This is a good question because if you bought about 1/3 of the main things
you see out there you'd spend $5000 on plugs alone. I was hoping that the prices
would come down on these things as more and more people used computers for
music (the economy of scale) and the competition.
Two plugs I use all the time are Equium and Finalis from Elemental, and they
are reasonably priced and work really well. Those are well designed plugs
which allow you to do what you want quickly - a lesson that I wish most other plug
makers would consider well.
The UAD card is a good deal in a sense, but there are some
not-waking-from-sleep issues, and none of the delays or modualtions are linked to song tempo
like most modern plugs, so I tend to mainly use the compressors, quirky and
unfathomable as they are. I wish they would get off this "vintage religion" and
make products in 2005 that use the best of the old, along with modern convenience
and features.
The PSP people have good stuff and are really, really good about updates and
reasonable prices. However, I find their stuff a little hard to use. But those
are excellent values and there are sales and group buys at times. (I own the
Mixpack, Vintage Warmer, and Nitro).
I have kind of lusted after the Blue Tubes stuff, but at $400 its just not
worth it when I already have other good tools. I tried the demos and I really
like the way they sound and the clean interface.
There's the BBE sonic maximizer which is about $100 and uniquely beneficial.
It adds some sparkle and bottom. Logic now comes with a free knock off of it,
so its unclear how much better the real thing is.
Waves stuff is good, but way overpriced and way overprotected. I bought two
bundles but didn't upgrade them to X. Some people boycott them because of what
Israel is doing to the Palestinians, but using that Logic there are other
countries' software that would suffer too.
People on LUG were swearing by Sonaliksis - but expensive and redundant in my
view (after just a little testing but not extensively).
I just tried out Synful after being very impressed by the demo mp3s, however
was very let down by the actual sound of the thing, and deleted the demo off
of my computer.
Samples are ok, but I buy stuff then don't use it. It can become like
collection baseball cards - never enough. Same thing with Battery kits and so forth.
I think the bottom line is to control expenses. I "treat" myself with a plug
or softsynth every once in a while, but these expenses add up .. big time! So
spend wisely.
