Must-have, I don't know. But this is what's working well for me now. Disclaimer: In terms of acceptance, I am a late entrant to the realm of digital audio recording:
An analog person's musings on recording music audio in the post-analog era
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Must have VST\Plugins
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Must-have, I don't know. But this is what's working well for me now. Disclaimer: In terms of acceptance, I am a late entrant to the realm of digital audio recording:
An analog person's musings on recording music audio in the post-analog era
Most I use is EZ drummer and Amplitube (nice SVT4 and Blue SVT). However before my audio interface i ALWAYS go through an Ampeg PF-50T (best) or SVTII-P.
I was extremely disappointed with the Native Helix, sounds like very thin and unrealistic compared to Amplitube.
Tried to switch many times from Amplitube to Native Helix without success.
I would also check the 14 days trials with Neural plugins, Ultra and Parallax. Neural produces right now the best plugins (at least with guitars).
I was extremely disappointed with the Native Helix, sounds like very thin and unrealistic compared to Amplitube.
Tried to switch many times from Amplitube to Native Helix without success.
I would also check the 14 days trials with Neural plugins, Ultra and Parallax. Neural produces right now the best plugins (at least with guitars).
If you buy Native Instrument Komplete it will include Guitar Rig 5. Komplete includes all kinds of sample libraries and effects that many musicians use for creating recordings.
Guitar Rig is a little long in the tooth in software age but it's still a great amp sim: Here's a recent demo that Musiclab used it for:
Komplete will more than likely go on sale before the end of the year.
Amplitube can do all this too, and it usually comes in a bundle if you buy and IK interface. It's a great package.
There's a lot of options and it's hard to say which one over the other is a must buy. Many choices are good.
Guitar Rig is a little long in the tooth in software age but it's still a great amp sim: Here's a recent demo that Musiclab used it for:
Komplete will more than likely go on sale before the end of the year.
Amplitube can do all this too, and it usually comes in a bundle if you buy and IK interface. It's a great package.
There's a lot of options and it's hard to say which one over the other is a must buy. Many choices are good.
Here are some VST effects that are among my absolute favorite ones, and that I utilize a lot, all amazing and all free, except for the Vahalla Room reverb that costs 50$.
Quoted from another thread I replied to:
Beside that I use these paid for VST effects and VST instruments:
Waves C1, a really great vintage style compressor, really simple, but sounds great.
Native Intrument Guitar Rig (can't remember the version, 5 maybe?) VST effect, all you need when it comes to amp, cab and classic guitar effects emulations, even if it only comes with one bass amp emulation, you can tweak it to sound almost however you like it. A lot of guitar amp emulations though.
Native Instruments Kontakt 5, amazing VST instrument with a really excessive amount of amazing and really realistic sounding samples of instruments of all different kinds, from exotic percussion and instruments, over orchestral classic instrument to more modern instruments like synths, electric guitar and bass, that you can tweak to your liking and program in midi.
Toontrack EZDrummer 2, which is an amazing drum VST drum instrument, with tons of amazing sounding samples of different drums that you can tweak as you want and program in from scratch in midi, as well as there are a ton of preprogrammed midi loops included, in all kind of different rhythms, meters and styles, and that you then can add you own touch to, if you can't be bothered to program your drums from scratch. All you need if you don't have a drummer and need realistic sounding drums on your tracks.
Not really a VST, but I use Propellerhead Reason 5 a lot too, for more electronic sounding stuff.
For those who don't know Reason is a program that got everything you need to program music: effects, synth machines, drum machines, samples of all kind of different instruments, and a midi like programming system, the I personally I think is a lot more enjoyable to work with than most midi editors.
The never versions of Reason works more as a traditional DAW , where you can use it for multi track recording and use VST effects as well.
The samples for it are not the best, far from as good and realistic sounding as for instance those in before mentioned Native Instruments Kontakt 5, but they actually works amazingly well for more electronic oriented stuff, and it got some great effects and synth machines as well.
Quoted from another thread I replied to:
Beside that I use these paid for VST effects and VST instruments:
Waves C1, a really great vintage style compressor, really simple, but sounds great.
Native Intrument Guitar Rig (can't remember the version, 5 maybe?) VST effect, all you need when it comes to amp, cab and classic guitar effects emulations, even if it only comes with one bass amp emulation, you can tweak it to sound almost however you like it. A lot of guitar amp emulations though.
Native Instruments Kontakt 5, amazing VST instrument with a really excessive amount of amazing and really realistic sounding samples of instruments of all different kinds, from exotic percussion and instruments, over orchestral classic instrument to more modern instruments like synths, electric guitar and bass, that you can tweak to your liking and program in midi.
Toontrack EZDrummer 2, which is an amazing drum VST drum instrument, with tons of amazing sounding samples of different drums that you can tweak as you want and program in from scratch in midi, as well as there are a ton of preprogrammed midi loops included, in all kind of different rhythms, meters and styles, and that you then can add you own touch to, if you can't be bothered to program your drums from scratch. All you need if you don't have a drummer and need realistic sounding drums on your tracks.
Not really a VST, but I use Propellerhead Reason 5 a lot too, for more electronic sounding stuff.
For those who don't know Reason is a program that got everything you need to program music: effects, synth machines, drum machines, samples of all kind of different instruments, and a midi like programming system, the I personally I think is a lot more enjoyable to work with than most midi editors.
The never versions of Reason works more as a traditional DAW , where you can use it for multi track recording and use VST effects as well.
The samples for it are not the best, far from as good and realistic sounding as for instance those in before mentioned Native Instruments Kontakt 5, but they actually works amazingly well for more electronic oriented stuff, and it got some great effects and synth machines as well.
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In your experience @JohnArnson, has it been worth it to have the full version of Kontakt versus the Kontakt player? I've been considering picking it up, but that's a pretty steep price tag for just a sampler engine. I know you can get some amazing instruments for the full version that you can't with player, but is it really worth it?
I use a mix of free and paid. The big bundle that comes with MixBus has proven really useful. I like EZdrummer ( have about ten of the kits now) and most of the iZoTope stuff (not a big fan of their latest interface, but still find Ozone very useful). Melodyne studio can be used to surgically repair two-track live recordings ( I.E. take out clams). If you have budget for paid software I recommend using pluginboutique.com - they have been very good in getting me set up with hundreds of dollars of software very quickly without any big headaches. They are also a good source of decent free plugins... see their Free section!
The only problem with free is? You usually get what you pay for... anybody have any AWESOME free basses? I knew a guy that did free base? It didn’t end well for him...
paid one opens you not only to NI instruments, there're lot of 3-rd party instruments for Kontakt (mostly paid as well) that require a full Kontakt. free Kontakt does have several decent instruments though.
and yes, wait for Xmas sales, last year full Kontakt was just at $100 at sale.
For organic vintage keyboard sounds (all freebies)
RedTron - Mellotron vst
Organizer Trio - B3 vst
Mr Ray 73 - Rhodes
Ticky Clav- clavinet vst
RedTron - Mellotron vst
Organizer Trio - B3 vst
Mr Ray 73 - Rhodes
Ticky Clav- clavinet vst
When I first dig into the DIY recording I bought a MIDI controller for keys and programming drums. I quickly found that I don't have a real talent for either. I tried EZKeys to help me with that, but I got distracted from music that would use that by my current band. I might be able to have some of that in the background, but I have always felt that putting things on a recording that you can't do live is cheating a little.
Definitely consider Komplete one of the best values you'll find in software, having finally upgraded to K12 this past summer, after having bought individual NI plugins like Kontakt and Massive at various points over the last fifteen years.
Guitar Rig is proving more useful than I would have expected given its age and how dismissive many can be of it - some very good cleaner and heavily-effected sounds in there, and even some of the driven stuff can be decent, especially combined with another sim like S-Gear when quad tracking.
I haven't even installed a large percentage of the content that came on the USB drive just because there's so much of it. The Una Corda is nice. Ditto the Strummed Acoustic 1 and 2 libraries. The new Massive X is, IMO, one of the best-sounding softsynths out now (though they really need to update its strangely primitive patch browser).
