@@jonaudio I think you know how much I love pigments! The others are targeted more at newer producers but have music production much more accessible to me as a hobby! Happy New year! Looking forward to more great content from you in 2024!
For me, it was Aturia''s very first product, Moog Modular V. That was how I was able to fulfill a life-long dream of mine of "owning" a Moog modular system. That was how I learned how to program a modular system. From there, it became the entire Arturia V Collection, been upgrading it to the latest version every other year or so. That collection instruments is my primary set of synths that I use. I've tried quite a few others but, I find myself constantly returning to the V Collection of synths.
The V collection is so amazing, it still blows my mind I can carry all those synths on my laptop thats in my back pack lol. pure insanity, but so awesome! I used those synths so many times and I've never gotten bored with them
- *Bitwig The Grid*, It's so simple and easy to use and you can make anything. - *Hive*. I cannot live without Hive it sounds amazing and is so easy to create great sounds - *Zebra 2*. I purchased it because of the amount of presets of Zebra legacy but then I started digging and making really great sounds. The filters and the sound of this synth are amazing - *Avenger 2*. It's really simple to use and you can go really deep, it's time stretch is the best. I think there are so many great soft synths and it's a matter of preference, for example I could never connect with Serum or Vital (they are great). For FX - Vallhalla Supermassive - Infiltrator 2 - Arturia FX collection
Top notch list my man!! The grid is kind blowing. It's something I wanna invest more time into. I absolutely love hive, it almost make it on the list, probably should have been because of its design, sound and low cpu. Zebra is really great too. Anything uhe makes is top notch!
Life changing synth would be U-He DIVA, so simple yet so in depth, took me from understanding the basics of synthesis to really knowing how to create the sounds I hear in my head rather than just altering presets. Your tutorials probably contributed some there. For effects I don't know if any really holds that spot, maybe the Mepda basic bundle or the Sound toys complete bundle because they are my first investment at various stages in the process but the plugins themselves never changed much just reflected my own learning and experience.
Yep, diva is absolutely a life changing synth! And that's good that you bring up hearing a sound in your head then making it. That's exactly where you wanna be! I think lots of people get stuck in this habit of just turning knobs all the time and hoping for a cool patch, it can happen for sure. But the targeted way of hearing something in your head then making it real is 100% the way to go
We are being spoiled by the amount of great plugins that are available these days. I used to stick to free plugins hoping the restriction would boost creativity. My first paid synth ended up being Synthmaster 2 as it was really cheap and seemed to be capable of what I was missing from other plugins (Vital didn't exist yet). At first I didn't even really realize its true value until years later when I started to experiment with more popular plugins. Just for fun tried to remake some of their sounds in Synthmaster too, just as a challenge. Turns out not only could it do nearly all of them, but often they sounded better and usually with a lower CPU usage too. Right now I'm at a point where I regret buying some these more popular plugins (won't name them). This underrated synth is a bit buggy sometimes, but it's such a versatile powerhouse I would choose it as my only synth if I had to pick only one. Oh, honorable mentions: Toneboosters EQ4 and (less original) Valhalla Room.
Its cool you did that though because now you can really appreciate the plugins you bought. In case you haven't used it yet, but since you mentioned low cpu usage, hive might be a good addition to your synth arsenal, it also sound great too!
I used to use sonar works for years when I'd use my 7506 headphones, and it did make mixes translate better thats for sure. I ran into the issue that I relied on it too much and when I was on gigs and didn't have sonar works and went to use my headphones, I felt like I didn't know them anymore and wasn't confident in my mix choices because of that. If it's always around its a game changer for sure but scary when it's not around. I eventually got a pair of headphones I really liked and translated and haven't used it since then
TBC doesn't generate any sounds, but I use it constantly. It's an absolute godsend to those of us that do not trust our ears. (I am old and can't hear high frequencies, but seeing them and being able to match them to references is so useful).
@@jonaudio totally love your work Jon. Thanks for all your amazing videos and all the advice you give. There's an 18 min guide called "Beginners guide to scaler in 2023" on School of Synthesis (SOS) channel that gives a quick overview for people not familiar with it. It's quite reasonably priced at about £40 or so I think. And since I'm not musically trained it has helped my music progress a lot! In a way it's a tool to help you learn music theory. Which sounds boring but it's soooooo much fun to experiment with and get inspired by!
I like scaler2, lotsa bang for the buck and it helps coming up with chords if you get stuck on something. Loop Engine is also pretty epic, esp if you can get it at a discount.
Ableton live was the software that really got me into making music, it changed my life in a huge way, love that workflow. Then Serum I learned how to make sounds. Then came omnisphere that really changed what I was doing , then I learned of Falcon oh man that sent me into the stratosphere of sound design. Then Phase plant and Done. lol huge life changers
That's a cool chain of events that you went though. So cool that you also were able to get falcon. I swear that plugin is just amazing, the possibilities are endless..
Great video, it's ten times more interesting to hear what users really like, than what someone is trying to sell on YT (it's boring). I can give my top five synths, haven't tried the Falcon though, which looks like a monster synth. I have Pigments which in my opinion is Arturia's best product. I'm a Bitwig user, which in itself is a good-sounding modular synth. My top five in no particular order are Serum, easy to work with, everyone knows it and it sounds good. Diva of course, sounds fantastic and is also relatively easy to work with. I'm a big Native fan, and have everything they've released so far, so Massive X, which can be a brutal-sounding synth but a bit tricky to work with. Received nine packages with patches for Massive during the last upgrade on BF, which helps me out. I think Spire still measures up, I like it and finally Moog's new Mariana, a good-sounding mono synth for deep bass. My favorite reverb is probably Replika, flexible, easy to work with and sounds good. I'm also a big fan of reverbs in general and many sound great, my last reverb purchase was Soundtoys big plate which sounds good too. Also, have U-he's all effects, and they are all top notch. I'm a Maschine MK3 user, an instrument I can't be without, the same applies to Scaler 2, a fantastic plugin, easy to understand, manageable and creative tool. XO drum machine, a great machine for rhythms and easy to work with. Was nearly forgetting about Xfer Cthulhu, an amazing arp and also Xfer LFO. There are so many good plugins today, could easily make the list twice or thrice as long :) Cheers from Stockholm
Thanks man!! I just love geeking out about synths and gear. As much as I love the v collection, my favorite by Arturia is pigments and agree it's their best product. They struck gold with that one. Falcon is just another level, I feel it's a synth you have to graduate to because of how unlimited it truly is. Once you're at that point, anything you imagine to do is just mouse clicks away. I don't really use much stuff from NI but I wanted to give massive X a try and downloaded the trial. And for some reason it was super buggy for me and crashed often. Maybe it's something on my end? I can't imagine them releasing a buggy plugin? But at the same time I've got so many synths installed that don't bug out so I dunno. I wasn't able to really use it.
@@jonaudio I Agree, it's really inspiring and fun to explore new instruments/tools. Maybe you had an early version of Massive that made it unstable, never had any problems myself.
I'm addicted to all things AUDIOTHING (for their Simplicity) & all things SUGARBYTES (for their Complexity!). ✨️!!!TRACK SPACER!!!✨️ 🎉!!!RHYTHIQ & REGROOVER!!!🎉 SPLIT EQ, TRASH 2, BEATFORMER, REASON RACK, XO, ZONE, HY-Plugins SEQUENCERS, SHAPERBOX!, & SPECTRE are game-changers for me 😎 FX COLLECTIONS: ZPLANE, U-HE, ARTURIA, MELDA (so Powerful & so DEEP!!!), NEOLD, and PLUGIN ALLIANCE in general 😉👍 SYNTHS: FALCON, PHASE PLANT, KNIFONIUM 💥🎶💥
Shows you how people are different, and that's fine. I regret buying pigments even though it was on sale. I haven't used it AT ALL. Avenger is the synth I can't live without. The TC electronic system 6000 native plugins are so good (for me) that they changed the way I do things (md4 especially, but the verbs also). There are some (free) Airwindows plugins that changed the way I work also. To show I might not be typical, I evaluated Live 9 and 10 and Bitwig (I think 2.x version, but can't remember four years ago) and it was no contest for me: Bitwig all the way. I don't regret my decision today.
Yeah bitwig is amazing! I'm in the process on moving over entirely to bitwig. After a few days of acclimating to it. It's just amazing, clean and really inspiring! I can see your point in regretting pigments if there's another synth you use and are comfortable with it. Avenger is a great synth. It's mind blowing how much it can do. The fx all are really good and that arp/sequencer is top notch!
Live changing: Ableton Live together with Push2 and my Novation Midi keyboard I own a lot of VST stuff from Arturia, Cherry Audio, Glitchmachine, NI, U-He, Izotope, and more. Can't name it all. And most of them are more or less still used. Here are the Plugins I like and use regularly in my tracks: Synthesizer: Diva, Zebra, Hive, Pigments, Chromaphone, Phase Plant Sampler: Kontakt and Unify from PluginGuru (Unify is much more than a sampler. It's like a Swiss knife for sound design) Midi: Scaler 2, Stepic, Phrasebox, Captian Epic Effect: Multipass, Supermassive, EFX Fragments, Stardust 201, Neoverb, Raum, Guitar Rig 6 Mixing: Ableton stock plugins together with Neutron Mastering: Ozone And I use Voltage Modular if I got the modular vibe ...
Great list there! Love the synths you picked. How do you like voltage? Been looking at that recently, I've generally used VCV for modular stuff but I've heard good things about voltage
@@jonaudio HI Jon, Voltage Modular was one of my first synth I bought, after starting with Ableton Live more then 3 years ago. In a long run it was not cheap, because of all the extra moduls I added. There is not much free stuff, like for VCV. For me the workflow in Voltage Modular is easier. I played around with an early version of VCV und use now as well the free Cardinal synth (free VCV VST Clone based on VCV Source with a huge amount of free VCV moduls build in). But still love Voltage Modular and I use it to build synths and as well effects. Give it a try. The base version is free of cost.
I don't have many but I really like Pigments and also I start learning more about Hive 2.. I also have Diva but I am not really well with it.. thank you Jon! Yours videos are very educational!
Life changing? Well, that's tricky but here's a selection of things which made a significant difference over my baseline (Studio One Pro). In no particular order: o Auto-align: revolutionised multi-miced instruments (drums, bass, guitars). One way or another you need to phase align stuff and this showed me how important it was o Metric AB: essential referencing plugin. Yes, your ears are lying to you! o Pigments: having struggled for so long with Synthmaster this was the soft synth which finally made it all make sense while still being immensely powerful o Seventh Heaven (not the Pro): this totally changed my understanding of reverb. It sounds great but, more importantly, it has exactly the right controls you need to dial in and shape your reverb. Many an a-ha moment with this plugin. o Standardclip: you need to clip and this was the easy gateway into that o vhorns Saxophones: this demonstrated to me how much better some virtual instruments are than others. And following the crowd doesn't mean you'll get to the best ones o Pro Q3: there are few more important things when mixing than EQ and this is the perfect tool to help you get to where you want to go. Simple to use and powerful in equal measure. o Gullfoss: this was life changing but for the wrong reason. I demo-ed it, didn't really like it but still went ahead and bought it because of all the amazing reviews and I just figured that all those people knew more than me. It's 3 years later on and although I've tried it many, many times it has never stayed on a single mix I've done. This was life changing because a) I make sure I demo any plugin before buying it and b) I trust my own judgement even if I appear to be swimming against the youtube tide. That's off the top of my head. These aren't necessarily my favourite plugins but they are the ones that have changed my life.
Its interesting you mentioned Gullfoss, I recently heard about it and was thinking about getting it at some point. What made you not really like it? Awesome to see pigments made your list! Such a great synth!
@@jonaudio well, I'm a bit hesitant to be specific because my main point isn't that Gullfoss is bad but that I made the mistake of buying it even though I'd demo-ed it and didn't like it. I didn't have confidence in my own judgement at the time and just decided that if all the youtube "experts" were saying it was amazing then I must be wrong. However, since you ask, I'd say that it adds a graininess and "artificiality" to the sound and the only way to get rid of that is to turn it down to the point where it isn't really doing anything. As a contrast, I recently tried Sonible Smarteq 4 (which on dynamic mode does a similar thing to Gullfoss as far as I can tell) and that didn't add any graininess. I still didn't buy Smarteq4 because I couldn't say it made things sound better but at least it didn't make things worse. I'm a big believer in judicious use of eq tools like dynamic eq, multiband compression and even specialty eq tools like resonance suppressors and transient/body eqs but throwing a smart eq into the chain just doesn't do anything good. IMHO! Once I'd decided to give up on Synthmaster and try a few others then Pigments stood out as being intuitive and flexible (iirc Serum and Phaseplant were the other contenders). I still think that Synthmaster is probably the best synth (in terms of sound and features) that exists but it's totally inaccessible. The GUI is a bit clunky, the labellling of parameters isn't especially useful and, this is the clincher, the manual isn't up to date. You literally have to try and find some release video for each version to understand what's new and what's changed. I actually found that learning Pigments helped me to understand some thing about Synthmaster. I also have to (again) thank you so much for your Pigments videos. I was looking for alternatives just when Pigments 4 came out and your series of videos were amazingly helpful. In fact, I still reference them to this day and they are permanently on my playlist. Happy New Year and keep up the great work.
Omnisphere has been a game changer for me. I bought it last year and it transformed how I work. I have Pigments, Phaseplant, which would be a lot more flexible, but they all demand so much of my CPU that I tend not to use them as much. However my laptop doesn’t struggle with Omnisphere or Serum, so those two are the ones I use the most. And those limitations have helped me get better at sound design. Dune and Falcon are also others that have had a massive impact on my workflow
Cpu cost is so important in a synth, especially when you really need to make crazy patches or use lots of instances. It's surprising for how much falcon has to offer its actually pretty good on cpu
For me: Omnisphere, EW's Hollywood Orchestra (OPUS), U-He's synths (I heard Repro compared to Arturia's Prophet and heard such a massive difference that I did away with all my Arturia stuff), and last year Berlin Studio (reverb). I never thought a reverb could be a gamechanger, but it's approach is so genius that it made working with orchestral libraries 80% more CPU and RAM efficiënt. It is truly revolutionary.
I'll have to look into that reverb. But yeah man repro is on another level. One thing to keep in mind between Arturias and uhes Version is that they are based on different revisions of the prophet. Arturias is Rev 2 and uhe is Rev 3. Which had different chips. Everything touches is gold tho haha
The new Pulsar stuff (8200, Massive and Mu are a record factory). More generally: any good de-esser, some of the Kazrog stuff (especially KClip), Softube’s Tape, and Overloud’s classic emulations. Trackspacer is pretty much indispensable. Finally, the AB from Plugin Alliance is a must before final mastering. Synth wise, your choices are spot on. I’d say whatever works best with your style and workflow. Most newer synths are pretty much world class at this point. I like simple synths that can do a lot, and for that I really dig the Softube stuff. Enjoyed the video!
I've never used any soft tube stuff, and I really gotta change that. Youre right tho, synths now are very good and if you get to know them, you can get really far.
@@jonaudio their Juno clone is very tasty, as is their Drawmer comp. By the way, Presswerk is criminally underrated; it’s basically every compressor. Best with the channel!
Pigments for sure was a game changer for me. Its a powerful synth thats pretty intuitive to use. As for effects, I've been digging Devious Machines' Infiltrator 2, a beast of a multieffects plugin. I feel like it is kind of like the pigments of effects. My most common use for it is voluming shaping. Before, I was using Cubase's FX Modulator but what made Infiltrator a game changer was the abilty to add swing. Sounds like a minor thing, but I'm happy with how much tighter things can sound now.
for me, everything arturia,VSLkontakt,musio,and avenger, these are my top ones, there are supporting vsti's like nexus 3,vital,decent sampler (for creating free sample instruments) for effects,everything polyverse music,blackhole,seventh heaven & cinematic rooms,and like you steppic, dont forget the free ozone EQ at native instruments, cheers Jon
Reaktor for basically the same reasons you listed Falcon - particularly I love the Blocks environment. Pigments for sure. Newfangled Elevate Bundle ,for mastering, particularly the Saturate plugin. I have a feeling that PlugData is what's gonna shift my workflow the most in 2024.
Reaktor!! Yes!! I absolutely love Reaktor. When I first got Reaktor I literally stayed home for a few days and just had a blast with it, I downloaded so many community ensambles. That's where I found a polivox emulation. Super super cool. And it sounds very very similar to the polivox I have
3 Life changing vst instruments for me: (I hope to add Falcon to this list eventually) 1. Omnisphere - Endless inspiration, inexhaustible array of stellar sounds 2. Pigments - T h a n k Y o u for all the videos, so helpful!!! 3. Novum - omgosh so fun to drag short vocal samples into it, and TWIST 4 Life changing FX plugins 1. Redopter - by D16 (Putting xtra hair on a synth has never been so fast or sounded so deep) 2. Air Delay Pro - by Air ( Bcz of the 'Auto Clear' function, especially fantastic on drums & vocals) 3. Mongoose - by Boz (This is what first got me into paying attention to mid/side processing, I'll never forget it) 4. Pan Knob - by Boz (Puts a sense of elegance into panning doubled tracks)
You're very welcome my man!! I love pigments so much lol. Thats a great list you got. Some I haven't used but I'll look into them. I think you'd really like falcon, the learning curve can be a little rough but man it's unbelievablely powerful and oddly pretty well optimized. I like making drums in different synths to see how they come out and how the workflow is and falcon has always given good results
Cool video again! My top 3 VSTi's would be: 1) Toontrack Superior Drummer 2 - Being a drummer first and foremost 2) Arturia Pigments - So versatile and clear (and how I found this channel) 3) Native Instruments Kontakt - Because I the broad array of different sounds (you can get) Top 3 VST's 1) Arturia Rev Intensity - I love this reverb. Sounds so nice and lush 2) XLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color - love that for a bit of 80s vibe and great wobble. 3) iZotope Ozone 10 - for a quick master. Special shoutout personally to Steinberg's Cubase. I love that DAW to bits!
Thanks man!! Great choices there! I've wanted to check out superior drummer for a while now. It seems so good. I've used addictive drums for a while, and most recently I've just been synthesizing my kits. Awesome that you included pigments as well, it's such a great synth!!
@@jonaudio Superior's "little" brother, EZDrummer, is great too and a lighter purchase, money wise. Both can make synthesised drums playable, as I'm sure addictive drums can do too. If you're into played e-drums that is. TBH, a great runner up for me, when it comes to programmed drums is Groove Agent by Steinberg. It's a lot more powerful than most people know. But let's just be happy with the abundance of awesome VST(i)'s there are out there now and some many with so much quality! Even free stuff!
Avenger 2 is the only instrument you will ever need. If you're a new producer on a low budget, get this plugin as you can do anything. It's a drum rack/sequencer, wavetable synthesizer, sampler, granular synthesizer, spectral synthesizer, sequencer, can generate notes and sequences randomly, has stellar built-in effects. You can have up to 8 oscillators and a single sampler oscillator can stack multiple samples to blend. The list goes on. However, Bitwig Grid is the most life changing for me, as I built my own instrument that mixes the best parts about Serum, Vital, Avenger 2 etc.
My favorite plugin is ultra super mute 2000. It is able to mute within a single sample and attenuate with its internal attenuation engine at 128 bits. It is also extremely simple with only two presets: on and off.
Phase Plant w/Ultimate is so amazing. It can do everything and the effects do so much. Its capabilities are unrivaled. The UI is so much easier to use than Avenger and Falcon. Also for quick edits and a powerful and CPU friendly engine look at Parawave Rapid.
Phaseplant did it right in the UI department. The first time I used it, I felt like I already knew it. UI on synths is a big deal imo. Fslcon for example has a rough learning curve, but that being said, after you get over that hurdle, it makes sense why it's designed like that and the UI grows on you. It's strange how that works but yeah, with its complexity it needs a UI like that
Ujam Usynth is a really good one. I have a few of them. The concept is weird. It's a synth but you don't have access to most of its features, but it has very nice presets and is often on sale, like now.
Loopcloud, sync and pitch samples. Halion 7, the new Yamaha FM engine and sample import from old Akai, Emu, Roland libraries. Komplete Kontrol, make presets and audio previews of your preset library.
The first ones I aquired when I bought Cubase which would be Retrologue and Halion years ago. Most of you take for granted no noise floor, presets, any effect you want. I started in the late seventies with an Arp Odyssey...
Or what's kinda crazy too is how engineers did everything they could to remove noise floor or just noise in general and nowadays their are plugins and effects that bring it back lol
Goodhertz Can Opener Studio…makes headphone mixing 100% better and more realistic. UAD Sound City…the tech in this plugin has blown me away. I can take any digital instrument or sample and make it sound like it was recorded in a real studio space. Eventide SplitEQ…utterly has changed the way I approach EQ. I can make masters far more detailed and dense while enhancing clarity.
Analog obsession plugin sets!!. It makes my personal life easier , simply because I dont need to "educate" my wife everytime credit card statement coming out
I have so many now but here is my list: Acid V Avenger 2 Nexus Musio 1 Pigments Pusher ( by Waves) Serum Spire Tom Factory Vital Raum (free reverb) Legato Solo Trumpet (Musical Sampling) Amy & Maggie (Musical Sampling) Spitfire Originals Epic Choir Spitfire Soaring Strings Some free bonuses I recently found but sound amazing... Hamburger (distortion) MS-2 (the ugliest thing I've seen but amanzing sound) ISpacer (was free but not anymore it seems) Minima 2
Main all the time go to's: Instrument: Diva / OP-X Pro II / IK SampleTank 4 DAW Stuff: Pro Q3 EQ / Waves CLA-2A / Morph Verb MASTERING in the box: IK One
thanks dude!! that's so cool to hear!! Most modern synths can get you there for sure, I do like Hive for trance, but really any modern synth will be more than capable to make the sounds you need for those genres like serum, vital, pigments, hive, avenger, diva, repro etc..
No one mentions 3x OSC? If there's one synth out there to make anything, it's this one. It's simplicity makes it also complex. Remember last year when 3x OSC was hyped because of the amazing real life sounding demotracks were released through IL?
@@jonaudio I absolutely agree. Whole new possibilities are opened with the new 3x OSC in patcher since it's way less demanding than Sytrus for basic waveforms
For me, the truly lifechanging plugins have been arturias plate-140, dist coldfire and the whole efx range, and since i got the augmented series, my use of kontakt has dropped like 173737% 😂😂😂
FL Parametric is a decent EQ. But you can do more with Fab Filter - because it's dynamic. IMHO Image Line really failed with their last version 21 - it really had very few upgrades, and not making their EQ dynamic was just another in a long list of failures.
they should really upgrade their eq to a dynamic eq, that would be a huge quality of life update, there is one in one of the patcher presets, but it should still be an upgrade to the stock eq
I just took a look at it. It seems very promising! Apparently it retails for 300 but on sale for 149 dollars. Def going to ponder getting it. Thanks for letting me know!! 🤙🤙
I would say Serum, Pigments, Vital, Hive and now Current Minimal I can’t use steppic, because I still use GarageBand and of course I own all Valhalla products
In this order for synths: Falcon, Avenger, Phaseplant, Pigments (not my favorite as it used to be. But its my first true 3rd party soft synth that made sense to me unlike all that NI chaos) Honorary mention: ICARUS 2 and NOVUM (i dont own them yet. But they've changed the game for me) For processing: i have no shame in saying this: all the iZotopes. I actually love how they sound, and i dont care what others say: the frequency masking is THE BOMB Bonus shout-outs: Reason rack. Bitwig (which i know.is a daw, but its hard to separate the Grid from Bitwig, so it's a huge fucking modular synth and sequencer with killer MPE and Audio support
Solid choices right there my man!! Since you bring up izotope, I kind of feel that I'll have to start moving away from them. I bought ozone 8 for around 500 bucks a while ago, and I love it. It's one of those plugins that probably should have made this list but anyway, I went to upgrade and it was barely a discount. Maybe like 30 bucks? I though it must have been a mistake, but nope, they basically wanted me to buy the whole suite all over again. They make great stuff but man their business model makes me not want to buy another plugin from them
I completely understand about the upgrade issue. It just bought the previous versions on a fatty sale, but then had a fatty discount with the upgrade price. HOWEVER, if I faced a steep upgrade price like you did, I wouldn't have done it. That's why I'm scrapping Waves all together for that god aweful upgrade plan, that provides no benefit or value. Bitwig has a similar yearly upgrade plan, but Bitwig is worth it. But that's honestly why I bought FL. I'm like "if I'm out of money, at least I have one DAW that gives me free upgrades for life" FL is starting to get up there with Bitwig for me. @@jonaudio
So happy to hear you're ditching waves. That company has such awful business practices. Bitwig is probably the daw I also want to learn aside from FL and pro tools. It seems like it's really moving up in the ranks. And the grid seems like soooo much fun
SO MUCH FUN! I was ditching waves before they becamse a controversy. They just don't sound good compared to the Arturia Collection, Plugin Alliance, UAD or iZotope.@@jonaudio
I've used it before yeah and you're right it's insane for sure. I really like the design. I felt it was a synth that I didn't need to read the manual for, I total did tho lol
Omnisphere. And Bitwig. And Soundtoys 5. All Output’s VSTs I regret buying. Especially as they use the pointless Kontakt. And Unison. Never brought any of their rip off cheap plug ins though. But the thought of having wasted money on one counts does it? Please?
Fm8 seems really cool. I rarely use NI stuff but that one has always interested me. For FM I usually use Arturias dx7, or sytrus, still curious about Fm8 tho
Loyalty towards a plugin is nice but think twice as they could be your (plugin) limitations in your creativity , Falcon, Phaseplant, Pigments, Current and Spire :-)
Outside of that... As you said said,putting some thought on your purchases. I genuinely feel like spending money leveled up my game. We all start broke and are able to download anything, and we get unhappy with it, and move on to the next new shiny thing. After I actually bought my first plugins, that was the day I started learning extensively. Watching tutorials, browsing manuals, doing some crazy unintended things to push the plugin to the limit to make my money worth. I still believe FL Studio has a great stuff inside. And one can do absolutely fine with it, but as time progress... U realized that you are not paying for the function, you are paying for the convenience. Example ProQ... Mid/side, L/R, Dynamic bands from one click. Ozone, channel linking on multiband compression, separate mid/side settings, and Stereo imager were to me main selling points.
That's a great point you bring up. Once we spend money on a plugin, we feel that we need to get our money's worth and learn it inside and out, which is a great thing. If we were to have every plugin out there for free I think we'd just collect a lot of them and never really use them to their full potential ya know?
Ive been buying sample packs (black octopus, production master, singomakers etc) and a lot of them come with presets for diva, serum etc, now im thinking i HAVE to buy serum and diva just because i have thousands of presets for them....😢😢😢😢🤑🤑🤑🤑
@@jonaudio indeed. Just feels a bit silly when i already have pigments, vital, the whole arturia collection. Bazille, Cube, Cherry audio synth s etc etc.....
Ah gotcha, well that being the case sounds like you got your bases covered. Serum probably wouldn't add much, diva might as it's very good at what it does, but since you got the v collection it may be somewhat redundant ya know?
ADAPTR Metric AB FabFilter Pro Q in all it's forms, just a great EQ Melodyne UBK1 and REDDI by Kush Sonnox Oxford Inflator Valhalla Vintage Verb Toontrack EZ Drummer Softube Tape Plus the usual suspects.... don't want to name any W*v*s products because I am seriously disappointed by their buisiness ethics.
I bet Steve Dudas life was significantly changed with the success of serum. Urs Heckmann was able to build a very successful plugin company and hire people to work for him. Matt's life has probably changed as well after creating Vital. Producers and artists have had their lives changed by using plugins. I've been hired for jobs because I have certain plugins that have helped me get the job done, which has then led to other jobs, which looking back did change my life. Autotune for example has changed many peoples lives as well To say that no plugin is life changing is simply not true.
Dune 3 ❤ gave me confidence to use a synth❤
That's super inspiring to hear!! I swear I'll get dune 3 soon haha
@@jonaudio Hi there Jon .. Enlighten us on some good vsts to create rhythm / beats in a easy way ..!! 🖖💗
Drinking game - take a shot whenever Jon says "right?" - Disclaimer: not responsible for alcohol poisoning or death.
LOL!!!! Let's do it!!
- Pigments
- Izotope Neutron/Nectar
- ujam beat maker plugins
- Captain plugins from mixed in key
Glad to see pigments on your list!! I havent used the others you mentioned, gonna look them up tonight
@@jonaudio I think you know how much I love pigments!
The others are targeted more at newer producers but have music production much more accessible to me as a hobby!
Happy New year! Looking forward to more great content from you in 2024!
Ujam Beatmaker is very good. I have many of them. I use them as sound banks, not as drum loops. Loops is cheating to me.
For me, it was Aturia''s very first product, Moog Modular V. That was how I was able to fulfill a life-long dream of mine of "owning" a Moog modular system. That was how I learned how to program a modular system. From there, it became the entire Arturia V Collection, been upgrading it to the latest version every other year or so. That collection instruments is my primary set of synths that I use. I've tried quite a few others but, I find myself constantly returning to the V Collection of synths.
The V collection is so amazing, it still blows my mind I can carry all those synths on my laptop thats in my back pack lol. pure insanity, but so awesome! I used those synths so many times and I've never gotten bored with them
- *Bitwig The Grid*, It's so simple and easy to use and you can make anything.
- *Hive*. I cannot live without Hive it sounds amazing and is so easy to create great sounds
- *Zebra 2*. I purchased it because of the amount of presets of Zebra legacy but then I started digging and making really great sounds. The filters and the sound of this synth are amazing
- *Avenger 2*. It's really simple to use and you can go really deep, it's time stretch is the best.
I think there are so many great soft synths and it's a matter of preference, for example I could never connect with Serum or Vital (they are great).
For FX
- Vallhalla Supermassive
- Infiltrator 2
- Arturia FX collection
Top notch list my man!! The grid is kind blowing. It's something I wanna invest more time into.
I absolutely love hive, it almost make it on the list, probably should have been because of its design, sound and low cpu.
Zebra is really great too. Anything uhe makes is top notch!
Hive2 is in my want list on pb. Seems amazing.
Dude it's so good. I love hive so much. It's quick, sounds great and excellent on the cpu. Highly recommend it!
Life changing synth would be U-He DIVA, so simple yet so in depth, took me from understanding the basics of synthesis to really knowing how to create the sounds I hear in my head rather than just altering presets. Your tutorials probably contributed some there. For effects I don't know if any really holds that spot, maybe the Mepda basic bundle or the Sound toys complete bundle because they are my first investment at various stages in the process but the plugins themselves never changed much just reflected my own learning and experience.
Yep, diva is absolutely a life changing synth!
And that's good that you bring up hearing a sound in your head then making it. That's exactly where you wanna be!
I think lots of people get stuck in this habit of just turning knobs all the time and hoping for a cool patch, it can happen for sure. But the targeted way of hearing something in your head then making it real is 100% the way to go
Shaperbox, gives me the control I always wanted over effects.
That's one I wanna get!
I hope that sonible and newfangled audio will change the way i mix and master music foreverrrrrrr
We are being spoiled by the amount of great plugins that are available these days. I used to stick to free plugins hoping the restriction would boost creativity. My first paid synth ended up being Synthmaster 2 as it was really cheap and seemed to be capable of what I was missing from other plugins (Vital didn't exist yet). At first I didn't even really realize its true value until years later when I started to experiment with more popular plugins. Just for fun tried to remake some of their sounds in Synthmaster too, just as a challenge. Turns out not only could it do nearly all of them, but often they sounded better and usually with a lower CPU usage too. Right now I'm at a point where I regret buying some these more popular plugins (won't name them). This underrated synth is a bit buggy sometimes, but it's such a versatile powerhouse I would choose it as my only synth if I had to pick only one.
Oh, honorable mentions: Toneboosters EQ4 and (less original) Valhalla Room.
Its cool you did that though because now you can really appreciate the plugins you bought. In case you haven't used it yet, but since you mentioned low cpu usage, hive might be a good addition to your synth arsenal, it also sound great too!
Well articulated
Sonarworks and Tonal Balance Control, game changer for my mixes.
I used to use sonar works for years when I'd use my 7506 headphones, and it did make mixes translate better thats for sure. I ran into the issue that I relied on it too much and when I was on gigs and didn't have sonar works and went to use my headphones, I felt like I didn't know them anymore and wasn't confident in my mix choices because of that.
If it's always around its a game changer for sure but scary when it's not around. I eventually got a pair of headphones I really liked and translated and haven't used it since then
TBC doesn't generate any sounds, but I use it constantly. It's an absolute godsend to those of us that do not trust our ears. (I am old and can't hear high frequencies, but seeing them and being able to match them to references is so useful).
Scaler 2 might not be life changing but it's good fun for people who don't know music theory that well. So much fun!
I've heard of that one but never actually used it before. It's def seem interesting. Gonna look at it 🤙
@@jonaudio totally love your work Jon. Thanks for all your amazing videos and all the advice you give.
There's an 18 min guide called "Beginners guide to scaler in 2023" on School of Synthesis (SOS) channel that gives a quick overview for people not familiar with it.
It's quite reasonably priced at about £40 or so I think.
And since I'm not musically trained it has helped my music progress a lot! In a way it's a tool to help you learn music theory. Which sounds boring but it's soooooo much fun to experiment with and get inspired by!
I like scaler2, lotsa bang for the buck and it helps coming up with chords if you get stuck on something. Loop Engine is also pretty epic, esp if you can get it at a discount.
Ableton live was the software that really got me into making music, it changed my life in a huge way, love that workflow. Then Serum I learned how to make sounds. Then came omnisphere that really changed what I was doing , then I learned of Falcon oh man that sent me into the stratosphere of sound design. Then Phase plant and Done. lol huge life changers
That's a cool chain of events that you went though. So cool that you also were able to get falcon. I swear that plugin is just amazing, the possibilities are endless..
Great video, it's ten times more interesting to hear what users really like, than what someone is trying to sell on YT (it's boring). I can give my top five synths, haven't tried the Falcon though, which looks like a monster synth. I have Pigments which in my opinion is Arturia's best product. I'm a Bitwig user, which in itself is a good-sounding modular synth.
My top five in no particular order are Serum, easy to work with, everyone knows it and it sounds good. Diva of course, sounds fantastic and is also relatively easy to work with. I'm a big Native fan, and have everything they've released so far, so Massive X, which can be a brutal-sounding synth but a bit tricky to work with. Received nine packages with patches for Massive during the last upgrade on BF, which helps me out. I think Spire still measures up, I like it and finally Moog's new Mariana, a good-sounding mono synth for deep bass. My favorite reverb is probably Replika, flexible, easy to work with and sounds good. I'm also a big fan of reverbs in general and many sound great, my last reverb purchase was Soundtoys big plate which sounds good too. Also, have U-he's all effects, and they are all top notch.
I'm a Maschine MK3 user, an instrument I can't be without, the same applies to Scaler 2, a fantastic plugin, easy to understand, manageable and creative tool. XO drum machine, a great machine for rhythms and easy to work with. Was nearly forgetting about Xfer Cthulhu, an amazing arp and also Xfer LFO. There are so many good plugins today, could easily make the list twice or thrice as long :)
Cheers from Stockholm
Thanks man!! I just love geeking out about synths and gear. As much as I love the v collection, my favorite by Arturia is pigments and agree it's their best product. They struck gold with that one.
Falcon is just another level, I feel it's a synth you have to graduate to because of how unlimited it truly is. Once you're at that point, anything you imagine to do is just mouse clicks away.
I don't really use much stuff from NI but I wanted to give massive X a try and downloaded the trial. And for some reason it was super buggy for me and crashed often. Maybe it's something on my end? I can't imagine them releasing a buggy plugin? But at the same time I've got so many synths installed that don't bug out so I dunno. I wasn't able to really use it.
@@jonaudio I Agree, it's really inspiring and fun to explore new instruments/tools. Maybe you had an early version of Massive that made it unstable, never had any problems myself.
I'm addicted to all things AUDIOTHING (for their Simplicity) & all things SUGARBYTES (for their Complexity!).
✨️!!!TRACK SPACER!!!✨️
🎉!!!RHYTHIQ & REGROOVER!!!🎉
SPLIT EQ, TRASH 2, BEATFORMER, REASON RACK, XO, ZONE, HY-Plugins SEQUENCERS, SHAPERBOX!, & SPECTRE are game-changers for me 😎
FX COLLECTIONS: ZPLANE, U-HE, ARTURIA, MELDA (so Powerful & so DEEP!!!), NEOLD, and PLUGIN ALLIANCE in general 😉👍
SYNTHS: FALCON, PHASE PLANT, KNIFONIUM 💥🎶💥
Never used anything from audiothing. I'll check em out though. Thanks for the list dude!!
Shows you how people are different, and that's fine. I regret buying pigments even though it was on sale. I haven't used it AT ALL. Avenger is the synth I can't live without. The TC electronic system 6000 native plugins are so good (for me) that they changed the way I do things (md4 especially, but the verbs also). There are some (free) Airwindows plugins that changed the way I work also. To show I might not be typical, I evaluated Live 9 and 10 and Bitwig (I think 2.x version, but can't remember four years ago) and it was no contest for me: Bitwig all the way. I don't regret my decision today.
Yeah bitwig is amazing! I'm in the process on moving over entirely to bitwig. After a few days of acclimating to it. It's just amazing, clean and really inspiring!
I can see your point in regretting pigments if there's another synth you use and are comfortable with it. Avenger is a great synth. It's mind blowing how much it can do. The fx all are really good and that arp/sequencer is top notch!
Pigments, Cardinal, and Logic's RetroSynth are the three VSTs that have taught me the most about synthesis.
Cardinal is a lot of fun! I've sunk so many hours into it. Modular is a great way to really drill the concepts in your head
Live changing: Ableton Live together with Push2 and my Novation Midi keyboard
I own a lot of VST stuff from Arturia, Cherry Audio, Glitchmachine, NI, U-He, Izotope, and more. Can't name it all. And most of them are more or less still used.
Here are the Plugins I like and use regularly in my tracks:
Synthesizer: Diva, Zebra, Hive, Pigments, Chromaphone, Phase Plant
Sampler: Kontakt and Unify from PluginGuru (Unify is much more than a sampler. It's like a Swiss knife for sound design)
Midi: Scaler 2, Stepic, Phrasebox, Captian Epic
Effect: Multipass, Supermassive, EFX Fragments, Stardust 201, Neoverb, Raum, Guitar Rig 6
Mixing: Ableton stock plugins together with Neutron
Mastering: Ozone
And I use Voltage Modular if I got the modular vibe ...
Great list there! Love the synths you picked. How do you like voltage? Been looking at that recently, I've generally used VCV for modular stuff but I've heard good things about voltage
@@jonaudio HI Jon, Voltage Modular was one of my first synth I bought, after starting with Ableton Live more then 3 years ago. In a long run it was not cheap, because of all the extra moduls I added. There is not much free stuff, like for VCV. For me the workflow in Voltage Modular is easier. I played around with an early version of VCV und use now as well the free Cardinal synth (free VCV VST Clone based on VCV Source with a huge amount of free VCV moduls build in). But still love Voltage Modular and I use it to build synths and as well effects. Give it a try. The base version is free of cost.
Izotope's Tonal Balance Control. I'm old and can't hear high frequencies well, but TBC allows me to mix with my eyes instead of my failing ears.
It's amazing that we have tool like that these days. That is absolutely life changing 100%!
I don't have many but I really like Pigments and also I start learning more about Hive 2.. I also have Diva but I am not really well with it.. thank you Jon! Yours videos are very educational!
pigments is fantastic, as are hive 2 and diva. If you haven't seen it yet I have a full diva course on the channel that goes though everything.
NI Komplete Ultimate, got it on sale, everything under one hood. Love the video! 👍
Thanks dude!! Yeah man you're pretty much set there!
Life changing? Well, that's tricky but here's a selection of things which made a significant difference over my baseline (Studio One Pro). In no particular order:
o Auto-align: revolutionised multi-miced instruments (drums, bass, guitars). One way or another you need to phase align stuff and this showed me how important it was
o Metric AB: essential referencing plugin. Yes, your ears are lying to you!
o Pigments: having struggled for so long with Synthmaster this was the soft synth which finally made it all make sense while still being immensely powerful
o Seventh Heaven (not the Pro): this totally changed my understanding of reverb. It sounds great but, more importantly, it has exactly the right controls you need to dial in and shape your reverb. Many an a-ha moment with this plugin.
o Standardclip: you need to clip and this was the easy gateway into that
o vhorns Saxophones: this demonstrated to me how much better some virtual instruments are than others. And following the crowd doesn't mean you'll get to the best ones
o Pro Q3: there are few more important things when mixing than EQ and this is the perfect tool to help you get to where you want to go. Simple to use and powerful in equal measure.
o Gullfoss: this was life changing but for the wrong reason. I demo-ed it, didn't really like it but still went ahead and bought it because of all the amazing reviews and I just figured that all those people knew more than me. It's 3 years later on and although I've tried it many, many times it has never stayed on a single mix I've done. This was life changing because a) I make sure I demo any plugin before buying it and b) I trust my own judgement even if I appear to be swimming against the youtube tide.
That's off the top of my head. These aren't necessarily my favourite plugins but they are the ones that have changed my life.
Its interesting you mentioned Gullfoss, I recently heard about it and was thinking about getting it at some point. What made you not really like it?
Awesome to see pigments made your list! Such a great synth!
@@jonaudio well, I'm a bit hesitant to be specific because my main point isn't that Gullfoss is bad but that I made the mistake of buying it even though I'd demo-ed it and didn't like it. I didn't have confidence in my own judgement at the time and just decided that if all the youtube "experts" were saying it was amazing then I must be wrong. However, since you ask, I'd say that it adds a graininess and "artificiality" to the sound and the only way to get rid of that is to turn it down to the point where it isn't really doing anything. As a contrast, I recently tried Sonible Smarteq 4 (which on dynamic mode does a similar thing to Gullfoss as far as I can tell) and that didn't add any graininess. I still didn't buy Smarteq4 because I couldn't say it made things sound better but at least it didn't make things worse.
I'm a big believer in judicious use of eq tools like dynamic eq, multiband compression and even specialty eq tools like resonance suppressors and transient/body eqs but throwing a smart eq into the chain just doesn't do anything good. IMHO!
Once I'd decided to give up on Synthmaster and try a few others then Pigments stood out as being intuitive and flexible (iirc Serum and Phaseplant were the other contenders). I still think that Synthmaster is probably the best synth (in terms of sound and features) that exists but it's totally inaccessible. The GUI is a bit clunky, the labellling of parameters isn't especially useful and, this is the clincher, the manual isn't up to date. You literally have to try and find some release video for each version to understand what's new and what's changed. I actually found that learning Pigments helped me to understand some thing about Synthmaster.
I also have to (again) thank you so much for your Pigments videos. I was looking for alternatives just when Pigments 4 came out and your series of videos were amazingly helpful. In fact, I still reference them to this day and they are permanently on my playlist.
Happy New Year and keep up the great work.
Omnisphere has been a game changer for me. I bought it last year and it transformed how I work. I have Pigments, Phaseplant, which would be a lot more flexible, but they all demand so much of my CPU that I tend not to use them as much. However my laptop doesn’t struggle with Omnisphere or Serum, so those two are the ones I use the most. And those limitations have helped me get better at sound design. Dune and Falcon are also others that have had a massive impact on my workflow
Cpu cost is so important in a synth, especially when you really need to make crazy patches or use lots of instances. It's surprising for how much falcon has to offer its actually pretty good on cpu
I like the one on the wall where I plug in my guitar amp!
Does it go to 11?
Life changing? I think for me that would have to be Native Instruments Kontakt. That opened up so many possibilities for me.
There's basically everything you need in there 🤙
For me: Omnisphere, EW's Hollywood Orchestra (OPUS), U-He's synths (I heard Repro compared to Arturia's Prophet and heard such a massive difference that I did away with all my Arturia stuff), and last year Berlin Studio (reverb).
I never thought a reverb could be a gamechanger, but it's approach is so genius that it made working with orchestral libraries 80% more CPU and RAM efficiënt. It is truly revolutionary.
I'll have to look into that reverb. But yeah man repro is on another level. One thing to keep in mind between Arturias and uhes Version is that they are based on different revisions of the prophet. Arturias is Rev 2 and uhe is Rev 3. Which had different chips. Everything touches is gold tho haha
I have the fabfilter EQ. 100% worth it.
I reeeeeally need to get fabfilters eq
Great review. I subbed.
Thanks dude!! Glad to have you aboard!!
The new Pulsar stuff (8200, Massive and Mu are a record factory). More generally: any good de-esser, some of the Kazrog stuff (especially KClip), Softube’s Tape, and Overloud’s classic emulations. Trackspacer is pretty much indispensable. Finally, the AB from Plugin Alliance is a must before final mastering.
Synth wise, your choices are spot on. I’d say whatever works best with your style and workflow. Most newer synths are pretty much world class at this point. I like simple synths that can do a lot, and for that I really dig the Softube stuff.
Enjoyed the video!
I've never used any soft tube stuff, and I really gotta change that.
Youre right tho, synths now are very good and if you get to know them, you can get really far.
@@jonaudio their Juno clone is very tasty, as is their Drawmer comp. By the way, Presswerk is criminally underrated; it’s basically every compressor. Best with the channel!
Pigments for sure was a game changer for me. Its a powerful synth thats pretty intuitive to use.
As for effects, I've been digging Devious Machines' Infiltrator 2, a beast of a multieffects plugin. I feel like it is kind of like the pigments of effects. My most common use for it is voluming shaping. Before, I was using Cubase's FX Modulator but what made Infiltrator a game changer was the abilty to add swing. Sounds like a minor thing, but I'm happy with how much tighter things can sound now.
That's a great list. Pigments is such a great synth, love that thing so much.
Infiltrator sounds really cool. Lots of people seem to love it
for me, everything arturia,VSLkontakt,musio,and avenger, these are my top ones, there are supporting vsti's like nexus 3,vital,decent sampler (for creating free sample instruments) for effects,everything polyverse music,blackhole,seventh heaven & cinematic rooms,and like you steppic, dont forget the free ozone EQ at native instruments, cheers Jon
I gotta check some of those out, thanks for the list my man!!
@@jonaudio you're very welcome
Reaktor for basically the same reasons you listed Falcon - particularly I love the Blocks environment. Pigments for sure. Newfangled Elevate Bundle ,for mastering, particularly the Saturate plugin. I have a feeling that PlugData is what's gonna shift my workflow the most in 2024.
Reaktor!! Yes!! I absolutely love Reaktor. When I first got Reaktor I literally stayed home for a few days and just had a blast with it, I downloaded so many community ensambles. That's where I found a polivox emulation. Super super cool. And it sounds very very similar to the polivox I have
3 Life changing vst instruments for me: (I hope to add Falcon to this list eventually)
1. Omnisphere - Endless inspiration, inexhaustible array of stellar sounds
2. Pigments - T h a n k Y o u for all the videos, so helpful!!!
3. Novum - omgosh so fun to drag short vocal samples into it, and TWIST
4 Life changing FX plugins
1. Redopter - by D16 (Putting xtra hair on a synth has never been so fast or sounded so deep)
2. Air Delay Pro - by Air ( Bcz of the 'Auto Clear' function, especially fantastic on drums & vocals)
3. Mongoose - by Boz (This is what first got me into paying attention to mid/side processing, I'll never forget it)
4. Pan Knob - by Boz (Puts a sense of elegance into panning doubled tracks)
You're very welcome my man!! I love pigments so much lol.
Thats a great list you got. Some I haven't used but I'll look into them.
I think you'd really like falcon, the learning curve can be a little rough but man it's unbelievablely powerful and oddly pretty well optimized.
I like making drums in different synths to see how they come out and how the workflow is and falcon has always given good results
Cool video again!
My top 3 VSTi's would be:
1) Toontrack Superior Drummer 2 - Being a drummer first and foremost
2) Arturia Pigments - So versatile and clear (and how I found this channel)
3) Native Instruments Kontakt - Because I the broad array of different sounds (you can get)
Top 3 VST's
1) Arturia Rev Intensity - I love this reverb. Sounds so nice and lush
2) XLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color - love that for a bit of 80s vibe and great wobble.
3) iZotope Ozone 10 - for a quick master.
Special shoutout personally to Steinberg's Cubase. I love that DAW to bits!
Thanks man!! Great choices there! I've wanted to check out superior drummer for a while now. It seems so good. I've used addictive drums for a while, and most recently I've just been synthesizing my kits.
Awesome that you included pigments as well, it's such a great synth!!
@@jonaudio Superior's "little" brother, EZDrummer, is great too and a lighter purchase, money wise. Both can make synthesised drums playable, as I'm sure addictive drums can do too. If you're into played e-drums that is. TBH, a great runner up for me, when it comes to programmed drums is Groove Agent by Steinberg. It's a lot more powerful than most people know.
But let's just be happy with the abundance of awesome VST(i)'s there are out there now and some many with so much quality! Even free stuff!
Avenger 2 is the only instrument you will ever need. If you're a new producer on a low budget, get this plugin as you can do anything. It's a drum rack/sequencer, wavetable synthesizer, sampler, granular synthesizer, spectral synthesizer, sequencer, can generate notes and sequences randomly, has stellar built-in effects. You can have up to 8 oscillators and a single sampler oscillator can stack multiple samples to blend. The list goes on. However, Bitwig Grid is the most life changing for me, as I built my own instrument that mixes the best parts about Serum, Vital, Avenger 2 etc.
avenger 2 is amazing. That's one synth I really fell in love with!
The grid might be my next thing to take on, it seems like so much fun!
Great choice so many to choose from , Diva , Omnisphere , Pigments , Phase Plant , Pro Q3 & for guitars Overloud THU...
Solid choices! You're pretty much set with those. Love how you included diva and pigments as well. Those are absolutely life changing
My favorite plugin is ultra super mute 2000. It is able to mute within a single sample and attenuate with its internal attenuation engine at 128 bits. It is also extremely simple with only two presets: on and off.
Interesting! Never heard of it before, gonna look it up
Phase Plant w/Ultimate is so amazing. It can do everything and the effects do so much. Its capabilities are unrivaled. The UI is so much easier to use than Avenger and Falcon.
Also for quick edits and a powerful and CPU friendly engine look at Parawave Rapid.
Phaseplant did it right in the UI department. The first time I used it, I felt like I already knew it. UI on synths is a big deal imo.
Fslcon for example has a rough learning curve, but that being said, after you get over that hurdle, it makes sense why it's designed like that and the UI grows on you. It's strange how that works but yeah, with its complexity it needs a UI like that
Ujam Usynth is a really good one. I have a few of them. The concept is weird. It's a synth but you don't have access to most of its features, but it has very nice presets and is often on sale, like now.
Fav VSTs = Portal, Thermal, Novum, Rift, Serum, Glitchmachines (tactic cataract cryogen subvert), ShaperBox3, Obscurium, Graindad, Other Desert Cities, R4 reverb, Eventide Blackhole, Polyverse Supermodal.... Vision 4x and Levels for mix monitoring tools. I use IKmultemedia sutie and waves for mixing / mastering.
A lot of those I've never used, gonna look at them. thanks for sharing dude!! Shaperbox is one I've had my eye on for a while
the Reason Rack (use it with Reaper)❤
Never used that before, gonna have too check it out!
Loopcloud, sync and pitch samples.
Halion 7, the new Yamaha FM engine and sample import from old Akai, Emu, Roland libraries.
Komplete Kontrol, make presets and audio previews of your preset library.
Never tried halion before but everyone days good things. I gotta look into it
The first ones I aquired when I bought Cubase which would be Retrologue and Halion years ago. Most of you take for granted no noise floor, presets, any effect you want. I started in the late seventies with an Arp Odyssey...
Or what's kinda crazy too is how engineers did everything they could to remove noise floor or just noise in general and nowadays their are plugins and effects that bring it back lol
Goodhertz Can Opener Studio…makes headphone mixing 100% better and more realistic.
UAD Sound City…the tech in this plugin has blown me away. I can take any digital instrument or sample and make it sound like it was recorded in a real studio space.
Eventide SplitEQ…utterly has changed the way I approach EQ. I can make masters far more detailed and dense while enhancing clarity.
I thought about getting can opener before, it seems super interesting as I do a lot of stuff in headphones.
@@jonaudio highly recommend…I use it even just for listening to music because it makes the experience far more enjoyable in headphones.
Analog obsession plugin sets!!. It makes my personal life easier , simply because I dont need to "educate" my wife everytime credit card statement coming out
lol that made my day reading that
I have so many now but here is my list:
Acid V
Avenger 2
Nexus
Musio 1
Pigments
Pusher ( by Waves)
Serum
Spire
Tom Factory
Vital
Raum (free reverb)
Legato Solo Trumpet (Musical Sampling)
Amy & Maggie (Musical Sampling)
Spitfire Originals Epic Choir
Spitfire Soaring Strings
Some free bonuses I recently found but sound amazing...
Hamburger (distortion)
MS-2 (the ugliest thing I've seen but amanzing sound)
ISpacer (was free but not anymore it seems)
Minima 2
Great list there! Some of those I've never tried before, gonna have to take a look at em
@@jonaudio I hope you will find something you like. I'm about 50/50 between synths and orchestral sounds/voices.
Main all the time go to's: Instrument: Diva / OP-X Pro II / IK SampleTank 4 DAW Stuff: Pro Q3 EQ / Waves CLA-2A / Morph Verb MASTERING in the box: IK One
Hell yeah diva made your list!!! I swear that synth has some wizardry to it.
@@jonaudio Agreed - It just sounds extremely good. I use others but the above are ones I use a lot of the time on songs.
I love it and I love your channel, man. What do you think are the best VST synths for Electro House/Future House/Trance, tho?
thanks dude!! that's so cool to hear!!
Most modern synths can get you there for sure, I do like Hive for trance, but really any modern synth will be more than capable to make the sounds you need for those genres like serum, vital, pigments, hive, avenger, diva, repro etc..
Omnisphere/Keyscape
Arturia V collection 🌟
The v collection is just delicious!
No one mentions 3x OSC? If there's one synth out there to make anything, it's this one. It's simplicity makes it also complex. Remember last year when 3x OSC was hyped because of the amazing real life sounding demotracks were released through IL?
I'm just excited 3xosc can be used inside patcher now
@@jonaudio I absolutely agree. Whole new possibilities are opened with the new 3x OSC in patcher since it's way less demanding than Sytrus for basic waveforms
For me, the truly lifechanging plugins have been arturias plate-140, dist coldfire and the whole efx range, and since i got the augmented series, my use of kontakt has dropped like 173737% 😂😂😂
i love arturias fx plugins, their dist opamp21 has been a godsend for me
Massive X is amazing
I wanna try it out again, when I checked out the demo it kept crashing on me
@@jonaudio very stable
FL Parametric is a decent EQ. But you can do more with Fab Filter - because it's dynamic. IMHO Image Line really failed with their last version 21 - it really had very few upgrades, and not making their EQ dynamic was just another in a long list of failures.
they should really upgrade their eq to a dynamic eq, that would be a huge quality of life update, there is one in one of the patcher presets, but it should still be an upgrade to the stock eq
@@jonaudio it looks like the Kirchoff EQ has overtaken fabfilter eq as the top dog now
I just took a look at it. It seems very promising! Apparently it retails for 300 but on sale for 149 dollars.
Def going to ponder getting it.
Thanks for letting me know!! 🤙🤙
Effects in vst instruments are superfluous.
They can be for sure. I like to use them to keep the patches consistent and putting fx on macros is really useful
I would say Serum, Pigments, Vital, Hive and now Current Minimal
I can’t use steppic, because I still use GarageBand and of course I own all Valhalla products
Solid choices! I still gotta give current a chance. I keep seeing good things about it. How's it on cpu?
No problem for me im running Big Sur 3.3 Ghz 32 GB Ram @@jonaudio
Hey jon do you use the Pressewerk for Synths too?@@jonaudio
In this order for synths: Falcon, Avenger, Phaseplant, Pigments (not my favorite as it used to be. But its my first true 3rd party soft synth that made sense to me unlike all that NI chaos)
Honorary mention: ICARUS 2 and NOVUM (i dont own them yet. But they've changed the game for me)
For processing: i have no shame in saying this: all the iZotopes. I actually love how they sound, and i dont care what others say: the frequency masking is THE BOMB
Bonus shout-outs: Reason rack. Bitwig (which i know.is a daw, but its hard to separate the Grid from Bitwig, so it's a huge fucking modular synth and sequencer with killer MPE and Audio support
Solid choices right there my man!! Since you bring up izotope, I kind of feel that I'll have to start moving away from them. I bought ozone 8 for around 500 bucks a while ago, and I love it. It's one of those plugins that probably should have made this list but anyway, I went to upgrade and it was barely a discount. Maybe like 30 bucks? I though it must have been a mistake, but nope, they basically wanted me to buy the whole suite all over again. They make great stuff but man their business model makes me not want to buy another plugin from them
I completely understand about the upgrade issue. It just bought the previous versions on a fatty sale, but then had a fatty discount with the upgrade price. HOWEVER, if I faced a steep upgrade price like you did, I wouldn't have done it. That's why I'm scrapping Waves all together for that god aweful upgrade plan, that provides no benefit or value. Bitwig has a similar yearly upgrade plan, but Bitwig is worth it. But that's honestly why I bought FL. I'm like "if I'm out of money, at least I have one DAW that gives me free upgrades for life" FL is starting to get up there with Bitwig for me.
@@jonaudio
So happy to hear you're ditching waves. That company has such awful business practices.
Bitwig is probably the daw I also want to learn aside from FL and pro tools. It seems like it's really moving up in the ranks. And the grid seems like soooo much fun
SO MUCH FUN! I was ditching waves before they becamse a controversy. They just don't sound good compared to the Arturia Collection, Plugin Alliance, UAD or iZotope.@@jonaudio
Right
Right
Do u use phaseplant? It’s insane, and totally lifechanging ❤❤, and yes u need pro q 3!
I've used it before yeah and you're right it's insane for sure. I really like the design. I felt it was a synth that I didn't need to read the manual for, I total did tho lol
Omnisphere. And Bitwig. And Soundtoys 5.
All Output’s VSTs I regret buying. Especially as they use the pointless Kontakt. And Unison. Never brought any of their rip off cheap plug ins though. But the thought of having wasted money on one counts does it? Please?
I've always heard bad things about unison. I've never used their stuff before so I have no experice with their stuff. Why is their stuff so bad?
serum vital fm8 alchemy , amp , max4live
Fm8 seems really cool. I rarely use NI stuff but that one has always interested me. For FM I usually use Arturias dx7, or sytrus, still curious about Fm8 tho
Loyalty towards a plugin is nice but think twice as they could be your (plugin) limitations in your creativity , Falcon, Phaseplant, Pigments, Current and Spire :-)
That's a good point! That's one reason i have major gear acquisition syndrome in the synth department. Cuz I don't know what I don't know, you know?
i know 🤫
@@jonaudio
Vital, ShaperBox, Ohmicide
Outside of that...
As you said said,putting some thought on your purchases.
I genuinely feel like spending money leveled up my game.
We all start broke and are able to download anything, and we get unhappy with it, and move on to the next new shiny thing.
After I actually bought my first plugins, that was the day I started learning extensively. Watching tutorials, browsing manuals, doing some crazy unintended things to push the plugin to the limit to make my money worth.
I still believe FL Studio has a great stuff inside. And one can do absolutely fine with it, but as time progress... U realized that you are not paying for the function, you are paying for the convenience.
Example ProQ... Mid/side, L/R, Dynamic bands from one click.
Ozone, channel linking on multiband compression, separate mid/side settings, and Stereo imager were to me main selling points.
That's a great point you bring up. Once we spend money on a plugin, we feel that we need to get our money's worth and learn it inside and out, which is a great thing.
If we were to have every plugin out there for free I think we'd just collect a lot of them and never really use them to their full potential ya know?
No Zebra? 😢
Zebra almost made the list, so did hive and repro too haha
#1. NI Komplete
#2. Acustica audio SALT
NI has so much stuff it's mind blowing!
Ive been buying sample packs (black octopus, production master, singomakers etc) and a lot of them come with presets for diva, serum etc, now im thinking i HAVE to buy serum and diva just because i have thousands of presets for them....😢😢😢😢🤑🤑🤑🤑
Serum and diva are both great synths to have. Those two together cover lots of ground
@@jonaudio indeed. Just feels a bit silly when i already have pigments, vital, the whole arturia collection. Bazille, Cube, Cherry audio synth
s etc etc.....
Ah gotcha, well that being the case sounds like you got your bases covered. Serum probably wouldn't add much, diva might as it's very good at what it does, but since you got the v collection it may be somewhat redundant ya know?
@@jonaudio exactly...just, i STILL have a couple of 1000's presets for those two lying around 😂
Mine is gross beat!
Dude! I almost added gross beat to this list. It's an amazing plugin and can really make a track really cool!
ADAPTR Metric AB
FabFilter Pro Q in all it's forms, just a great EQ
Melodyne
UBK1 and REDDI by Kush
Sonnox Oxford Inflator
Valhalla Vintage Verb
Toontrack EZ Drummer
Softube Tape
Plus the usual suspects.... don't want to name any W*v*s products because I am seriously disappointed by their buisiness ethics.
This really makes me wanna get fab filter. It seems sooo good! I used to use ez drummer a long time ago. How is it nowadays?
No plugin is life changing
I bet Steve Dudas life was significantly changed with the success of serum.
Urs Heckmann was able to build a very successful plugin company and hire people to work for him.
Matt's life has probably changed as well after creating Vital.
Producers and artists have had their lives changed by using plugins.
I've been hired for jobs because I have certain plugins that have helped me get the job done, which has then led to other jobs, which looking back did change my life.
Autotune for example has changed many peoples lives as well
To say that no plugin is life changing is simply not true.
I would actually recommend to stay away from Diva and most u-he plugins, they are just boring and overrated
What makes them feel boring to you?
Right