What plug-ins do you guys like?

The classic waves plugs are completely redundant in today's day and age. There is no reason to invest in them. They represent the state of the art circa ten years ago.  Not to say they are bad. Just overpriced and underpowered. There are newer plugs that do the same things for less money.

When I started mixing in the box, I spent years trying to recreate the caliber of mix I could get on an ssl. The presence of the eq was somewhat easy to get from filterbank or even eqIII but that snap you can get from the ssl dynamic section seemed completely unattainable. It seems that plugin developers spent so much time modeling complex tube outboard that they completely neglected simple inboard VCA style compressors. Now I use the Waves SSL plugs religiously. Does it sound like an SSL? No. But they achieve the goals I was going for.

Other plugs I rely on:

Omnipressor. Yay VCA.
Massey De-esser. Best de esser ever. Hardware OR software I dare say.
TL Space. Nothing fancy. Just a solid convolution verb.
PSP Audioware stuff. The 42 and Nitro.
Melodyne.
Whatever that Massey drum to midi program is. Best drum replacer ever.
     

Of course!!! drumagog!! I have the same situation here Silvas...

I forgot...i replaced many many instances of aphex aural exciter with a pair of modded dolby 361, my new favorite "plugin" !

I must say, i also love the plugins of propellerheads reason.
I love the sound of the screamer and of the UN-16-Unison-Modul.

I tryed to copy the UN-16-Unison sound with the cubase stuff (chorus,spatial,delays...) but i didnt get the thight nice sound.
It would be so cool if propellerhead would make separate plugins... but now they
launched "Record"...a separate sequencer with some of the good reason devices... anyone testet it? the mixer looks interesting a "ssl clone" mixing desk... maybe this is a good thing as i was very crazy about reason... but maybe not as they never had a good mixer algorithm..  

I must add that while i have 2 or 3 SSL bus compressor clones which are very tasty, they don't match up
to the GSSL with turbo at all !!!
UAD's 1176 is very very close to the real thing and Stillwellaudio's "Rocket" is like an 1176 on steroids

Horses for courses ....


MM.

A lot of bashing against Waves has been seen now due to their customer politics, but we all like the ultramaximizer series. If you don't have any of the Waves L1/L2/L3, you can help yourself by using a freeware clone of L1 called Yohng's W1 limiter. It does the job great, but I wish it had somewhat the same GUI as the original, I'm missing the GR reduction graphics which always tell me how much I'm biting (used to do 250ms release for speech and vocals in overall, and you can use a lot of threshold before you are doing too much damage). I wish he will clone L2 one day. Check it here
http://www.yohng.com/w1limit.html

I'm amazed that no-one has mentioned ProAudioDSP's DSM (Dynamic Spectrum Mapper). We all have had our not-so-convincing experiences with software leaning on this idea before (like Steinberg's Freefilter, mind I laugh), but this is finally something that really is working great. It's ie. the best "de-esser" I've had so far, but you gotta be cautious with the settings and pay some time learning to use it for your profit. It will save me a LOT of manual hand labour mouse-work on dynamics wise once I buy it. I had the 21-day trial and unfortunately run out of time already, but found out inserting it on every vocal channel and replacing a line of plugins.  I find it revolutionary and just what digital equipment is for when combining the best out of the two worlds. These guys worked for SSL/Oxford before, which tells something in itself (see the About page). See the videos and try-out for yourself (need an iLok though, but you won't regret it).
http://www.proaudiodsp.com/products/dsm/