Hey all, are you happy with your toolbox or do you have a wishlist for Black Friday? Let us know!
I have only one plugin I really want at the moment: Pro-R upgrade to Pro-R2 (they added two new algos, more range for the decay rate EQ, IR import, ducking and more).
I love Pro-R! I have it saved in all my templates.
Pro-R2 looks cool, I really like the IR import, I have some IRs I would definitely dust off and use again.
I’m looking to get the Ableton 12 update, and maaaaaybe the Sugar Bytes Effectrix 2. Years ago I had a cracked version of Effectrix 1, got rid of it when I purged all my cracks and decided to go clean hard drive. But in the back of my head I always think about it.
Damn, right, Ableton 12 would be nice, too 
Effectrix is good, I have v1 and I used it a lot in the past but nowadays I use Shaperbox much more often. I don’t think I will be updating Effectrix to v2 - the price is a bit high and I’m not even sure that I like v2 that much more than v1 from what I have seen.
Yeah, it’s pretty nice to have reverb in the box, too, although using it after any reverb can be fun. I think soon we can make full tracks in it hehe
Speaking of FabFilter, I may get Twin 3 if there’s a decent sale. Tone2’s Electra2 I’ve been thinking of getting for a while, so again, maybe if a decent offer happens.
To answer your question, I honestly don’t need any more VSTs than I already have… I don’t even have a wish list anymore at this point. But… I’m a sucker for decent deals so I’ll probably end up with a few things anyway. Most probably synth expansions.
Shaperbox 3 actually 
Those fuckers got me with their $19 update pricing so I got all the modules. Haven’t tried the reverb one yet.
I did just get a new job so I’ll have more disposable income… next year when my paychecks even out again!
In all seriousness, I have my eye on only a few things this year, and all the companies don’t really do big sales so it’s not a big deal if I miss them.
Fabilter Pro-R 2 and Pro-L. Expensive by themselves, but I’m told that once you buy one Fabfilter plugin you start to get discounts towards the rest. Not really interested in anything else they do but I’ve wanted Pro-R for years and I would like to have another broadband limiter besides Ozone around.
Tone Projects Michelangelo, which just introed a few weeks ago. I unfortunately deleted the email with my early adopter/upgrade offer since I own everything else Tone Projects makes, so I expect to pay full price for that one somewhere down the line. I’ve been looking for a good character eq replacement for the ancient Acustica Red EQ, and based on the demos I’ve heard of this one it does the job better than anything else I’ve heard, plus I really like/trust Tone Projects based on their other plugins.
And the last ones I have on my list are the AOM invisible limiter v2 and/or v3. They’re kind of underground secret sauce broadband limiters. I’ve seen a literal handful of people talk about them with nothing but good things to say. This is a small company out of Japan, their website is so-so, and I don’t think they’re going to do a sale, so that’s another plugin I can just pick up when I have some extra money down the line.
I was briefly interested in Shaperbox, but then I remembered I just picked up Arturia EFX Motions, and I already have Fragments and Dist_Coldfire too (actually used Coldfire in my submission for the compilation album). I can do a lot more with these than I am right now, so I’m going to hold off on Shaperbox for a bit - especially because I’m going to get a lot busier next year and might not have as much time for music anymore.
Tone2 stuff is awesome imho, I’m a big fan especially of Icarus. I have Twin 2, but Twin 3 didn’t convince me when I checked it out.
Cableguys got me, too, they are sneaky with their pricing and constant updates lol…
Congrats for the new job! More income sounds good
I use Pro-R and Pro-L in every project. I’m not using Ozone much anymore, so I can’t really give you a good comparison for the limiters from my perspective (I mostly use Elevate and Pro-L these days). I also can recommend Saturn, Pro-Q and Pro-MB but I guess you got the saturation, EQing and multiband compression fronts covered with a few plugins already 
I think you save 5-10% with every Fabfilter plugin you own but not completely sure. I own 8 of their plugins and they still want 60€ for the Pro-R update (maybe a bit less when their BF deals start I hope).
Never heard of the Michelangelo EQ or the AOM limiters. For character EQ I use Sie-Q, Uhbik-Q and the old Vibe EQ, but in general I don’t use these that often as compared to my other EQs. For the Michelangelo EQ, you can always try to write to Tone Projects and tell them that you lost the email. In my experience, software companies usually are willing to give you some special deals if you ask nicely.
Once you’re ready to buy it, you should let them know about that offer email & the fact you own everything else they made. You never know, they may be OK to send you an offer of sorts.
eh. I really don’t. All I want is more time to work with what I have! At this point new fancy software or hardware is just another thing I don’t have time for.
I’m perfectly content with my toybox toolbox.
Good news though, even if I wasn’t, I still don’t have money to spend
Just to be clear: I gave a like for the “being content with your toys”, not for the “not having money to spend”
I shouldn’t spend money on unnecessary toys, too, but there is still some mild GAS infection lurking in my brain somehere…
I just checked out the feature list and I have to say I’m not that impressed. Some generative stuff I probably will not use much, more UI customization (nice but I’m used to the current UI), modulated parameters can be changed with the original knobs instead of the offset of the modulators (nice, but I got used to using the offset parameters) and new effects and instruments I don’t need… Is there something important that convinced you?
Might instead update BItwig - it’s a bit cheaper and I’m still on 3.x while they are on 5.1 and have added lots of stuff since then I think…
Tbh, the Ableton 12 update seems rather unimpressive. Additionally, I’m of the school of thought that your DAW isn’t the limiting factor anyway. I could make pretty much anything I make today on a much, much older version of Ableton or FL Studio.
I’m just looking forward to getting some new monitors, my Christmas gift to myself. I already have a pair of JBL 305P MkII and Yamaha HS8 but I actually want some lower quality tweeters so I can get a better idea of what my stuff sounds like on a wider variety of setups. Plus I’ve been meaning to update my headphone wall, a dozen or more pairs up on my headphone wall are SUPER old and I just need a full headphones refresh. Snagged a couple good deals on some new cans, but I might just end up replacing some earpads on some of the older ones too.
For clarification, I’m saying the hardware and the earpads are sort of falling apart from age, however I’m not saying that old cans are bad. Quite the contrary, some of the best headphones I have are from the early 80s.
Yeah, I agree, with some exceptions (such as MPE support for instance)… the main thing I was hoping for was significantly higher stability of Live 12. I frequently get crashes in Live 11 and I can’t even open some projects anymore. But I haven’t heard anything about improvements in this regard for Live 12.
Bitwig at least has some kind of plugin sandboxing and it even seems to be able to read the MIDI data of project files from some other DAWs, so I might be able to at least recover the MIDI data from some old Live projects with the newest Bitwig lol… So yeah, I guess I kinda have already decided…
Personal opinion, but this one seems way better if you’re a fan of modulation at all (and of course, Grid!). Especially if you don’t already have the spectral suite, that’s a nice little cherry on top
Come to think of it, they’ve added a lot since then, like note grid and all sorts of other great stuff
Yeah, you are right, I’m a big fan of extensive modulation and frequently use all available modulation slots in some synths 
and I also really like spectral effects hehe…
Last time I decided to upgrade to Live 11 instead of extending Bitwig updates just because they introduced MPE support and some other stuff in Live, but this time it’s not a hard decision, I will def update Bitwig…