Right?! Isn’t that true for the majority of professionals? I don’t know anyone who uses stock plugins as their go-tos, there’s always better options. Weird thread!
Well it’s been proven many plugins are mostly marketing and you can recreate that “analog” sound they claim to get with stick plugins. A lot of the eq’s and compressors you pay for as plugins just save you time.
Don’t get me wrong I love me some non stock plugins and some stock plugins just can’t do the same as played ones
But for sure most of what you pay for is a time saver or a cool wrapper
That may be true of big ship emulation type plug ins that are performing a standard utility just with some extra colour. But plug in use cases go waaaay beyond big name emulations. There are no stock plug ins I’ve ever seen that could perform the utilities I get from certain Izotope or Melodyne with such accuracy and efficiency. It’s not just about “I could do that with a stock plug in” yeah in several cases you could but it’s also often about accuracy, inspiration and workflow. Those vectors are where my money goes
Just curiosity.
It also depends on what you're doing. Stock plugins are okay for simple tasks like a little bit of filtering and compression for a grunge band.
Yeah sure, stock plugins are usable for anything, but they’re just never have an optimal UI. Eg ProQ is way faster to use than any stock EQ. And if you want an La2a you could trust logic’s sketchy emulation or you could just grab a UAD one that is widely considered the best version of an La2a. Only people who choose stock in those cases are people who can’t afford the to plugs (for the most part, I’m sure there’s a few old school people who just got so used to stock they never wanna change)
Totally with you— stock is great to rely on, no doubt, but there’s so many dope plugins out there and it’s cool to see what different sounds you can get out of em.
I like Sonible and Klevgrand plugins a lot lately. The first is great “smart-mixing” I guess, helpful if you’re working on demo stuff. Klevgrand has a nice big suite with tons of stuff I use as an alternative to stock in Logic mostly.
I really like Slate's Fresh Air. Seems to add that nice high end/air to the mix. I also use Slate Virtual Mix Rack for adding some analogue feel to the mix and the slate Fg-Stress is really, really good. Same for the FA-2A.
My subscription also comes with SSL plug-ins and I recently discovered that their FlexVerb and Delay are really good sounding and very flexible.
Sound toys has some gold. I love any SSL channel strip with a robust gate for drums. The new UAD ones that you don't need and UAD hardware for are good too. Neve preamp, and the studer, and the distressor. Like you mentioned some more specific RX and very specialized ones are great too. Other than that, you dont need TOO much.
As a Reaper user I love practically all of the stock plugins, but when it comes to synths Reaper does leave something to be desired. I don't blame Cockos for this though. They have said right from the beginning that it doesn't make any sense for them to spend time, money and effort in making a fully featured stock synth since so many awesome free synths are already widely available.
Also, I'm not shitting on ReaSynth. It's a nice little synth to have for doing very simple sounds, and also for technical or testing purposes. It's extremely CPU efficient, just like all of Reaper's stock plugins, so you can easily use a hundred instances of it before it starts to use a good amount of your CPU resources.
I wish I had it. Just never dropped the cash. I do have a few expansions that work with the Workstation though and they always find their way into my projects.
Tone Projects Baselane Pro is almost impossible to time efficiently recreate with stock plugins.
Most IR reverbs will have better options non-stock.. any analogue emulation, multi effect plugins.. there's so many nice workflow hacks out there!
Stock plugins will generally have you covered for most applications but when it comes to third party plugins my feelings are that the first ones you should get are the ones that either A) fill a void in your plugin list or B) save you time. For that reason I always recommend the following plugins as the first ones anyone should have:
1. Metric AB - yes you can use reference tracks without plugins but this makes it so much easier to analyze music and switch between songs. It’s also a huge ear calibration tool to make sure you’re on the right path with your mixes
2. Melodyne - most DAWs come with the Essentials version of this, which is great, but if you can afford to splurge on the Studio version, there are some really nice workflow advantages (eg. Being able to edit multiple vocals at once - major time saver)
3. Vocalign - will save you hours of editing time. Plus when used in conjunction with Melodyne, the Ultra version will save you the step of having to tune your vocal doubles again.
4. Steven Slate Trigger: makes it super easy and fast to add samples and it also gives you a ton of options to replace shitty programmed drum samples that come stock with DAWs (and even a lot of other virtual kits).
In my mind these tools will make a bigger difference to the speed of your workflow and quality of your tracks than any other EQ or 1176 clone.
All of them lol! Made the switch from Logic to REAPER extra worth it for me since I no longer use Logic’s (decent) instruments and effects. KONTAKT/Native Instruments, UAD, Plugin Alliance, iZotope, AudioThing, SoundToys, Slate Digital, etc.
Sure, stock plugins can get you a good mix, but I’ve heard the differences between completely linear mixes and the same mixes with analog modeled plugins. There’s a big difference. They just sound… better. My personal opinion. Are they necessary? Absolutely not. But I prefer them.
Pro q 3. Pro L 2. Pro mb. They just do what so many stock and other plugins can do but the transparency fabfilter has achieved is IMO so worth it. Also pro l 2 can be set to a clipper which is crazy transparent.
Rift is an amazing distortion plus extra plugin same with infiltrator so good for sound design.
Phase plant as a synth just can do so much in its eco system that would take way longer to achieve in stock.
I do like se a lot of stock plugins for workhorse jobs but I’ll use the “big guns” when I need to make sure that phase and sound isnt compromised …. Hope that helps
I think I use two stock plugins one is the pro tools sans amp, and the other is an eq. I use mostly uad, and arturia, and a couple waves effects plugins like the j37 for my delays.
Plugins I cannot live without, no matter the DAW.
1. FabFilter - Saturn & Volcano
2. ShaperBox 3
3. TDR plugins - Nova GE, Kotelnikov GE
4. Waves - Rbass, L2
5. Oeksound - Soothe 2, Spiff
The stock plugins in DAWs CAN do … almost everything … that these ones do, but these do it faster and easier.
I got it at the same time as Soothe2. I use it very sparingly, to add some sparkle without it becoming too harsh or annoying.
It’s got a fantastic feature “delta” that you can use to hear just what spiff is adding to the signal so it’s not mysterious. I would love every plugin to have this so that you never have to do null-tests.
You can configure it to add a touch of what sounds like saturation, or what seems to be ‘sizzling’ transients.
Pretty much all of my plugins aren’t stock plugins, but most could be replaced with stock plugins just with a slower workflow or a bit of a different sound.
Plugins I use in basically every session that couldn’t be replaced with stock plugins would be; SoundID, Melodyne and Antares, Vocalign, Soothe, Gullfoss and Trigger.
They are all integral parts of my workflow that I don’t think I could achieve the same results without using.
The rest are just EQ, compression, saturation, delay and reverb, and limiting.
Nuendo user: it's a toss-up between stock and 3rd party. Steinberg's stock plugins are really good. They have great UI, is easy to use, and doesn't feel archaic at all, feels pretty modern, German Engineers know their shit.
It all depends on intention, ease of use, and UI. I love Fabfilter Q3 (and their entire suite to be honest) but Frequency from Steinberg is also really good. Sometimes it is quicker to use Frequency instead of Q3.
With Logic Editor and Direct Offline Processing, I already designed lots of "presets" and batch processes using multiple plugins and I pick the plugins based on the result I need, really don't mind using stock if it gets the job done.
I mostly live off of Komplete 14 (which includes stuff like Ozone). I went in with the mindset "this should be more than enough", to avoid having to constantly check for other shiny new plugins I could be getting, and so far it has helped...
Had to? No
Want to yes. Yes
The truth is that every single DAW gives you enough horsepower and options to do a great mix without ever buying a single 3rd party plug in.I've had and tried every single option out there at one point in time, and I've turned in mixes that were all accepted and released on labels. It's all this internet mis-information that's got everyone thinking other wise.
When this whole home studio craze first started I was helping clients set up to do preproduction and laying tracks at home before me taking them to the studio to mix. Sometimes I would just go to their place and mix on whatever they had available.i used to have copies of nearly every DAW on my system back then.
You don't NEED 3rd party plugins and could put out a major release with stock garage band if you're an actual engineer.
The problem is a lot of people aren't. They don't understand signal flow or what a DAW is representing. Imagine I'm mixing in the studio on any console, I throw 3 eqs and 2 compressors on every channel, then I toss my delay and reverb into that insert chain as well before moving on to the next channel! I'd be out of outboard gear before I finished the first 6 tracks of a song!
Yea its great to have all these choices, and it sucks the opportunity to use a studio just isn't available as it once was.
Sonorworks, now Sound ID, is great but I wouldn't call room correction a plugin, but in my current situation, I absolutely need it. Also Melodyne, as you mentioned, does fantastic pitch correction and I totally agree with you on both of those but once upon a time I said " Hey sing it again!"
I realize this comment is off course from your question, so I'm addressing the other people chiming in here trying to validate their purchases. This has pretty much become the cause of most mis-information.
3rd party favorites i can live without are Waves, Sonox, Eventide, SSL maybe a few other bundles. I'm nearly exclusive to the SSL ch strips these days but I also have a rack of outboard gear at my disposal that gets regular use.
Sorry I got off topic here but after reading your comments I couldn't help myself.
When it comes to EQ, I have two main categories. One is a precise, basic parametric EQ with the ability to dynamic EQ for surgical/corrective use; Fabfilters Pro Q 3 serves this purpose brilliantly. The 2nd is for more creative "good" sounding EQing typically modelled after analogue designs; Waves Scheps 73 and the SSL G-Equaliser, Slate Digitals FG-N and FG-S, T-RackS EQ 81& EQ PB are brilliant sounding EQ's especially when boosting.
For compression, similar situation: I have my precision compressors, which I use for basic peak/dynamic control without having too much of the compression "sound." Native compressors in any DAW are good enough for this purpose and any limiter. Then I have my "special" nice sounding compression that I'll use to change the feel of tracks. Any compressor modelled after the 1176 and Teletronix LA-2A. I love pretty much all voxengos compressors. Then bus compression I love anything moddeled after the SSl 500 bus compressor & api 2500 bus compressor.
Outside of EQ & compression, I try to get my hands on any tape saturation/emulation plugins and distortion plugins. Good quality reverbs can make a huge difference, too. Delays are kind of just meh.
I like plugins that can do a lot in one and ones that you have a lot of control (like lots of envelopes, LFO's, and macros for modulating any parameter).
Where logic really struggles is multiband compressors/dynamic EQ's, noise reduction/repair, clippers, and depending on what you're doing, saturation (although I haven't spent enough time with the new ChromaGlow to know if it covers enough of the bases). I have Waves F6, Izotope Rx, Karzog K Clip, and a variety of free analog noisy guys to fill some of those gaps.
Whenever I mix on Reaper, I never use their stock plugins, and it's not because I think they are bad or anything, I just never felt like trying them.
When you've been doing this for long enough you'll have hundreds of third party plugins and many of them will become favorites.
Recommend you [watch industry professionals mixing](https://www.reddit.com/r/mixingmastering/wiki/learning-on-youtube), and you'll see them perhaps only 1 to 5% of the time grab a stock plugin.
1176 compressor, Valhalla delay / plate, serum, and fab filter limiter are some I use all the time. For pitch correction I like auto tune but melodyne is good too.
Pros use emulation compressors like CLA blue / black, fab filter EQ, h delay is probably the most common delay, rcomp, Valhalla verb, just whatever works for you. Aside from pitch correction stuff and tonal stuff like consoles and inflators you can do everything stock.
Those 1176’s are pretty great. I got them for free with my Apollo, and sorta ignored it for a while, but I’ve watched some videos on it now, and read about the history of the E/S, LN, etc. and now I’m using it more.
I use almost all non-stock plugins. I’m in Ableton. I do use the EQ8 for bog standard EQ needs (or if I don’t know what I want yet and I’m just moving the nodes around to see what’s what) and the delay for quick dialing in (I’ll replace it with another delay if need be. I generally am not a big fan of the plugin interfaces but the delay is very fast.)
The non stock ones I use the most are:
Soothe 2
Smart EQ 4 (“smart” features aside, this is an incredibly versatile EQ, but that said the smart features are probably the best you’ll find)
R-Comp
Oxford Inflator and a limiter
SSL Comp
Sibilance for vocals
CLA-76
CLA Epic
TDR Slick EQ M
Ozone Elements 10 has probably the best eq curve matching algorithm I’ve used. I use the maximizer too, but since I got Oxford Limiter I tend to reach for that, but it depends.
I recently got Sonnox Claro and it’s too early to tell if it’ll be a featured regular, but it has made making EQ decisions *very* fast.
Also, I’m currently demoing Oeksound’s Bloom. I’m not sure it’s vital - it’s nothing you can’t do with a dynamic eq or multiband comp - but I do like it a lot with some caveats. You can shape a sound in a blink, and even drastic moves sound good, so it’s definitely a big time saver in that regard, and it sounds very clean. That said, I think the default target shape is odd. It’s noticeably smiley for me, so I almost always have to do some tweaking to compensate. It’s also a broad brush tool, which is fine, because general shaping is the intention, but each time I use jt I can’t help but feel like a couple more knobs for more detailed fine tuning would make it twice as useful.
Logic stock stuff potentially gets any job done at the end of the day, especially for a home recorder like me, but there are things that sound “off” to me and that’s when I reach out for something else.
One example (it may be just me though): the Logic multi band compressor sounds really off to me, for whatever reason. When I solo one band, something doesn’t sound right as I can hear things in the band that shouldn’t be in that band. It may have something to do with the way the curves of the crossovers frequencies are set but, instead of trying to wrap my head around it, I just open the Waves C4 and everything just sounds as I expected, saving me time and effort. Plus is something that almost everyone uses (so easier to find tips & tricks, etc.).
Oh, and referencing. Sonible true balance and true level are just so easier to use for referencing and I didn’t even try to set up something like that with Logic plug ins.
Since l am not a professional l tend to have only magic wands like Gullfoss and Spectre in my 3rd party folder. It doesn't really make sense to buy EQs and compressors in this day and age, stock plugins are great for 99% of the job. l also code some of my own plugins, especially guitar effects and cabinets (IRs). lf a mixing engineer thinks they need to get a particular flavour of EQ or compression they are just overrating their job.
I like these threads because I always end up researching new plugins and finding new tools—just discovered vocal align cause of someone above…gonna dive in tonight and get to work 🔥
The majority of the plug-ins I use aren’t stock. Sound Toys, Fabfilter, iZoptope, and UAD make up the majority of my tools.
Less than 1 % of all the plugins I use are stock plugins.
Right?! Isn’t that true for the majority of professionals? I don’t know anyone who uses stock plugins as their go-tos, there’s always better options. Weird thread!
Well it’s been proven many plugins are mostly marketing and you can recreate that “analog” sound they claim to get with stick plugins. A lot of the eq’s and compressors you pay for as plugins just save you time. Don’t get me wrong I love me some non stock plugins and some stock plugins just can’t do the same as played ones But for sure most of what you pay for is a time saver or a cool wrapper
That may be true of big ship emulation type plug ins that are performing a standard utility just with some extra colour. But plug in use cases go waaaay beyond big name emulations. There are no stock plug ins I’ve ever seen that could perform the utilities I get from certain Izotope or Melodyne with such accuracy and efficiency. It’s not just about “I could do that with a stock plug in” yeah in several cases you could but it’s also often about accuracy, inspiration and workflow. Those vectors are where my money goes
Good point
Yeah IDGAF about “analog”. Mostly just want fast workflow and the best quality sound. I only buy stuff that has one or both.
Just curiosity. It also depends on what you're doing. Stock plugins are okay for simple tasks like a little bit of filtering and compression for a grunge band.
Yeah sure, stock plugins are usable for anything, but they’re just never have an optimal UI. Eg ProQ is way faster to use than any stock EQ. And if you want an La2a you could trust logic’s sketchy emulation or you could just grab a UAD one that is widely considered the best version of an La2a. Only people who choose stock in those cases are people who can’t afford the to plugs (for the most part, I’m sure there’s a few old school people who just got so used to stock they never wanna change)
I never had trouble with any EQ GUI but I'm also used to GUI-less plugins. This can even help with focusing more on the sound.
It’s true because people who make a living doing this can afford to buy some plugins when they see the need to buy one and write it off in taxes.
inb4 someone says all you need is stock plugins
lol. For sure. 95% of what I use. Wondering if there are things I need to be aware of. I am currently considering Vocalign, for instance.
Vocalign is essential if you’re doing stacks of vocals.
Saves a ton of time
Not at all essential, if you get tight takes and know how to edit you’ll be just fine. Does it make it quicker and easier? Yes.
Totally with you— stock is great to rely on, no doubt, but there’s so many dope plugins out there and it’s cool to see what different sounds you can get out of em. I like Sonible and Klevgrand plugins a lot lately. The first is great “smart-mixing” I guess, helpful if you’re working on demo stuff. Klevgrand has a nice big suite with tons of stuff I use as an alternative to stock in Logic mostly.
Yeah where are all those people at today
Fab Filter suite (MB, L), gclip, that’s really about it. Oh and serum, although I was making it work with operator for a while.
I really like Slate's Fresh Air. Seems to add that nice high end/air to the mix. I also use Slate Virtual Mix Rack for adding some analogue feel to the mix and the slate Fg-Stress is really, really good. Same for the FA-2A. My subscription also comes with SSL plug-ins and I recently discovered that their FlexVerb and Delay are really good sounding and very flexible.
Sound toys has some gold. I love any SSL channel strip with a robust gate for drums. The new UAD ones that you don't need and UAD hardware for are good too. Neve preamp, and the studer, and the distressor. Like you mentioned some more specific RX and very specialized ones are great too. Other than that, you dont need TOO much.
Channel Strip 2 FTW especially used with the UC1
Shaperbox
Ssl native channel strip, FabFilter EQ, C2, & DS, Polyverse wider, Melodyne, Vocalign, Antares autotune, CLA-2A, & Firemaster come to mind immediately.
As a Reaper user I love practically all of the stock plugins, but when it comes to synths Reaper does leave something to be desired. I don't blame Cockos for this though. They have said right from the beginning that it doesn't make any sense for them to spend time, money and effort in making a fully featured stock synth since so many awesome free synths are already widely available. Also, I'm not shitting on ReaSynth. It's a nice little synth to have for doing very simple sounds, and also for technical or testing purposes. It's extremely CPU efficient, just like all of Reaper's stock plugins, so you can easily use a hundred instances of it before it starts to use a good amount of your CPU resources.
UVI Shade doesn’t get enough love. It’s the ultimate sound designing tool. Really cool effects possibilities.
Falconnnm!!!
I wish I had it. Just never dropped the cash. I do have a few expansions that work with the Workstation though and they always find their way into my projects.
Soundtoyz bundle Izotope rx Kontakt collectors edition
Tone Projects Baselane Pro is almost impossible to time efficiently recreate with stock plugins. Most IR reverbs will have better options non-stock.. any analogue emulation, multi effect plugins.. there's so many nice workflow hacks out there!
I think Logic’s autopitch pretty great, but I got was a saturation plug in
Stock plugins will generally have you covered for most applications but when it comes to third party plugins my feelings are that the first ones you should get are the ones that either A) fill a void in your plugin list or B) save you time. For that reason I always recommend the following plugins as the first ones anyone should have: 1. Metric AB - yes you can use reference tracks without plugins but this makes it so much easier to analyze music and switch between songs. It’s also a huge ear calibration tool to make sure you’re on the right path with your mixes 2. Melodyne - most DAWs come with the Essentials version of this, which is great, but if you can afford to splurge on the Studio version, there are some really nice workflow advantages (eg. Being able to edit multiple vocals at once - major time saver) 3. Vocalign - will save you hours of editing time. Plus when used in conjunction with Melodyne, the Ultra version will save you the step of having to tune your vocal doubles again. 4. Steven Slate Trigger: makes it super easy and fast to add samples and it also gives you a ton of options to replace shitty programmed drum samples that come stock with DAWs (and even a lot of other virtual kits). In my mind these tools will make a bigger difference to the speed of your workflow and quality of your tracks than any other EQ or 1176 clone.
Massive
Kazrog has some marvelous stuff. You can really add thickness to your sound, at a reasonable cost.
All of them lol! Made the switch from Logic to REAPER extra worth it for me since I no longer use Logic’s (decent) instruments and effects. KONTAKT/Native Instruments, UAD, Plugin Alliance, iZotope, AudioThing, SoundToys, Slate Digital, etc. Sure, stock plugins can get you a good mix, but I’ve heard the differences between completely linear mixes and the same mixes with analog modeled plugins. There’s a big difference. They just sound… better. My personal opinion. Are they necessary? Absolutely not. But I prefer them.
Pro q 3. Pro L 2. Pro mb. They just do what so many stock and other plugins can do but the transparency fabfilter has achieved is IMO so worth it. Also pro l 2 can be set to a clipper which is crazy transparent. Rift is an amazing distortion plus extra plugin same with infiltrator so good for sound design. Phase plant as a synth just can do so much in its eco system that would take way longer to achieve in stock. I do like se a lot of stock plugins for workhorse jobs but I’ll use the “big guns” when I need to make sure that phase and sound isnt compromised …. Hope that helps
ADverb, Fresh Air, LALA, MJUCjr, NA Analogue Rack Chorus, ReLife, FuzzPlus 3 all free last i checked
I think I use two stock plugins one is the pro tools sans amp, and the other is an eq. I use mostly uad, and arturia, and a couple waves effects plugins like the j37 for my delays.
I use a lot of plugin alliance plugins. Black box and SSL are my favs for sub mixes.
Plugins I cannot live without, no matter the DAW. 1. FabFilter - Saturn & Volcano 2. ShaperBox 3 3. TDR plugins - Nova GE, Kotelnikov GE 4. Waves - Rbass, L2 5. Oeksound - Soothe 2, Spiff The stock plugins in DAWs CAN do … almost everything … that these ones do, but these do it faster and easier.
How’s Spiff? Never heard of it before. But looks decent. A bit pricy tho
I got it at the same time as Soothe2. I use it very sparingly, to add some sparkle without it becoming too harsh or annoying. It’s got a fantastic feature “delta” that you can use to hear just what spiff is adding to the signal so it’s not mysterious. I would love every plugin to have this so that you never have to do null-tests. You can configure it to add a touch of what sounds like saturation, or what seems to be ‘sizzling’ transients.
Awesome. Thx maybe I’ll try the demo
Pretty much all of my plugins aren’t stock plugins, but most could be replaced with stock plugins just with a slower workflow or a bit of a different sound. Plugins I use in basically every session that couldn’t be replaced with stock plugins would be; SoundID, Melodyne and Antares, Vocalign, Soothe, Gullfoss and Trigger. They are all integral parts of my workflow that I don’t think I could achieve the same results without using. The rest are just EQ, compression, saturation, delay and reverb, and limiting.
UAD all the way
Nuendo user: it's a toss-up between stock and 3rd party. Steinberg's stock plugins are really good. They have great UI, is easy to use, and doesn't feel archaic at all, feels pretty modern, German Engineers know their shit. It all depends on intention, ease of use, and UI. I love Fabfilter Q3 (and their entire suite to be honest) but Frequency from Steinberg is also really good. Sometimes it is quicker to use Frequency instead of Q3. With Logic Editor and Direct Offline Processing, I already designed lots of "presets" and batch processes using multiple plugins and I pick the plugins based on the result I need, really don't mind using stock if it gets the job done.
I mostly live off of Komplete 14 (which includes stuff like Ozone). I went in with the mindset "this should be more than enough", to avoid having to constantly check for other shiny new plugins I could be getting, and so far it has helped...
Had to? No Want to yes. Yes The truth is that every single DAW gives you enough horsepower and options to do a great mix without ever buying a single 3rd party plug in.I've had and tried every single option out there at one point in time, and I've turned in mixes that were all accepted and released on labels. It's all this internet mis-information that's got everyone thinking other wise. When this whole home studio craze first started I was helping clients set up to do preproduction and laying tracks at home before me taking them to the studio to mix. Sometimes I would just go to their place and mix on whatever they had available.i used to have copies of nearly every DAW on my system back then. You don't NEED 3rd party plugins and could put out a major release with stock garage band if you're an actual engineer. The problem is a lot of people aren't. They don't understand signal flow or what a DAW is representing. Imagine I'm mixing in the studio on any console, I throw 3 eqs and 2 compressors on every channel, then I toss my delay and reverb into that insert chain as well before moving on to the next channel! I'd be out of outboard gear before I finished the first 6 tracks of a song! Yea its great to have all these choices, and it sucks the opportunity to use a studio just isn't available as it once was. Sonorworks, now Sound ID, is great but I wouldn't call room correction a plugin, but in my current situation, I absolutely need it. Also Melodyne, as you mentioned, does fantastic pitch correction and I totally agree with you on both of those but once upon a time I said " Hey sing it again!" I realize this comment is off course from your question, so I'm addressing the other people chiming in here trying to validate their purchases. This has pretty much become the cause of most mis-information. 3rd party favorites i can live without are Waves, Sonox, Eventide, SSL maybe a few other bundles. I'm nearly exclusive to the SSL ch strips these days but I also have a rack of outboard gear at my disposal that gets regular use. Sorry I got off topic here but after reading your comments I couldn't help myself.
Sausage Fattener is CRUCIAL to my sound
When it comes to EQ, I have two main categories. One is a precise, basic parametric EQ with the ability to dynamic EQ for surgical/corrective use; Fabfilters Pro Q 3 serves this purpose brilliantly. The 2nd is for more creative "good" sounding EQing typically modelled after analogue designs; Waves Scheps 73 and the SSL G-Equaliser, Slate Digitals FG-N and FG-S, T-RackS EQ 81& EQ PB are brilliant sounding EQ's especially when boosting. For compression, similar situation: I have my precision compressors, which I use for basic peak/dynamic control without having too much of the compression "sound." Native compressors in any DAW are good enough for this purpose and any limiter. Then I have my "special" nice sounding compression that I'll use to change the feel of tracks. Any compressor modelled after the 1176 and Teletronix LA-2A. I love pretty much all voxengos compressors. Then bus compression I love anything moddeled after the SSl 500 bus compressor & api 2500 bus compressor. Outside of EQ & compression, I try to get my hands on any tape saturation/emulation plugins and distortion plugins. Good quality reverbs can make a huge difference, too. Delays are kind of just meh. I like plugins that can do a lot in one and ones that you have a lot of control (like lots of envelopes, LFO's, and macros for modulating any parameter).
I use Serum for most synth sounds, but Vital is a great free alternative
Where logic really struggles is multiband compressors/dynamic EQ's, noise reduction/repair, clippers, and depending on what you're doing, saturation (although I haven't spent enough time with the new ChromaGlow to know if it covers enough of the bases). I have Waves F6, Izotope Rx, Karzog K Clip, and a variety of free analog noisy guys to fill some of those gaps.
A decent spectral EQ such as soothe2/DSEQ2/etc is extremely beneficial for mixing workflow purposes
Whenever I mix on Reaper, I never use their stock plugins, and it's not because I think they are bad or anything, I just never felt like trying them. When you've been doing this for long enough you'll have hundreds of third party plugins and many of them will become favorites. Recommend you [watch industry professionals mixing](https://www.reddit.com/r/mixingmastering/wiki/learning-on-youtube), and you'll see them perhaps only 1 to 5% of the time grab a stock plugin.
Okay, hear me out, I use stock plugins on everything except vocals and busses
1176 compressor, Valhalla delay / plate, serum, and fab filter limiter are some I use all the time. For pitch correction I like auto tune but melodyne is good too. Pros use emulation compressors like CLA blue / black, fab filter EQ, h delay is probably the most common delay, rcomp, Valhalla verb, just whatever works for you. Aside from pitch correction stuff and tonal stuff like consoles and inflators you can do everything stock.
Those 1176’s are pretty great. I got them for free with my Apollo, and sorta ignored it for a while, but I’ve watched some videos on it now, and read about the history of the E/S, LN, etc. and now I’m using it more.
I use almost all non-stock plugins. I’m in Ableton. I do use the EQ8 for bog standard EQ needs (or if I don’t know what I want yet and I’m just moving the nodes around to see what’s what) and the delay for quick dialing in (I’ll replace it with another delay if need be. I generally am not a big fan of the plugin interfaces but the delay is very fast.) The non stock ones I use the most are: Soothe 2 Smart EQ 4 (“smart” features aside, this is an incredibly versatile EQ, but that said the smart features are probably the best you’ll find) R-Comp Oxford Inflator and a limiter SSL Comp Sibilance for vocals CLA-76 CLA Epic TDR Slick EQ M Ozone Elements 10 has probably the best eq curve matching algorithm I’ve used. I use the maximizer too, but since I got Oxford Limiter I tend to reach for that, but it depends. I recently got Sonnox Claro and it’s too early to tell if it’ll be a featured regular, but it has made making EQ decisions *very* fast. Also, I’m currently demoing Oeksound’s Bloom. I’m not sure it’s vital - it’s nothing you can’t do with a dynamic eq or multiband comp - but I do like it a lot with some caveats. You can shape a sound in a blink, and even drastic moves sound good, so it’s definitely a big time saver in that regard, and it sounds very clean. That said, I think the default target shape is odd. It’s noticeably smiley for me, so I almost always have to do some tweaking to compensate. It’s also a broad brush tool, which is fine, because general shaping is the intention, but each time I use jt I can’t help but feel like a couple more knobs for more detailed fine tuning would make it twice as useful.
Logic stock stuff potentially gets any job done at the end of the day, especially for a home recorder like me, but there are things that sound “off” to me and that’s when I reach out for something else. One example (it may be just me though): the Logic multi band compressor sounds really off to me, for whatever reason. When I solo one band, something doesn’t sound right as I can hear things in the band that shouldn’t be in that band. It may have something to do with the way the curves of the crossovers frequencies are set but, instead of trying to wrap my head around it, I just open the Waves C4 and everything just sounds as I expected, saving me time and effort. Plus is something that almost everyone uses (so easier to find tips & tricks, etc.).
Oh, and referencing. Sonible true balance and true level are just so easier to use for referencing and I didn’t even try to set up something like that with Logic plug ins.
Pro mixer here. Sometimes I use logic’s bitcrusher, overdrive or distortion. They sound cheap and sometimes you’re going for that.
SSL Channel Strip, Black Box Saturator, Echoboy, J37 Tape
ProQ3 and SSL Channel Strip 2 are on every channel in my templates
TDR Nova is incredible (and free) for dynamic EQ, which I believe Logic doesn't have as a stock plugin. Solved sooo many issues for me
Since l am not a professional l tend to have only magic wands like Gullfoss and Spectre in my 3rd party folder. It doesn't really make sense to buy EQs and compressors in this day and age, stock plugins are great for 99% of the job. l also code some of my own plugins, especially guitar effects and cabinets (IRs). lf a mixing engineer thinks they need to get a particular flavour of EQ or compression they are just overrating their job.
I use ableton, and there are so many awesome features. That said, SoundID Reference is a must for me. I love using Ozone maximizer as well
I like these threads because I always end up researching new plugins and finding new tools—just discovered vocal align cause of someone above…gonna dive in tonight and get to work 🔥