Well it’s that time of year again where I am allowing myself to buy some plugins since they are going to be on Black Friday sale…
Don’t know why but I have a crap ton of plugins for mixing/mastering. Like every eq, compressor, clipper, limiter, saturator, stereo widener etc. Stuff like that. But I feel like I don’t have many creative sound design kind of plugins. I have a few, like some stuff from arturia like efx fragments, but really would like a few more… what are your favorites?
Thanks!
Output Portal and thermal are very fun for me, when automating their macro controls are very dope. I like.
Just use some basic effects and do some creative routing. Set up a send with a delay on it, and then crush the hell out of the delay with one of those compressors. Then send that into a reverse reverb and bitcrush it. I promise you it will sound different.
Many things that are made by either of these companies are good candidates for the more experimental times:
https://freakshowindustries.com/
Or
I’ve only used these on iOS, but I really like Unfiltered Audio’s lo-fi-af & Silo. The first does a lot of very digital audio degredation (cd skips, repeated transcodings, etc). The latter is a granular/spatializer/reverb that sounds excellent.
Birds rolling sampler. It’s kinda like having a tape deck always running and you can grab any piece of audio and drag it into a new clip. I’ve always thought the resampling process of modern daws was incredibly slow and this speeds it up.
Trash 2 is pretty cool. Can be obtained pretty cheap quite often as well. https://www.izotope.com/en/products/trash.html
Edit: seems like they dropped it for some reason. Might be available from other sources such as pluginboutique
I use Shaperbox on many tracks in a project, volume, distortion, filter, flanger, can do many things. Its very practical. Soundtoys is also very good.
Fabfilter , any stuff they have is very good. Ok the delay is not up to par imho, i prefer Valhalla or Soundtoys, Color copy from UhE is intresting too.
If you are creative with fx racks, many things can be solved with Abelton onboard plugins and sequencing the rack selector.
Unfiltered Audio lo-fi-af does soooo many potentially creative things. They have a few more plugins that have quite a bit of hidden depth as well.
Shaperbox is super fun.
Little alterboy is great for messing up vocals
One of my favorite plugins for the past year has been the Minimal Audio Morph EQ. I’m pretty sure I got it last black Friday and I’m still liking a lot. It’s not a traditional EQ, although it could probably do that too. It’s just great for creative filtering/EQing the way it allows the bands to move freely or linked to each other.
I have Shaperbox3 and I like it, but I think I would have liked Infiltrator2 more: Infiltrator 2 - Devious Machines I’m debating picking that up this season, but it might make me abandon Shaperbox, which would feel a bit wasteful
Yeah, they dropped it a while ago! It’s a bummer, because I didn’t get a chance to pick it up when it was cheap. When I saw your post I got excited it might be back 
oh well, there are other great distortion plugs out there
Baby Audio Spaced Out and Super VHS, Audio Damage Other Desert Cities
They’re currently three I think of when I want something to spark ideas or help move ideas forward.
Dang, some good suggestions so far.
I also think the daw resampling workflow is slow and this looks really interesting, thanks.
Wtf, looks like I already have morph eq and I totally don’t remember getting it. So I checked my old emails and it looks like I got it for free somehow earlier this year. Must have thought that it was just a regular eq that I would get around to trying sometime. Guess that time is today lol. Some of their other stuff looks really cool too!
Every black friday I think about buying the soundtoys bundle, but every year the plugins just get older and the price gets more expensive lol. I think the plate reverb is the only new thing they have done in like 5+ years. They used to be standards but I am just not sure, again, this year.
Nice! It’s not like a mind-blowing, feature-packed powerhouse or anything, but man I get results with it. Give it a shot!
The soundtoys distortion is not as flexible as Trash 2 is, but overall it sounds very good (and dark). (In low quantities 5% it can be a cool master FX also.) But there are some free distortions now - namely from Analog Obsession -he has a lot of pay what you want - and damm its really sounding great - also the SSL console emulation from him is very good, it. gives a magic sauce kind of thing, when you boost a little of these frequencys that is good in your signal. SieQ from Soundtoys is somewhat similar - it also adds a bit pop to the signal. The problem is then - when everything pops, nothing is special, something has to play the support role, otherwise it wont function. From a palette view, is really good to have some flavours - but most come down to the signal itself. Its like photography in that respect, a certain filter can add to the picture, and set a mood - but the original image is what is most important.
This is the way. And add some modulation or automation to it. “Creative” plugins are IMO not much more creative than just slapping some shimmer reverb instead of normal one and calling it a day. Yeah it’s a bit different than the norm, but it still makes everybody that uses it sound the same.
Anyway, for something a bit different, glitchmachines comes to mind.
Love everything I’ve tried from Slate & Ash
Cycles is super cool, but I’ve been obsessed with Choreographs for the past year. Kind of expensive but worth it imo, you can make really cool patches with it and also drag your own samples in
Timeless 3 is fucking amazing. 