10 Paid Plugins Actually Worth Buying

[Music] howdy doody buckaroonies harry anthony fantano here back with another episode of oh god my wallet for whatever reason the majority of plug-in releases i hear about anymore are the next big thing or the future of insert product category here or a way to get that pro sound or level up your productions or whatever equally catchy one-liner some marketing department came up with and then paid influencers to pair it on social media as some kind of review over the years i found that a majority of my plug-in purchases fall into a couple of different categories things i actually needed things that i bought because i blamed my existing toolkit or things i bought because i didn't understand my existing toolkit enough to know any better and think that i need to buy something new to solve a problem that doesn't exist in the first place one of the biggest things i've learned especially in recent years when it comes to plug-in and gear purchases is that your time is better spent really learning every single thing you have inside and out because then and only then are you able to accurately assess things and understand what something new will contribute functionally into your setup as a matter of fact i'm a very firm believer in the idea that as long as you know how to use the tools in your daw your stock plugins will get you like 85 percent of the way to a professional finished product especially when it comes to the major players like cubase fl ableton bit wig and so on when it comes to that remaining 15 there are a ton of amazing free plugins out there that can help you get from a to b but free plugins can't do everything in this video i wanted to share with you 10 of my favorite paid plugins that i think are actually worth the investment if you've got some of your favorite secret weapons be sure to leave them down in the comments below today's video is also brought to you by knob cloud an online marketplace to buy and sell plug-ins so if you've got some plug-ins sitting around that you just don't use anymore you can offload them to get a bit of cash and find your next big plug-in purchase often at a pretty steep discount but we'll talk more about them in a bit first up here on the list of goodies is parawave rapid which is probably my current workhorse synth that i do a lot of different things in because it's very powerful but it's also very fast and efficient to work in this is a synthesizer that also includes over 20 effects which you can utilize in the rapid effects plug-in which also comes with rapid and it's also a pretty capable sampler to boot if you really break this thing down to its core level i think it is a bunch of plugins that cost just over 10 dollars each and is also a really good synthesizer on top of all that rapid also has an insane mod matrix if you look down here at the bottom we have 32 slots and this is actually independent per layer we've got up to eight layers in rapid we could also send these layers to each other so we could go in here and add a send and we could send this to layer seven and use layer seven as just a bus effects processing thing it's just really wild to give you an idea of what this sounds like i've created just a quick patch here loading up six different layers of rapid so i have essentially six different synth patches going on in one instance of this thing and it sounds like this [Music] [Music] to demonstrate rapid effects here i've got an instance of pnov feeding into a rapid effects this is one of the presets called delay breaks and verbs we've got the input layer here which we can add stuff to i added a vintageizer which is essentially a version of something like rc 20 built right into rapid and then i added in the filter so i can use the filters from rapid as a filter effect we've got a couple other layers here reverbs delays a couple bit crushing things and that takes the piano sound from this to this [Music] now because there's no way for me to get through a video without adding reverb to something i've got a instance of rapid effects here i've got a filter to dole out this piano sound we've got just kind of a nice dark cinematic piano and then that is going into one of my favorite reverb algorithms which is space i've got the decay cranked all the way up so let's bring this in and hear what it transforms that piano sound into [Music] and that is probably one of my favorite features of rapid these reverbs are absolutely gorgeous and i love putting them on stuff to make these huge washy soundscapes now when it comes to the cons of rapid i actually have a pretty hard time thinking of any there are a lot of new features that are going to be on the way in future updates and there have been a lot of features added like the granular stuff the extra effects and i just think all around this is probably one of the most solid investments out there there's not really any weak point to it it's a lot of fun it's very easy to use and above all it actually sounds really good next up here is kilahart's phase plant this is a really really good choice like rapid for a all-around utility synth that will do just about anything you need it to the advantage that phase plant has over something like rapid is that it's essentially semi-modular so it opens up a lot of really big possibilities so long as you have the time and patience to program something really complex with it with this synth as long as you spend the time to really learn it you have just about as many features as you could possibly want and there are more on the way there are a bunch of different generators and ways to make the generators interact with each other we have three independent lanes which can be serial or parallel they can be mono or poly we've got our macro controls we have tons of different modulation possibilities and a whole lot more it's a bit tedious to work with at times much like anything of a modular semi-modular nature but as with anything of a modular semi-modular nature it is incredibly powerful let's dive through a couple presets just to show you some of the sounds of phase [Music] plant [Music] now when it comes to the cons of face plant there are only a couple that really come to mind one of the big things i think is that you need these snap-ins to really get the most out of phase plan on its own it's a very capable and powerful synth but to really dive in and get all the fun out of it you kind of have to have a lot of these snap-ins which does drive up the price pretty significantly but considering the subscription option i guess that negates that by making it pretty affordable and accessible to everybody so a little bit of a mixed bag there if you don't have the money to buy all of these and maybe aren't a fan of subscription based options but if you do unlock the full power of face plant it is really an experience unlike anything else next up here is voltage modular core which is one of my favorite synthesizers and probably just one of my favorite all-around vsts because it is what you make it and that's what i really like about it so voltage modular is a modular system in a box as the name would imply and much like something like vcv rack i think it is one of the closest things you can get to experiencing an actual modular synth setup without the actual modular synth setup price tag voltage modular is an incredibly powerful modular synthesis environment it is a ridiculous midi control surface with all the midi modules and ways that you can control them to send midi out to your favorite plugins or your daw or send midi out to control your favorite synthesizers or whatever you feel like doing it's also a really powerful tool for audio effects because like rapid you can also use this as an effects environment but because it's modular you can build your own one-of-a-kind audio effect on the fly and modulate it with whatever you see fit or tweak and destroy things to your heart's content the other really great thing about voltage module i think is that if you get bored there are tons of other modules to explore both free and paid according to this there are currently 791 additional modules that you can get for voltage modular to expand it however you want to turn it into whatever you want when it comes to voltage modular the only real thing in your way is your imagination and how much your computer can handle in terms of the real i guess practical cons you do need to understand modular synthesis in order to really use it i guess as you would probably think so if you're newer to synthesizers and stuff this is probably not the best choice but if you're relatively comfortable with modular or want to get into it i think this is one of the better options outside of something like vcv rack because this also runs in the daw the only other real thing i think is that it can quickly become pretty expensive with so many additional modules to add in a voltage modular can quickly become one of the more expensive plugins that you own but everything is optional it doesn't really require you to add anything to get a lot of power and functionality out of it it's just what you want to add in that can really start to drive up that price tag all that aside though i think voltage modular is a really fun thing to check into it's a lot of fun to play with as a synthesis environment it's a really powerful control surface with midi it's a really powerful modular effects unit and it's just all around a lot of fun and i think a very practical tool in the tool belt of stuff this plugin would take hours and hours to cover in any kind of exhaustive details so let's just flip through a couple presets here to give you an idea of what voltage modular sounds like so [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Music] next up we have the one the only uvi falcon which is one of those things that just makes life worth living uvi falcon in my mind is the king of synth sampler hybrids this is truly a unique piece of software in that it really gets this idea of merging two different things and it does it very well without any real compromises going into falcon in any real detail would take hours and hours and hours there's just way too much to cover here it's just incredibly cool there are a bunch of different sampler modes including granular synthesis options there are different synthesis modes you are free to combine these in any way you see fit and stack them together there are a gajillion different effects there are tons of different other effects like the guitar processors or whatever there's scripts and different tools there's different modulators and then a ton of really cool presets to boot to teach you how to use falcon and start making something yourself falcon also offers npe support so if you have an mpe controller like this here fancy sunsel morph you can actually use mpe with this thing which opens up even more ridiculous sound design possibilities so if you work in sound design at all i think this is one of the best investments you can make it does a lot of really powerful stuff and allows you to take control of it in a lot of very interesting ways so let's flip through just a couple of presets here to get an idea of what falcon can do [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] wow [Music] all right [Music] foreign [Music] and that is a very brief look at falcon it is incredibly powerful and way too much to cover in one video you can also stack different instruments and layer things together you can create key splits you can do all sorts of ridiculous things or even write your own scripts to make falcon do something entirely new now when it comes to the downsides of falcon i think the biggest fault is that it has a very steep learning curve and it's really not the fastest workflow if i'm going to create something simple like a little respace or a basic pad falcon is probably not my first choice but when it comes to really deep powerful sound design possibilities falcon really has no competition another downside for falcon for me at least is that i feel like some of the oscillators are maybe a bit underwhelming the fm1 specifically is really not that fully featured so i wish there was maybe some better fm features to do like fm from the additive oscillator to the wave table or maybe use a sample to fm the fm operators or something to that nature so not really a huge downside because there are plenty of synths that do that kind of stuff but i do wish falcon especially for the price tag had some extra features like that to get a bit more depth out of its oscillators the only other big downside and this is kind of relative is that there aren't a whole lot of third-party libraries available for falcon uvi has a ton of libraries that you can choose from they're all really solid i think every bank uvi has released has been just absolutely top-notch quality but there aren't a whole lot of libraries out there for falcons so if you rely a lot on third-party libraries rather than doing a lot of your own sounds or tweaking you know the factory stuff or whatever it might not be the best choice but again that really comes down to what you're looking for and to me falcon is more of a sound design environment rather than something i'm gonna want to get a bunch of libraries for the only other big thing i can think of is that big patches in falcon get very confusing very quickly if you have a lot of different key groups and a lot of different effects and a lot of different modulation and a lot of different things going on it can get pretty hard to remember how things are operating and why so that's something to keep in mind is that it does take a fair amount of practice and know-how to really get the most out of falcon but if you commit yourself to it and really start to learn it and maybe dissect some of the presets it's really a very powerful tool to own to make sounds and process things in some unique ways hey there it's me again and i wanted to quickly talk about the sponsor of today's video knob cloud back in the day i used to play a lot of video games and one of the things with buying a game on a disc was that i could then trade it in once i got bored of it or was done playing it to go get a new game or get some other game that someone else had traded in and it was kind of a cool thing to be able to buy and sell used video games now that we've entered the era of software and plugins though you can't really do that if i buy a game on steam that i get bored of i'm kind of out of luck in the same with plugins if i buy a plugin that i maybe enjoyed but got rid of and replaced with something new or something that just wasn't quite what i expected or a plug-in that just wasn't that good you're kind of stuck with it but that is where knob cloud comes in now in the past i've bought and sold a couple of plug-ins on sites like kvr but overall it was just a little bit sketchy because there was no real official marketplace for this kind of thing before and you never really knew who was on the other side of the screen knob cloud is an online marketplace to buy and sell used plugins with zero fees and it has buyer and seller protection so you can always be sure that the plugins you're purchasing or selling are totally legit and that you're going to get your money and not get scammed you can actually find many of the plugins featured in this video here today at a pretty steep discount there are a lot of really cool plugins you can find on knob cloud for sometimes over 50 or 60 or 70 off so it's a great way to maybe swap out some of your plugins for something new that you really want to try out without breaking the bank to buy some of the more expensive plug-ins if you've got plug-ins that are sitting around it's a great way to offload them and get some money back so you can turn around and go pick up something new or just pocket the cash and move on with life without having a bunch of plugins sitting there on your hard drive making you feel like you regret purchasing them so a big shout out again to knob cloud for sponsoring today's video and helping to support the channel if you've got some plugins you want to sell or maybe want to pick up some of the plugins from today's video at a pretty steep discount you can check out knob cloud today over at knobcloud.com now let's move on and talk about some effects first up here i've got audio damage replicant 2 which is a really fast glitching machine one of my favorite features about it though is that it has randomization factors so we can select the beats we want to put the glitching on or you can just randomize it so we'll randomize that we'll randomize the looping the random of the stutter and the direction and repeat so now we can take this drum break from this and turn it into this without really touching anything [Music] and we can change the loop size [Music] let's change it to mix mode maybe bit crush [Music] add some filtering and i think you get the idea replicant 2 is a really fast and efficient way to create cool glitchy effects but i think the real power comes in the randomization this way we can set up kind of a regular pattern of glitches and stutters and whatnot but we have randomization coming in to make it a bit more unpredictable that way you don't have to sit through and really tediously chop out and edit all of your glitches manually you can just throw this on add a little bit of randomization and forget about it the only real cons i had for replicant 2 is that i would like to see maybe a couple extra features i would love to have modulation over these filters because i think they add a really cool factor to the whole sound but there's not any way to move these automate these or any kind of lfo to modulate them otherwise so that would be really nice i would love to see the same thing for the bits control here and i would really like to see maybe a bigger version of this with maybe individual effects for each little slice something i guess like izotope stutter edit so i'd love to see a bigger battered version of this but as it is it's a really cheap and easy way to get into cool glitchy stuff without any real effort next up here we've got psp infinistrip as you know i'm a huge fan of the psp plugins and infinistrip is really no exception infinistrip includes over two dozen effects so it comes in at just under ten dollars per effect and it gives you access to a lot of the better psp effects and some new ones that aren't available outside of infinistrip like the preamps infinistrip is also zero latency so you can use it live you can use it for headphone mixes if you're producing stuff in the studio you can also use it for broadcast and production work like podcasts or whatnot or live streaming or you can use it like i do where i run this as a plug-in inside of obs to do my voiceover chain i think the big thing infinistrip offers over some of the basic stuff in your daw is that it really has some cool colors that can add to your sound with things like the phet presser the vca presser the optopressor the different eqs that just have a little bit of a different flavor and of course the preamps we can have kind of a crunchy tube console a more big bad solid state console or a kind of crunchy but clean 90s digital preamp thing and just add a bit of flavor and overall vibe to your mixes which i think is an important thing everyone needs the clean super hyper processed digital stuff but you also need something just to make things sound a bit more lively and that's where i think infinistrip comes in the other big thing to me is that i really like channel strip mixing formats and if you're a fan of that as well i think this is a really great solution because it's modular we can swap these around you can add different modules swap them on the fly you can also switch them with parameter matching so the eq if you switch that it has the same parameters for all the eq modules that way you're really only hearing the differences in each of the modules it just makes things a bit easier i think it's a bit more restrictive than something really deep and fully featured but i think it's for the better because it makes me make better decisions and forces me to move on because i only get so much to work with in terms of the cons of infinistrip i have a very hard time finding any much like rapid it's just one of my favorite all-around tools to just get things done and it does what it does very well the only real con i could think of is maybe that the de-esser takes a bit more time to dial in than a lot of other de-essers i've used but that's really the only thing i can think of as a downside outside of all that though more modules will be on the way soon so if you find this list may be a bit restrictive i'm sure there will be more on the way to expand infinistrip well into the future making it a pretty solid investment now everybody needs a really good utility eq and i had a hard time picking between these two for this video so i wanted to share slice eq from kilohertz and uvi shade these are both really good very powerful eqs they're just a little bit different and i guess their intended applications slice eq overall is a very good very clean digital eq that you can add as many bands and filters as you want to it's also fully open to modulation inside of things like multi-pass or snap heap from killer hearts it does mid-side mode it's also got matching so you can use this to get a reference from maybe a track or another sound or whatever to then balance your sounds against it's a pretty decent tool overall and it's not that expensive and it just does exactly what you would think that it does and i think you can't really ask for much more than that another nice thing with slice eq is that it acts as a pretty decent spectrum analyzer so if you set this to exact mode here you can actually get a very nice visual reference of how a signal looks which makes it a bit easier to work with as well as individual mid side analyzers that way if you're putting this on your master or something you can get an idea of how things are sitting in the stereo field shade on the other hand is a little bit different it's a very good clean digital eq but with some added extra filters and a lot of extra modulation options which makes it really really powerful i don't think this is necessarily an advantage over slice eq but it is just a little bit different in its intended approach shade offers a couple of different things like band soloing options dynamic eq modes and a whole lot of different filters if we go in here there are just a ton to choose from including phasers combs and flangers special modes from there's also drive there's a bunch of different slope options and just about everything you can dream up there's a ton of modulation available there's side chain inputs there's just a whole lot that you can do when it comes to the cons of these there aren't really a whole lot to name i guess the biggest thing with slice eq is that it doesn't feature nearly as many options as something like shade with things like dynamic eqs or really deep modulations or exotic filter types but i'm sure there will be some updates pretty soon to offer a bit more modulation stuff with slice eq to make it a bit more competitive to shade it's still going to be pretty different because shade is kind of its own unique beast but it will bring them a lot more in line in terms of getting really creative with them as for shade there aren't really any cons to name the random modulator's a bit weird because it's always bipolar it's also maybe just a little bit much to deal with at times it's just a lot of option paralysis but once you understand shade there's not a whole lot else that's like it it's really powerful and a lot of fun to play with next up here is sketch cassette 2 from aberrant dsp i've talked about this plug-in a couple times before on the channel but i think this was one of my best purchases i made recently i got this for only 20 bucks and i've used it a ton sketch cassette gives you that crappy tape sound on demand but also gives you a lot of very fine green control as to how that tape is doing what it's doing and why and really lets you dial in everything from a subtle bit of something spicy to really crappy destroyed tape that just sounds like absolute garbage this is a great tool to add that vibed out character in just a couple seconds by flicking through the presets or dialing in just that little bit of mojo and magic to a pad sound or whatever to bring it to life and make it feel a bit more interesting without having to go in and really tweak the synth patch it's just one of those things you can throw on and make things sound better if you do anything involving lo-fi productions or things that just maybe need a bit of that vibe to them this is probably one of the best plugins you can buy and it's under 50 when it comes to the cons of sketch cassette there really just aren't any it does exactly what it says it does and it sounds very good doing it and that's just about all you can ask for to quickly demonstrate this i've got an instance of stage 73 open here and we're just going to give this a play and flip through some of the presets of sketch cassette [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so next up here is izotope neoverb which i think has really quickly become my favorite mixing reverb and what i mean by that is a reverb that works when i need to add reverb to something in a mix it's not really a creative effect it's more of a utility add reverb to a thing with a reverb that sounds very good now originally in this video i wanted to feature something like denise perfect room or perfect plate because those are two of my other favorite reverbs but the thing with neoverb is it allows you to combine different reverb types to get something that suits the sound really well and move between them if needed what you're essentially getting is access to a bunch of really good reverb algorithms we have plate we have medium chamber we have room we have hall and then we have large chamber and we can blend between these with this cool xy control as well as the early reflections up here at the top within neoverb you can actually open this up to get a lot more fine control over each of these things so i might want a really large large chamber with more of a medium smallish room and then a pretty big amount of early reflections with maybe not so much diffusion but a large size i can adjust the tone of these things the crossover points maybe we want a really dark room but a really bright chamber or whatever and then we can blend between these to get different sounds [Music] one of the things that really stands out about neoverb though is it makes use of izotope's assistant technology so what i can do here is hit auto cut and i'll just play my song or whatever is feeding into this and it will automatically fix the reverb to sound better so if we eliminate that here let's just play a big chord and now let's bring it in all the way it's going to find any resonances and help reduce them which i think is one of the more annoying parts of dealing with reverb and this works for the pre-eq as well as the reverb eq so we can unmask signals let's do the dry versus what we'll hit unmask and it says no significant masking detected so normally it would adjust that but in this case i guess it thinks it's fine now in terms of the cons of neoverb i think the biggest one is its price this is by no means a cheap reverb there are a lot cheaper options out there but i think the assistant technology combined with the different algorithms and the ability to blend between them to really dial in the reverb sound to exactly what it needs to be to suit whatever it is you're feeding into it makes it a pretty solid choice the only other big con i guess is that this is really not meant to be a big washy reverb but there are plenty of reverbs out there that can do that including a bunch of free ones it does have a couple presets if we go to like experimental and i think the uh this one pretty sure is one of their biggest settings in here and we can just crank this all the way up to here but if we give this a play you'll hear it's really not the most exciting huge reverb let's dial that in towards the bigger reverbs so it might be a little plain in terms of its algorithms but it is very functional in practice and again this isn't really at least to what i could figure what it was designed to do so i think that's just kind of a con if you're looking for the all-in-one reverb last but certainly not least is psp mastercomp this is definitely one of my kind of secret weapon plugins that i use on just about everything i've ever released since i got it now in my opinion and keep in mind i really don't consider myself to be a mastering engineer this is like the mastering compressor to have it just makes things sound more like a finished record this compressor is great to just clamp down on the mix and really glue things together and it seems to add just a bit of body to the sound and i'm not sure why that is i don't know if it's some kind of internal circuitry emulation or if it's just some kind of placebo effect and i just am very biased towards it because i use it on everything but it just makes things sound more like what i want them to in the end overall i really have no cons or complaints for mastercomp it's maybe a bit expensive but it is more than fully worth it in my opinion because it just makes things sound like a record to demonstrate this here we'll bypass it and i'll play you a segment of this mix then we'll bring in mastercomp i actually just use one of two presets really i either go for a gentle master or fat mix and then i'll dial things in a bit so we'll bring that in on this track here and start fiddling with the parameters a little bit [Music] hey [Music] [Music] uh [Music] hey [Music] biggest [Music] [Music] hey [Music] and that brings us to the end of this one so i hope you enjoyed the video and i hope this turned you on to a couple plugins to go check out to make your next track sound awesome and if you make something great feel free to share with me because i'm always excited to hear what you guys are up to if you're looking to pick up some new plugins or offload some ones that you don't need anymore be sure to check out the sponsor of today's video knob cloud over at knobcloud.com you can also find some of the plugins featured here in today's video at a pretty steep discount so that's it for this one thanks for watching be sure to like and subscribe and i will see you guys again soon you

Channel: Venus Theory

Views: 77,059

Keywords: Venus Theory, sound design, best plugins, best vst plugins, best vst, best paid plugins, best paid vst plugins, fl studio, bitwig, studio one, cubase, ableton, free plugins, free vst plugins, free vst, free vsts, best free plugins, logic pro, vst plugins, best plugins 2020

Id: txIqemrK5U0

Length: 38min 41sec (2321 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 04 2021