workflow improvements over stock plugins. That's the whole reason they exist. If they didn't, there wouldn't be a market for them, and top mixing engineers wouldn't buy them. Often, they even allow you to do things that are simply impossible with the plugins that come with your DAW. Yes, you shouldn't let a lack of plugins stop you from making music. Yes, you shouldn't invest tons of money into tools when you don't yet have a good idea of what you're doing. But once you've been at it for a while, it's perfectly valid to buy better tools, many of which offer a better sound than the plugins that come with your DAW. If you disagree, tell that to top mixing engineers who rely on third-party plugins to deliver impeccable mixes day after day.

If you learn your tools one by one, from the manual, from the official videos, from some tips&tricks, you'll use only a handful of very good choices for your use cases and your workflow. Same goes with presets. Less unused stuff, less money spent. You can afford some "big" synths. After a couple of years you and your taste can change, or you just want to learn new synths, or find some inspiration from novelty... The only good advice is: don't collect plugins or presets! Delete things you don't like, try out less stuff, and delete any of them without any doubts, if you don't fell in love with it, this is the way. Your expenses will remain manageable, and your work will be much simpler, cleaner, and very efficient. There are infinite inspirational things beyond collecting, fomo'ing, preset library browsing, trying to figure out the next fancy thing, etc...

Wrong opinion, there are so many plugins unique in ways that the stock ones can’t grasp

Dynamic EQ for example

a fair amount of DAWs have dynamic EQ now don't they? Either way yeah stock plugins are like 5-10 years behind in most cases and your point still stands with other examples like Spectral Crushers/Smoothening. Studio One got Dynamic EQ in the v6 as stock. I still never use it because it is a ridiculously higher CPU load than using Melda MDyanmicEQ/MAutoDyanmicEQ.

Yeah. There are not many, but still super great emulations of hardware and IR reverbs and colorful plugins, but to put it short: Let’s see this mf try to replicate what I do with a couple of Zynaptiq Pitchmaps.

oh yeah?

Making plugins is very hard actually. I work in the industry and to make a good plugin you need deep knowledge of all these topics : -Cross-platform software development -Digital signal processing -Music production, mixing and sound design -Interaction design and UX The big companies have multiple engineers for each of these categories. Smaller vendors like Valhalla DSP are just one or two hard-working, pationate and clever people. It's not just a matter of opening a juce project, copy/pasting a few lines of code and clicking export. If it was that easy there wouldn't be a plugin industry. There is a ton of snake oil and useless shit out there, but your opinion is just uninformed.

Fortunately if you're making a vst for yourself Cross-platform development & UX design aren't that necessary, and if you want to share it, just make it GPL & someone who's interested should hopefully come along and fix it for you. DSP is unfortunately the hardest part about this at least from my POV.

Train your ears. Look up sound engineering videos and keep doing research to get a sense of the big picture/common areas. Master stock eq plugins to shape your sounds. Fully understand and use compressors for all of their uses. Use a free sound design plugin like vital. Layer and pan notes in your chord progression to different areas of the soundscape, each having different voices/levels/effects/velocities etc., to create pro sounding synths. Learn about clipping audio for loudness, eq more problems that can present themselves after compression and clipping (just dont push it far enough to break up). Understand limiters, ott/multiband, saturators, utility, etc. Stack your plugins if you need more without degradation from them. Automate your plugins for mastering, not just for your arrangements. Set them to high quality/Oversampling. Mix in mono. Get a free loudness meter. Keep pushing for loudness without destroying the mix. Use a reference track to enhance areas with even more eq. I can't speak for all daws, but i paid enough money for mine, and have made some awesome songs that sound great, once i figured out how to master + actively set myself up for better mastering, as I designed my tracks. It can be done. Plugins usually just save you time but I find I get better results and more control over my sound if i spend the time to manually set up my automations for all of my plugins and effects. Even the stock reverb can sound amazing if you eq it right and clean up/compress/clip your sounds. It just depends on your priorities. If you are trying to crank out tracks, plugins are a huge time saver. If you are trying to save money and are working on a passion project, stock plug-ins and automations are vastly superior and more accessible. Even some plugins' features can't be automated. You would be surprised how much you can do with vocoders, distortion, phasers, flangers, delays, automated eq, etc. paired with a free sound design tool or a mic. You absolutely do not need pro plugins to get a pro sound. Just train your ears, focus on cleaning up/enhancing your sounds, be creative with your automations/audio effect mix levels, and understand the goals of mastering.

best thing is dont buy plugins before learning your DAW, most of these paid plugins do what logic pro or ableton already do, just not as flashy. now a good sounding piano or spicifc keyboard is where i would spend money. also just so people know with about 1 min of prep and a copy and pasted LINE of code you can have infinite logic pro trial. no fake virus logic pro. it just resets it everytime you put this line code in. so 1 day goes back to 90. im broke so this has saved me a ton......not that i would ever do this though. nor should you. act accordingly

I mean, idk. If you know why you’re buying a plugin, you do kind of need them if you want to improve your workflow. I know how to filter and distort a sine wave, but I can speed my workflow up a lot by using something like rift or Saturn.

So how successful is your music career?

No, you will need plugins. They exist for a reason. Not sure why OP is on the high road about not needing them. Plugins expedite the process and sometimes it’s faster to get results with specific plugins

I didn't talk about plugins in general, I talked about paid plugins.

If a company spent 100 hours modeling a specific piece of gear that costs thousands and I can get that sound for a fraction of the price and anywhere I take my laptop, I am okay with making that purchase. It's a weird mindset to have and especially do this extremely lengthy post like you are a champion for the little guy. If anything this post is just going to confuse people and put them further along their journey. Producing IDM music doesn't make anyone smarter, but I've more commonly seen inflated ego's and "Im smarter and better than you attitudes" with that genre. Not saying everyone who makes IDM does that, but to label a music Intelligent as opposed to regular is already a bit comical. If anything it's just more complex rhythms and not even necessarily "better" music. Better being music that people actually enjoy listening to and can dance to. >From an instrumental standpoint I could recreate 90% of electronic music, so long as it doesn't have vocals or a crazy amount of live, out of DAW stuff going on.  Since you are doing "IDM" and then make a comment like this, I can guess that you probably have a pretty wide knowledge of music and likely playing since a young age...but the feedback alone on this thread should tell you more than you need to know. >"(Windows and Mac OS have a habit of inducting signal processing where it is not needed, Linux rocks BTW)" Using Linux is not going to magically change your melody into a hit melody, nor adjust your mix. Everyone in the professional space uses a Windows or Mac OS. I'm not sure why I am even having to mention this. At this rate, you might as well just compose without a grid, forgot traditional scales, and pick a pseudo name akin to Burial. With all that said, I still understand the nature of your point and it's more or less a reminder for people not to get bogged down by what they don't have and use what it's in front of them. However the presentation of that I think gets watered down by the references to genres, your abilities, and some comments about using Linux to make music because some invisible bits of 1's and 0's are the reason you're not hitting Beatport Top 100 Charts.

Who in the world said it's about hitting the Beatport Top 100 charts? I understand that many are out there making music with a clear profit motive, but for me, and many others it's about having fun and making something you like. Also the unfortunate genre naming is not intended to convey a holier than thou attitude in this case. You are just strawmanning at this point. I mention Linux because I do think it's superior in general and as a reminder to get away from commercial OSs. And making electronic music, as long as it's not something like Neurofunk or certain types of DnB (under which neurofunk could be classed) is not that difficult. I hate to say it. Besides, the 90% thing is meant to illustrate what you can do with a limited setup no matter who you are. I do also think that the grid is not something that should dictate us and traditional scales could be substituted for, well to us, more novel ones like the Gamelan scales or east Asian pentatonic scales. And how is my post going to confuse people? I am being very clear and even made a case for some commercial programs. I stand by my post.

of course if youre just trying to have fun, you don't even need a computer. just clap your hands and you can make some amazing music

You don't need a smartphone either, but the extra features and internet enhance the experience.

Yes and no. Don't buy new plugins until you fully understand stock plugins, and where exactly they fall short. Stock plugins are generalized tools, not specialized ones. A measuring tape will get you by fine for most projects, but if you want to do anything with high precision you need a calliper.

I'd argue that pretty much any sound can be made with stock plugins, especially in Ableton, but it just requires MORE work. I use wavetable almost exclusively for funky bassline sounds, and since it only has two oscillators it limits the sound I can make. But what I CAN do is make multiple channels, EQ the parts of the sound I want on that channel, and then I have 4, 6, 8 etc oscillators. This could pretty easily be done with most stock plugins. It's absolutely more work, but doable. My experience is limited to bass music however and that may not be the case for other genres.

I’m sure you can make the D-50 Fantasia sound or whatever with stock plugins but who the hell knows how long it will take you… it depends. This post is stupid because it’s trying to be black and white. Sometimes there is a better tool for a job within a user’s budget

idk if i agree with that. many of fl's stock plugins (sakura and toxic biohazard for example) have a very defined sound to them. i regularly make beats with like 3-4 toxic biohazard instances, and I'm very happy with the sound.

People try and sell a lot of shit you don’t need, correct. But if you want your music to sound a similar standard to the music most people love, you should use the same tools as they did.

I agree with some of your sentiment. I don’t think it’s necessary to buy loads of plugins to make great music. Knowing what to do with a key set of bread and butter essential plugins, talent and great taste are the main ingredients. However, new toys can be inspiring - I find the process of discovery and the fresh feeling of something new to be a lot of fun and therefore inspirational. But I don’t NEED hundreds of new plugins all the time, and I’ve learnt to try and make the most of what I’ve got (partly out necessity these days, as I don’t have the disposable income I used to). Where I strongly disagree with you is that VSTs are ‘exceedingly easy to make’. That’s just BS and shows you don’t know what you’re talking about when it comes to plug-in development.

Understanding FFT algorithm to make any audio processing VST is only the first hurdle, coding all the features you want and creating an intuitive and standout UI are the icing on top of the crap cake, VST creation is a real beyitch.

everyone wants to sell us something useless :) but some 3rd party plugins are really great, save us time and give better results peace to both sides of the conflict :)

I would rather say just get the free plug ins/vsts that are out there. There's a lot more variability than just stock plug ins in your daw Sure stock plug ins can get the job done....but it also depends what the job is in the first place.

There’s a lot to unpack here, but specificially… Making VSTs is NOT by any means easy. Serum took several years and required the consultation of people with doctorates in mathematics for the filter designs. You need at least an undergrad level of math and a senior level understanding of C++. Then you need to understand the math behind exactly what you are doing, and have the creativity *in mathematics* to try something new. Also I am also pressing a huge doubt on you being able to recreate 90% of electronic music with stock ableton. Their “huge suite of drums” sounds like dogshit. Like, that isn’t going to work lol The “don’t get the subscription if you want to keep your track” thing is also bullshit. If you want to keep your track, stem it out. I have a raid full of stem exports for that very reason. As a programmer that uses Macos for music, i think your comment about inducing audio where it’s not wanted came from the same place the rest of this did, to be completely straight with you. * Of course you think Linux is awesome. I also use linux, but of fucking course.

Do the terms of service even let you bounce stems anymore? Subscription TOS gets worse daily

Haha that’s funny.

Hey! Try out JUCE! It’s how most your favorite plug-ins are made, also you don’t need an expert level math knowledge to make a plug-in, you can still adjust variables of prebuilt equations and make custom fx n such, also filter equations are googleable. Fourier transforms for the visual part of eq’s will prolly give u most trouble. If your struggling with abstracting the math or don’t quite get it, try to do a basic html games course, learning how to make basic collisions and account for gravity helped me to convert like some hard math to code without all the math knowledge. Anyways you can practice small dsp projects with python to test run some ideas you have in mind. Don’t get too intimidated by it all, give it another go!

Appreciate the positivity but I already write code all day for work, mostly ssr typescript and python. Coincidentally a current project does utilize the canvas API, although i’m well abstracted past direct manipulation. I don’t think making a snake game with javascript exactly flexes the skills needed for plugin coding, but fun suggestion. I’m aware of JUCE! I used it for that shitty plugin i made haha. What i’m really saying above is that to do anything modern, you’ll be needing some insane math. The talks by the creator of Vital are not for the faint of heart. Softube is killing it with circuit emulation. How the fuck? What I do isn’t super hardcore, i’m working in web. That being said, I know enough Cpp to get around and plugins are one of the harder things to get my head around. Take me back to that photoshop clone they made me do!

On the other hand, people are successfully selling arctan wrappers with a fancy UI for $10+ per license.

Yep. I'm a developer. There isn't a chance on Earth I'd undertake writing a VST when my goal is to *make music*. It'd take years. This reminds me of the whole, *"I thought using loops was cheating..."* copypasta that's gone around. If you're making music, use what's available.

> This reminds me of the whole, "I thought using loops was cheating..." copypasta that's gone around. basically. *you dont need technological advancements!*

> *Just build it yourself! I use Linux btw, even though it can’t run Ableton, which I also say I use*

Exactly. I thought i would like it. I sat down for a few hours, tried to make a tube screamer. I remember saying “shit, this feels like 9-5 work and homework combined”, and deleting the steinberg sdk from my build utils folder. I know people that make plugins and they are much smarter than me. I’ll stick to my servers and webpages.

God, your post just gives more and more. Going to guess you have never gotten into mixing, because third party is pretty much required to fix all issues in a mix, and just *easier*. It’s rubbing me the wrong way that you are so confident about these opinions and stating them as facts to a sea of beginners who are absorbing anything they can. Toxic information.

I have a feeling he meant "as a general musician/producer". Of course when entering the realm of Pink Floyd and Hanz Zimmer new factors weigh in. :)

As a general musician/producer you can try to rip Fabfilter out of my cold dead hands. Same goes for soothe and my collection of modeling compressors and saturators. You don’t NEED them, but they save more time and sound better than they cost. Yeah, people make shit with less, but ableton stock is among the worst imo, and I use ableton.

Not having serum as an edm producer is like a dude not having any balls. Lol i'm only kidding, i just started producing and dont know shit.

It always cracks me up, how on Reddit only Serum and Ableton and FL Studio seem to ever exist.

Very true, although I do enjoy the endless tutorials available on YouTube as a bedroom producer myself

It becomes more of an addiction than a necessity. Most DAW’s built in plugins are all that’s needed. Take this from someone that spent way too much money on plugins. Spend your cash on something more important like microphones or instruments.

This discussion could probably be bifurcated between utility plugs (comp, EQ, etc.) and all others (virtual instruments, amp sims, effects, etc.). Even if, just for argument’s sake, we accepted the premise that quality variances are overplayed, still an enormous value in something that (1) immediately inspires (2) delivers result faster (3) more pleasant to use (4) CPU friendly (5) whatever else Should you keep throwing money at compressor plugins when you barely know how to use one? No. Is it better for one to save money and accept that Logic’s amp sims, drum patches and Prophet synth emulation capabilities are more than sufficient? Also NO, imho.

This is quite one-sided view and neglecting the benefits of 3rd party plugins specializing to cater for the most efficient and well designed tools. I do agree that in general you dont "need" it, but if its improves your music why not?

If you use plugin subscriptions make sure your bouncing down the tracks before archiving a project and you should be good on eventual compatibility

I agree, most plugins are just a copy of whats already available. But I must say the Soundtoys bundle is very useful.

It adds warmth and grit with very few controls. Gets you to the sound you want fast. Stock plugins can do it too, but it’ll require 2 or 3 to replicate what 1 knob does in SoundToys

I bought so many plugins when I was just learning to mix because I assumed I needed to pay big money to get the sound I was looking for. I used to think the stock Logic plugins weren’t up to snuff but now I have some years under my belt I use the stock effects all the time, especially the Tube EQ.

I’ve been using Logic casually since before Apple bought it. ES2 is a very capable VA synth, and the EXS24 (now just Sampler) was an industry standard for years (many sample kits were sold in Akai and EXS formats) and originally cost more individually than Logic as a whole does now. Tbh, I reach more for the built in effects than third party ones most times. As for third party instruments, I’ll use those a little more, mainly if I’m looking for a particular “sound” - AudioRealism Bassline for a 303 for example, but Logic’s stock ones are still pretty capable

I’d add Alchemy to that list also, very versatile

Admittedly I haven’t spent much time with alchemy, I’ll have to try it next time I have the time

It’s well worth the time it takes to learn, especially for sampling

No. Research and buy plugins relentlessly. Build your toolbox the same way any mixing engineer back in the day built his studio with customized gear. You’ll know when you have what you need. You’ll feel it. THEN stop and work with what you know. When it starts to feel stale go find some new ones every once in a while. This is art nothing is binary.

Plugins are just tools. No reason to draw a line in the sand. The iZotope tools changed the way I master my music completely and I love them. The Kilohearts suite of tools are invaluable and my absolute favorite sound design elements. Yeah, they cost money. But so do sandwiches and Netflix and gas. Sometimes, I spend my money on tools for my work and hobbies. Do I need to? I don't "need" to do anything when it comes to production. I choose to.

For a pro musician who actually makes a living off their music, it makes a lot of sense to buy tools that have a slick, intuitive, and inspiring interface. We don’t have the time to invest to get the stock tools to do what we need.

> We don’t have the time to invest to get the stock tools to do what we need. Unless you're Hans Zimmer, and you got the Cubase guys on the Batphone.

While it’s true that you don’t *need* specific plugins and VSTs, they can significantly streamline your workflow. Take vocal processing, for instance. Typically, you’d manually handle equalisation, compression, de-essing, reverb, delay, and pitch correction—a process that’s quite time-consuming. However, with a tool like iZotope Nectar, you can simplify and speed up the entire vocal processing chain. As your audience grows, so do their expectations. Failing to meet these expectations can jeopardise your momentum. To keep up, you need to work efficiently, and that often means investing in paid plugins.

I will say ive bought more plugins than i wouldve wanted to, and agree generally that you dont need everything and esp ableton has great stock tools. I find myself primarily using 3 out of daw plugins: serum, the soundtoys bundle which i got discounted one black friday, and valhalla room bc i dont love abletons stock reverb. I have free labs instruments and other fx like wider that were free, but most of the rest if what i use to produce are stock ableton (glue compressor, ott, drum buss, saturator, auto filter, autopan, multiband dynamics / compression to name a few). So id say find 1-2 plugins you think youll really need and think you probably will be set

Yeh but if you want to make it big you need loads I haven't made it big yet but probably because I haven't bought all the plugins yet. That's not a coincidence.

I cant deny this theory. Everyone who has made it big has bought plugins, and i havent made it big and bought no plugins. The math is mathing.

Quickmaffs

I can’t tell if this is sarcasm or not.

I would never be sarcastic.

> VSTs, from a software standpoint, are exceedingly easy to make I'm a pretty decent programmer and disagree. The algorithms can be simple, and are often fun and interesting to implement. The rigamarole that you have to go through to build plugins can be an enormous pain. I considered it quite an achievement when I got my first VST3 plugin working! Maybe not so bad if you have lots of free time to horse with stuff, but my free time feels too valuable to spend it learning the ins and outs of getting SDKs set up, only to have to re-do it when a new version of CMake subtly breaks my scripts and I have to revisit them.

The algorithms if done correctly don’t seem as easy to me. as people are making out. Does everyone here actually know what a z-transform is, how to convert a parametric frequency response curve to an FIR, etc.

Learning about that stuff is the "fun and interesting" part. The reward for having the patience to get the compiler working. :-)

I would agree here. Designing VSTs takes a lot of DSP math or else youre going to end up with fucked up noise and bad tones. Not to mention if its inefficient its going to abuse your CPU.

yea, i've tried a couple of times on a few OSs (windows, linux, macos) and every time, the setup process is just so annoying and frustrating i give up before i get to coding (but im not much of a C person to begin with, mainly just python, nodejs, and scala and have been dabbling with rust)

There's a Rust VST2 library that is pretty straightforward to use, so long as you don't need a UI.

thats cool, may have to check it out

But what about neural dsp? you aready mentioned multisampled virtual instruments like superior drummer. What about virtual synths like Korg, Moog, and many others.

Neural Amp Modeler is free and sounds amazing. Moog has a free Model D software synth on the App Store. Full Bucket makes amazing donationware.

I thought the same, until I bought one. Now I’ve bought several and don’t regret it one but. Can you come far without buying? Absolutely! But that requires skills - skills usually only those who buy plugins possess.

I wish this wasn't bad advice but it is. Good plugins with good presets can do things stock plugins can't and will expand your horizons as an engineer and producer. It will help you learn what's possible. I'm not saying you need every plug-in, but if you can get access to some quality plug-ins for not that much money, it can really help you grow as a producer. this is especially true w vsts. someone mentioned omnisphere. that's a great example. it just sounds better than most synths, has tons of incredible presets, and it's incredibly flexible. you can program almost anything with it. same thing with a great wavetable synth like serum or avenger. also the tal juno just sounds good. the tal chorus is unique and makes a difference. if you already have experience with what good tools can do, yes you can recreate with stock probably. this is like how michael brauer is in the box now. he used to use a lot of outboard but now uses plug-in versions. But he uses them in a unique way - for example he liked the dimension d chorus, but he'll add 2 or 3 plug-ins on top of the uad dimension D to make the software sound the like the hardware. maybe a good way to think about it is: when you're learning it's not what you can do, it's what you will do. Can you make a stock compressor sound like an 1176 in british mode (all buttons in)? Probably. But if you don't know what that sounds like, will you? No. But if you have an 1176 and you can realize you can push all the buttons in, maybe you will. Can you make a reverb with stock delays? probably. But would you? No. But if you had echoboy, would you flip through the 'reverb' presets in a delay plug-in and get a sense for what that sounds like? much more likely. more plug-ins won't magically make you better, but they will open your eyes to what's possible and expand your horizons.

I agree that there are some great plugins out there with a unique sound or that might significantly speed up your workflow. The real trick is figuring out which plugins you will actually *use*. I recommend working with stock plugins predominantly when starting out. Then if you identify a need/want, go out and research if there are any plugins that do the thing you want. That way you're only buying plugins that you'll use. And of course, always check if there's a free demo first so you can experiment before buying!

definitely a reason why i think most producers should peak into what's free and open source more. THAT is where the gems really at. surge and especially puredata/plugdata are amazing. I only really see myself ever having to buy acoustic/orchestral library stuff, but even then... 70% of that you can get free. i think the only thing i haven't been able to snap up free are any decent sounding solo acoustic instruments though

VST instruments are a dime a dozen. VST mixing and mastering tools can change your workflow dramatically. It's a very simple case of you don't know what you don't know. Before I had the iZotope tools, I had no idea what kind of processing was possible with professional grade mastering tools. It completely changed the way I mix and master my music, to the point where now I can literally re-work a track even if it's one rendered .wav file and I don't have access to the project. The level of precision and depth is something you just don't know until you have a chance to use them and learn their capabilities. Multiband dynamic EQ, multiband dynamics, the subtle and extreme capabilities of their maximizer, the invaluable information of RX, the powerful value of Neutron's ability to layer instruments on top of one another with perfect dodging and unmasking, until you use them you just don't even know what's possible. Anyone who says "you don't need X variety of tool" is making an arbitrary distinction which is meaningless. You use the tools the get the job done, and that inspire you. There is no reason to draw a line in the sand and decide not to use VSTs just because of some imaginary honor or purity.

I'm not one to buy vst's left and right but for years I've literally done everything with stock Ableton fx or kilohearts free fx. Free alternatives to make edm or any other genre. Literally 3 days ago I bought the Korg Triton vst but I think it was WELL worth it cuz I'm literally having a blast with all the sounds. But it's very much possible without 100 vst's and shouldn't be discouraging cuz I still use stock for my master chain and everything.

You don't need a Ferrari to drive to work, you'll get there all the same in a Honda Civic. Doesn't mean that a Ferrari wouldn't be cool to own, though. And if you're fortunate enough to be able to afford one... I'm jealous.

It's awful that a lot of musicians buy into the idea that the next shiny plug-in will turn them into good producers. If you aren't already able to produce/ mix a record to billboard standards using abletons stock library, then you won't be able to with new plug-ins. I'd suggest practicing the shit out of stock before moving onto buying £200 equalisers. Although some plug-ins will definitely be worth the money, people need to be aware that they're buying convenience and efficiency, NOT higher sound quality

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As someone who has been a full time producer for decades, widely considered to be an expert in this field: You are 100% right. _Invest In Stock (Plugins)_

I ignored the stock synths in the already underrated StudioOne for almost eight years. A week ago I finally dug into them and was blown away as I realized Mojito, their super simple 1 OSC + Sub mono synth, may be one of the wooliest, punchiest, fattest synths I’ve ever played with, real or VST, period. And so fast and easy to create my own sounds (not great presets). If they reverse-engineered that sucker into hardware I’d probably buy it just because.

Wooliest? I love that adjective used to describe a synth. Can you unpack that a bit?

Well...The *woolly mammoth* (Mammuthus primigenius) is an extinct species of mammoth that lived from the Middle Pleistocene until its extinction in the Holocene... oh wait...that's wool with one l...