$29 seems like the sweet point for impulse purchasing VSTs

PolarityMan

Lots of manufacturers seem to be following waves lead with $29 plugin sales. I eprsonally think this falls quite nicely into the impulse purchase bracket and has porb lead to me spending a few hundred quid more that i strictly needed to.

What do you guys think>

guitarfishbay

Yes.

I actually really dislike the 24 hour sale culture right now.

For me I'd buy it if I like it but I want to demo it.  With only 24 hours to try something out it's not always possible, so you either buy blind or you pass.

Recently I've just been passing if I haven't already identified I want it in advance.  Sometimes you can waste your evening testing out $29 plugs and not want any of them, I'd rather have had my evening.

octatonic

PolarityMan said:

Lots of manufacturers seem to be following waves lead with $29 plugin sales. I eprsonally think this falls quite nicely into the impulse purchase bracket and has porb lead to me spending a few hundred quid more that i strictly needed to.

What do you guys think>

It seems to be doing well for a certain market- I don't know if many in that market are doing actual music production with the products though.

I'd tend to warn people off automatically buying these super cheap plugins unless it fulfils an actual need that isn't being addressed in another product- at least demo them and try to be scientific about comparing them to what you have and not get sucked into a pretty GUI.

A lot of the time you are paying for something that is almost sonically identical as some of their other products in a different skin. *cough* Waves *cough*

I also think 'the good stuff' often tends to cost more.
Companies like Fabfilter, UA, McDSP, Exponential Audio, Izotope, Sonnox, DMG are making, to my ears, much better products with a higher buy in price, although they all have yearly sales.

A while ago I did a test of all the SSL Bus compressors (licensed and unlicensed) against the hardware unit I have here and SSL's own Duende plugin, which isn't based on the hardware but a port from one of their digital consoles.

UA won in terms of being closest to the hardware and by a bit of a margin.

There is an embarrassment of riches out there though- you could work with any of them- and by work I mean make and finish music.

If you absolutely need the sound of the SSL Bus compressor as close to the hardware then the UA one is the one to buy, but if you just need a compressor that sounds roughly in that territory you don't need to go to that expense, nor to the expense of the hardware, which is about £3k.

I still prefer using the hardware, if I can- although I could have as many UA API2500 emulations as I like in a track I prefer to use the hardware- because you work differently with the hardware and I think it has a slight sonic edge.
I also tend to need only one per song- on the drum bus.

Finally, how much of this stuff do we actually need?
Steven Wilson produced and engineered 'Fear of a Blank Planet' with basically a handful of plugins- some TDM Focusrite EQ's & compressors (the native version they now give away with their interfaces), Amp Farm and the free Digidesign (now Avid) ones.
As always the writing and performances are what matter- plugins are just window dressing.

I say all this this owning over 500 plugins myself (full bundles from Waves, UA, Soundtoys, Slate, Sonnox, Fabfilter, SSL, McDSP, Softube and a lot of random things). I'm not immune from plugin lust myself- although a lot of them are NFR's.

PolarityMan

its funny you mentioned an SSL channel as I was originally waiting for one to go on sale but in the end decided I didnt want one after all. Im not suing high end really but I have spent on a couple of higher quality things like fabfilter EG / comps, soundtoys,komplete but the cool thing with waves is filling in some gaps I dont have, like waves tune etc.

guitarfishbay

PolarityMan said:

its funny you mentioned an SSL channel as I was originally waiting for one to go on sale but in the end decided I didnt want one after all. Im not suing high end really but I have spent on a couple of higher quality things like fabfilter EG / comps, soundtoys,komplete but the cool thing with waves is filling in some gaps I dont have, like waves tune etc.

IMO don't get Waves Tune, you're better off with the lower version of Melodyne next time that goes on sale.  Then as and when you can upgrade Melodyne versions if needed.  The Waves Tune GUI window can't be resized and that gets frustrating fast.  You can get the job done with most tuning software (AutoTune is my favourite) but workflow does differ between them and WT is on the potentially more frustrating side IME.

On a related note how are you getting on with Speed Mixing?  When I did it I found it helped me narrow down what I actually use, it's probably saved me a bunch of money long term.

PolarityMan

the workflow is a bit awkward, melodyne was a little too pricy so couldnt justify it... Speed mixing ive only done week 2 so far and actually spent more time working on a writing template than a mixing one. Kids bouts of chickenpox hasnt helped with progress unfortunately.

octatonic

PolarityMan said:

its funny you mentioned an SSL channel as I was originally waiting for one to go on sale but in the end decided I didnt want one after all. Im not suing high end really but I have spent on a couple of higher quality things like fabfilter EG / comps, soundtoys,komplete but the cool thing with waves is filling in some gaps I dont have, like waves tune etc.

That is the best way to do it.

I have all the Waves plugins (long story but didn't buy them at full retail- I got a generous crossgrade when Waves stopped doing TDM and took advantage of discounted pricing for Mercury + Studio Classics).

I regularly use about 6 of them- Renaissance Compressor, EMI TG12345, Brauer Motion, Waves SSL GBus, Kramer PIE Compressor & Dorrough Meter.

IMHO, most of it is just filler that doesn't usually sound better than the stock plugins that comes with your DAW.

guitarfishbay

PolarityMan said:

the workflow is a bit awkward, melodyne was a little too pricy so couldnt justify it... Speed mixing ive only done week 2 so far and actually spent more time working on a writing template than a mixing one. Kids bouts of chickenpox hasnt helped with progress unfortunately.

Melodyne does sometimes go on sale, I've not seen the basic version drop below $49 though so WT is still cheaper.

I found in SM I thought I'd done a good job of the early weeks and as it went in to the challenges and prepping the 30 songs I realised I'd missed a lot of stuff I just simply hadn't thought of.  But you don't know you've missed it until you need it.

gibsongretschfan

$29 plugins are in my 30's what cracked software was in my 20's