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My favourite commercial software for first time buyers. The inbuilt effects in DAWS are great now, but there are still a few things that can make a massive difference to the quality of your productions – Saturation and distortion especially you have to pay for, and I would argue for good delays and reverbs. I will talk in a lot more detail about most of these at other points on this site, so this is just a bare outline for those starting out. And I will also caveat this by saying that Finneas made all of Billie Eilish’s hits using just Logic Pro with stock plugins, so you don’t NEED anything. I just find it inspiring to use good tools.
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This website has a slight slant towards those starting out making music, and this is where the expense of commercial software has to be carefully considered. You don’t want to spend a fortune on something you no longer use after a fortnight.
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Always use demos where they are offered – on the rare occasions I have been carried away by hype and bought something without testing it, I have often been disappointed.
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Most software goes on strong sale in November, but these days can also often be bought as ‘rent-to-buy’ which helps spread the load. Also always check for education discounts. Some online courses are also valid for these discounts so you don’t necessarily have to be at university or on a physical course. Finally, there are also some forums for second hand software and you can get some bargains that way.
QUICK GUIDE
Plugins
Effects
- Soundtoys Effects 5 (or Effects Rack) – for me, the most essential effects pack. The saturation effects are beautiful, the compressor characterful, and the delays capable of anything. The Effect Rack is the cheap way to buy the same plugins, except you have to host them in a plugin called Effect Rack when you host them in your DAW. Not cheap but they are always half price at Black Friday sales in November. It is still unrivalled in my opinion.
- IK Multimedia T-Racks 6 – Available in a few different permutations, from the basic Deluxe package, to the full Total Studio Max 4, which also includes all of their sample library content. My advice would be to hunt down the singles you need second hand on KVR or wait until you need the T-Racks 6 Max package, which represents the best value and includes pretty much every plugin you’ll ever likely need in the way of compressors, EQs, reverbs. I just find that IK’s plugins are very musical-sounding. One caution – their instrument interfaces tend to be clunky and hard work, despite sounding great, so wouldn’t focus on them so much. Some of these plugins are truly exceptional so if you are ready to invest in your mixing then I think this represents the best all-in-one package for the money. Highlights include the Sunset Studio, Farm Stone Room and FAME Studio Reverbs, the Joe Chiccarelli Vocal Strip and the many fine compressors. Also available on Rent-to-Buy on Splice at $15/mo.
Valhalla DSP – The best value plugins there are. Very high quality and always $50. The Valhalla Delay is pretty essential (bettered only by Soundtoys Echoboy), and I’d recommend owning at least one reverb too. Do some reverb research to find out what is best used for what, and what you like the sound of. And definitely download their exceptional free SuperMassive reverb.
- Universal Audio – used to make the very best plugins, and a whole ecosystem grew up around them, including very expensive DSP cards and interfaces to run them exclusively. They still make some of the best software, but now native computers are super fast and some native plugins are of similar quality. You can still use their plugins, now on a subscription model, but it is expensive compared to the competition. I get the feeling that they are finding their way into the cheaper end of the spectrum so already they are representing better value as one-off purchases.
Waves – these guys make a huge range of high end plugins, although for the last 5 years they changed their business model to instead target the cheaper end of the market, but with the same quality. As a result they are always on sale. You just have to wait until the one you want is cheap….. Too many favourites, but most used ones are MV2, Abbey Road Chambers, MaxBass, CLA76….blah blah. ONE WORD OF WARNING – they have a weird upgrade policy which means that after a while you essentially have to pay to upgrade them to work with new operating systems as they change, but I have only had to do this once or twiceso far, and you can choose which plugins you upgrade.
Plugin Alliance – now a super audio company with Native Instruments, which means they are trying to undercut everyone else. You can rent everything for $15/month or pick them up in sales which happen constantly, like Waves. The creative effects by Unfiltered Audio are very unique and highly recommended. The ‘Vertigo VSM’ and ‘Blue Tubes HG2’ ( or something like that) are both very good sounding distortions.
- Kush Audio – the only subscription I pay for. $10/month gets you some of the best sounding compressors and EQs in the business, and a nice plate reverb too. Also the very best saturation and distortion algorithms in the business. If I had to but just two it probably be the Novatron compressor and the Hammer DSP EQ. Not essential for beginners, but a very worthwhile upgrade.
- Acustica Audio – I’m including these because they are the best EQs and compressors out there, but are usually quite expensive. But in case you want one or two special things, these are the guys….. Also very demanding on the CPU. I love the Purple Pultec EQ, the Diamond EQ and the Ultramarine Fairchild compressor.
Instruments
- Arturia V Collection – Ridiculous array of synths. Very high quality. Again, not cheap, but you get a hell of a lot, and you can get it in the sales for a bargain. CS80 has been on every album of mine, but they are all useful in their own ways. The focus is more to the analogue synth realm and highlights are the Buchla Easel, Farfisa Organ, Synthi AKS and Fairlight.
Xils Labs – These guys make some truly spectacular instruments and, in my opinion, the greatest software drum machine, the StiX. I may well do a feature on software drum machines at a future point, but for now it should be enough to say that this carries the crown, with full kit randomisation, per-channel drum synthesis, and MIDI output amongst other things. Xils’ other analogue synths have a great tone and include the Synthi-alike ‘Xils 4’, the mighty CS80 clone ‘The Eighty’ and the Polymoog ‘PolyM’.
Cherry Audio – I don’t have as much experience with these synths as with Arturia, but they offer the second greatest range at affordable prices, and at a similar level of quality, so I feel I should mention them. Their Korg PS3300 is especially fine, ‘Sines’ is a great original design, and they also have a few other more unusual offerings when compared to Arturia.
Madrona Labs – More experimental synths, but my absolute favourites. Not cr4zy money either. The new one Sumu has just dropped and is spectacular.
- Native Instruments Reaktor – NI make loads of useful stuff but a lot of it is quite ‘practical’ and not very exciting. Reaktor on the other hand is incredible and is so ridiculously massive, due to all the user-created instruments and fx. Some of which are very professional. You could start off just using this to provide most of your synth and drum machine needs really – if you can think of something ,someone will have created it. There is also the Player version available for free, which can load user ensembles for 30 mins at a time. You should get it.
