Attn Music Producers n Beat Brethren: What VST or VSTi do you use?

madswagga

madswagga

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Jan 5, 2010
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I was wonderin what you all use for VST's? I give anything I hear about a try so Ive accumulated a large variety of VST's and DAW's. I for the most part stick to FL Studio, but am trying to give Cubase a try at the moment (I already have Ableton, Reason, and some other minor ones). Does anyone have much experience in Cubase? Tryin to get the 5 to work but my computer wont recognize my mounted drive. Look forward to hearin all the input.
 
I'm confused as to what you're asking. You're asking about VSTs but you listed DAWs. As for DAWs I've only messed with FL thus far but that's purely for the sake of comfort. Good automation, easy to get etc etc. for VSTs I mainly use Massive and Sylenth1. Massive is amazing for crazy basses and leads and the performer feature is really neat. Sylenth1 is also really good for the same reasons but i like making synth pads with this more. I also use FM8 for leads sometimes and it's pretty good. A little hard to learn to use but you get it after a few hours.
 
Oh the reason I didnt list the VST's is because I have so many. Ill have to check out that Slyneth and microtonic. What about FX generator's? Thats somethin I seem to be lacking in at the moment.
 
I use Ableton and am learning Logic. As for Vsts I really like Zebra and to a lesser extent sylenth, massive, VB-1, Supatrigga, and I'm starting to learn FM8. I have no leads on FX generators.
 
VSTi's

My favourite is Sylenth - Simple, Effective, Great sound, but not very versatile IMO for creating massive complicated patches, seems limited to me

Absynth is another great one but is very detail oriented, you can do anything with it but it takes time to program it. Can be worth it in the end... Sound quality can be controlled nicely, with really clear or subtle disortions, wide to thin patches... But takes a lot of time to programming it... but it comes with a lot of unique and cool sounds installed within it...

Alien-303 is cool, not very 303-like but a nice remake/emulator. Great for Psy/Goa 303's, though I've made some really cool Nu-Break Acid lines as well as Acid-House tracks using a couple of these...

Dune is another great one, similar to Sylenth, though I find the sound quality coming out of it isn't so great? Don't know if it's just me... seems thin/muddy no matter what I try which is a shame, really reminds me of the Virus TI I own except with a muddier sound output... The parameter routing is almost identical, though with just a few less options...

Drum-machines, I sometimes use this Dr-909 free vst I have, which is cool but takes a bit of time to make the sounds fatter... it's good for simple preccusive sounds and if you want a drum-machine type sound/patterns using MIDI, but like I said you will need FX to make it sound full...

Along with my Virus TI this is all I need, great stuff... I would replace Dune with maybe Z3tA, used it years ago but back then I used mostly patch-presets without understand how they worked... Even still it's a very unique synth (Z3ta) and you can do a lot, but like Absynth it's a nit-gritty one with programming...

Dr-909 can be replaced with drum-samples run through a sampler, or an actual drum-machine... or a better drummachine vst...
Best thing IMO is MIDI patterns run through a Sampler with drum-samples of all sorts, with a good sampler VST you should be able to adjust, tune and edit the sounds to your liking as well, but not to the extent that a drum-synth may be able to, but in essence you can use another VST to create your drum sounds the way you want and sequence them through the Sampler via MIDI...

Some ones I need to learn/wrap my head around - Massive, FM8...

Special mention to Superwave 8000 (Think that was what it was called?) Don't use it anymore but was alright for generating trance leads... couldn't find many great applications for it and could be recreated with Sylenth, and Sylenth has a great sound quality to it...




Distortion:

QUADRAFUZZ
Great and simple for fattening up sounds or wrecking them apart... The Multi-band Distorion is also a very good plus side to it...

Bitcrusher from Cubase - not very great to be honest but it workes for adding a subtle character if used lightly... not great for automated bitcrushing though... Very choppy as you adjust it live in your track, it's like going from 1 to 2 on a setting knob but also skipping everything inbetween it (1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc - to 2)



I love the delays in Cubase (Ping-pong, Stereo, Mono) in combination with panning automation via a synth itself, or the auto-pan tool
Revarb I simply use Cubase's revarb as well... It's alright and can sound good. Though I find it to be very heavy on the CPU... Most Revarb VST's are though...

I love Cubase's Stereo Enhancer, I also like the fact that they released the old-school Stereo Expander. They work closely but differently, same concept done different. I find the Stereo Enhancer has a clearer/spacey expansion while the older Stereo Expander sort of pulls the sound from the center out to the sides - Real Mono->Stereo. Together it gives great control over your sounds in fattening them/adjusting them in the mixdown...



I love Cubase, but at the same time I may end up switching to Mac with Logic for various reasons... One being that PC's really suck. (No really, they are garbage compared to Mac's for Multi-Media) and the fact that many VSTi's/VST's don't work on Mac's... I may just use Cubase but there are other factors as to why I may switch.


That's all for now.
Cheers


madswagga said:
Oh the reason I didnt list the VST's is because I have so many. Ill have to check out that Slyneth and microtonic. What about FX generator's? Thats somethin I seem to be lacking in at the moment.
Click to expand...

I'm no proffesional, but from my own perspective I like using just a few versatile and great sounding VSTi's and skipping out on the rest. Used to have so many that I'd go through them and never be happy with any single sound... Better to pick the ones with the style of sounds you are searching for and stick with them, learn them inside-out, and learn to apply which FX to make that VSTi sound nice/the way you want it to...
The point of this is to minimize the time you are looking for a right sound cycling through 20 or more instruments while not working on the idea of the track... Once you have something that sounds similar to what you want, if you know your VSTi inside-out you can adjust it to keep the certain characters of the sound you want to keep and remove/change the others...

Than you get a glimpse on how to make the sound by reviewing the Parametres, and you can create your own similar, unique, and new sounds to the previous one you created from a Preset... It's best to learn this atleast a little bit with Electronic Music Production... The best music IMO is the ones with old-sound ideas spun into a new form/feel... (Psy-Trance Squelches have changed and been used as a basis for many great new sounds within Psy-Trance... But the idea still comes from the old-style of creating those Squelches, with new spin-off's from the producers/sound engineers...)
Many pro tracks may use VST presets, but they arrange them in such a way you wouldn't know, or otherwise can't tell because of the small adjustments they make to those presets... or they re-create it and as they do so change the way it is done to make that new but similar sound...

If it really interests you I recommend reading up just on basic sound synthesis and how most every synthesizers work (Oscillators, Tune/Fine-Tune, LFO's, LP/BP/HP Filters, Filter/Amp Envelopes, Velocity Parameters, etc) Than read about additional parameters you can add/set to each of these... (Example you can try with most any: Controlling the LFO Speed/Amount through the Filter Envelope, While that LFO is controlling say the Tune/Pitch of an Oscillator with a Sine Wave...WEOOowowowo, or reverse)

Than move onto more advanced synthesis such as FM or Wavetable synthesis and understand the differences if you like the idea of starting from scratch & get obsessed into all synthesis...
Otherwise the basics are mandatory to know if you wish to create this type of music... You will waste a lot of time searching through tons of VSTi's and preset after preset after preset...

Point is - Keep a few & Learn to use those ones.
Learn more VSTi's after you feel comfortable...



VST FX I would say, the Waves plugin's are the best, but there are so many... Most of the good DAW's have nice Delay FX (Cubase has great ones) but Waves was the best toolset I've worked with in the past. Very nice EQ's, Compressors, Revarb. These are the things I used most out of the VST's in the Waves set...

Waves, hands down IMO... Though I don't use it anymore (On my old setup in another country... :( )
 
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Afghan_Tourist said:
....I'm no proffesional, but from my own perspective I like using just a few versatile and great sounding VSTi's and skipping out on the rest. ... Better to pick the ones with the style of sounds you are searching for and stick with them, learn them inside-out, and learn to apply which FX to make that VSTi sound nice/the way you want it to...
Click to expand...

Wow, what a helpful post. Nice one mate.

I can't really add much to that. But would agree very much with the above.

I use Cubase 5 as my DAW. VSTi's I use are the Spectrasonics trilogy of Trilion, Omnisphere and RMX. I also use Sylenth which I think is a wonderful bit of software for a budget. The Reverence reverb that comes with Cubase is nice, but I tend to use a great freebie called Ambience. Another good all round freebie out there for FX is the kjaerhus set of chorus/flange/reverb/delay etc. For mastering I use Sonalksis. But I'm still getting to grips with that!
 
Wondering if anyone who knows anything about cubase 5 could give me a hand? I must be completely missing something. One issue I'm having is I can't get my head around quantize, I know this is probably very basic stuff... and also do I need to use it all the time. Like I know how to quantize a basic four on the floor beat for example but how to quantize audio as I use a synth. Pm me if you would be willing to answer some questions I have, I would be so greatful.
 
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^^ Quantize is just locking it to the grid. Its basically something you never use. The only real use for it is if you suck at playing a phrase in time or a part but then why wouldn't you just practice it? In terms of automation its easier to just adjust stuff (? then again why would you want to as it basically makes it sound like some robot drum pattern/preset without feel). I mean if you are quantizing drums or a phrase something has fucked up somewhere or someone.

I'm finding more and more a lot of VSTs are basically gimmicks, a lot of music production stuff seems like the basics are enough, you have a sampler and for me at least its almost all I need. The outboard gear, guitar FX stuff craze seems kinda wack. A lot of the gear sounds like ass. I look at these dorks spending $1000s on modular rack systems to make music no one listens to and really is kinda garbage.
 
jpgrdnr said:
I mean if you are quantizing drums or a phrase something has fucked up somewhere or someone
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I've been recording live I just thought quantize was the way to record lol. I'm teaching myself. Using beat maker for drums now which means I don't have to fuck about with quantizing hihats etc.. What about using samples don't you have to quantize them?
I take it you use your ears more than the grid itself then?
Btw thanks a lot for explaining that for me. It really helps a lot! 👍
 
Strictly coming from "Edm" there is no need to quantize anything as every midi sequence is short enough or you are sequencing everything specifically. That's not to say you might want to nudge something, or like I said you want to have stuff not have something strictly in time so it grooves or has rhythm, as opposed to say some sort of primitive Techno where 4 to the floor is fine. Again, this is more from the MIDI end of things in Edm and not in terms of live tracking a band.

I pretty much never use extended drum loops or stems, but yes you can quantize them but again why? I always know the BPM and the BPM of the loops and If have to do any sort of editing of anything that is not in time, I just cut it up and loop it so its in time, etc. I definitely feel that quantizing a loop in hiphop is going to fuck up the loop or time stretch it. And you generally want to have all your drum tracks separate. I mostly use one shots so I never have to deal with matching loops like in something like drum and bass etc. where maybe quantizing might be more appropriate.

From what I understand you can quantize whole audio tracks. I guess it would make sense in live tracking drums for bands or you need to automate 4 minutes of a track but generally that is what overdubs are for or you should fire the drummer because he/she can't play to a click track. It probably means people need to practice more as opposed to mechanically making things sound tight and together, but yes I'm sure people want things to be super tight and polished in a commercial recording for radio etc. (think Paramore or something where its pop perfect, etc. probably Metallica quantizes the crap out of their newer records, or Metal, Dreamtheater, whoever).
 
@jpgrdnr So my best bet is to practice my audio parts (using microkorg), time them perfectly as possible, and record my midi drums using one shot hits then manually change individual beats that may be out of time, to match in time with my recorded audio tracks? Does that mean the midi drums should be set to a specific quantize setting e.g. 1/16 so that the grids match the places where I want to replace the midi should it be out of time with the click track? Or would I just record more accurately in smaller parts kinda thing then copy/paste? I also thought that there would be an easier way to fix a slightly dodgy audio recording that is ever so slightly out by using quantize rather than having to re-record especially if it's a longer section like a piano part. Apologies for being a n00b lol and thanks again for the info. Cleared a lot up, I think I'm just confusing myself at this point lol I think I've been getting time signatures and quantize mixed up too lol and I feel so stupid I can't understand the basics yet
 
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i use freeware.

i really really like the stuff xoxos put out years ago, not sure if you can still get them but they had interesting effects and really cool instruments. i particularly like "mass", a percussion synth.

rs-met is another good designer, and tweakbench (but they started charging for em).

also b. serrano, the "adonis" synth and "nibiru" filter.

if you're into microtonal, xen-arts made a few (ivor off the top of my head), but you will have to do some digging.

mostly, lately, i've been using whatever comes with LMMS.
 
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