I upgraded to Kotelnikov GE a few months back and I’m absolutely blown away. It has totally paid for itself the last few weeks. The saturation is nice, equal loudness bypass is good, but the showstopper is frequency dependent ratio. As in, the compressor will react to the wideband signal but only compress the frequencies you want. I know of only two or three other compressors that can be made to do this (and they don’t just have one or two buttons to make it happen) and all of them are priced in the hundreds of dollars. Wish I had gotten this much sooner.
https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/1-Instruments/64-Virtual-Instrument/9065-CUBE-Mini
Plugin boutique has Cube Mini on sale for a tenner. Cube is one of the more interesting softwares to me to come out in the past year, it’s a sampler with 8 samples that you crossfade between by moving a point around in 3D space. The Mini is missing some editing features compared to the full version, but for 10 bucks I’m willing to take it for a spin and see if I want to save up for the full version.
Bonus, plugin boutique always gives you a freebie with a paid order, and this month they have Melda production MReverb MB or the Cherry Audio ARP 2600. Or a 2 month membership with producertech if you feel like learning. Or decoda le (which I got since I lack ear training if I need to copy a chord progression for any reason).
Was thinking about getting Manipulator or Infiltrator with the Cherry 2600, but I already have very similar alternative plugins that can do most of what the two effects can do… it might be interesting to compare some options bit, but both deals are not really great, so it looks like I’m not getting any new plugins on Black Friday this year…
Cube sounds interesting, does it have some spectral morphing aspects or some other special trick or is it more like simple crossfading between multiple samples and it’s more about the good controls for fading multiple samples in the UI?
As far as I’m aware, Cube is just crossfading with no spectral elements involved.
I didn’t feel the need to get as much as I thought I would this year. I spent probably too much last year, so I gave myself a hard budget this year and stuck to it. I got the Tone Projects complete bundle at $270 and pretty much called it a day, with a few other little bits and bobs.
With the stuff I got last year (mostly all the Weiss/Softube stuff) I don’t need anything like the Fabfilter/Sonnox eqs/compressors/limiters for mixing. I have tons of reverbs and picked up Neoverb for $7 (and have been enjoying it). I was thinking about spending big on a color compressor/EQ, but after looking at/trying out demos of a bunch my favorite compressor was Klanghelm MJUC for $25, and my favorite color EQ was the retro EQ in Ozone 9 that I already have.
Between the stereo spread of added harmonics in Kelvin, and the quick reverb assistant in Neoverb (and Neoverb is well worth it’s own heap of praise but suffice it to say it is the fastest reverb I’ve worked with since I gave up my cracked copy of the Lexicon native PCM collection and more flexible to boot!), I can do all sorts of new spacial/stereo tricks that I’m experimenting with in some mixes now. Having tons of fun with mostly my old workflow and just a few new toys, but no need to reinvent the wheel over here is the conclusion I came to.
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Sounds good, looking forward to hear what you are doing with it!
I got an email if you use the code “FASTBUNDLEFEB23” you get all the FAST plugins for $40. These are based on the Sonible algorithms. I might get it just for the “reveal” plugin, kind of does what Trackspacer does I think.
If I were doing more paid mixing, I’d definitely be interested as these could speed up a lot of the basic first pass cleanup, maybe get my average mix down from 2-2.5 hours to under 2, which would make my prices lower (or my current ones more profitable). But I only have one person regularly asking for mixes so that’s just not my focus right now.
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I know this happens every other week, but Glitchmachines have their stuff at $5 again. Fracture XT is my favorite for crazy randomization fun
Use free plugins your DAW offers or find it on plugins4free
https://www.jrrshop.com/synapse-audio
with the discount code “group” you get an extra 15% off the already low prices on Synapse audio plugins. Dune 3 for $75 instead, the legend or obsession for $40 apiece. I’m using credit card rewards points for Dune myself.
Haven’t used Synapse stuff in a while, but IIRC Junglist was one of the first plugins I really liked more than 20 years ago ^^
Yeah, Synapse does really good stuff, I just haven’t had money line up with one of their sales in a few years. The thing that intrigues me about Dune is it has the same zero-delay feedback filters that U-he uses in Diva (which are a big part of what makes that one so good) but you get to use them with a much more modern synth architecture with big unison, lots of FX, wavetables, etc. Should be a killer combination, on paper at least.
Yeah, sounds good and from what I remember of an early Dune version (I think it was magware) it already was a great synth. I thought most filters have that feature nowadays tbh but reading a bit about it now it seems like just certain LP types in Serum have it for instance, but not sure…never paid attention to that aspect, but I will check it out more in-depth.
Yeah I’m sure it’s not every mode because they’re still hard on CPU. I recall actually reading the whitepaper on them when they were new and these filters essentially have to use calculus to approximate where the resonance feedback is going to be some number of samples before it happens (hence the zero delay). Since computers aren’t built to do calculus natively, it can’t be hardware accelerated and it all runs in software, which still slows down CPUs ten years later just as much as it did ten years ago. It’s like trying to render Cyberpunk without a GPU - doesn’t matter how fast your CPU is, you aren’t going to be having a good time.
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For Ableton only, but highly recommend this… only $20!
All of Novel Music’s stuff is amazing. If you have a Push/Push2/Push3 they have stuff that totally changes functionality, but those are a little more pricey.
They’re well worth the money though
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RYM2612 is on sale at PB right now for 10 bucks. Finally grabbed that after eyeballing it for way too long.
Edit: this thing is so much fun, for some reason. If anyone’s into chiptune or a fun little introduction to FM, this is based on the Sega Genesis YM2612 chip, and it’ll even extract patches from roms for you (even though that’s definitely not why I’m using it – the limits of patching with it are what drew me in).
Cool shit, though. If only they had a SID chip version for $10
Miniraze is $10 on PB right now.
Kind of reminds me a bit of UA’s Lion without the crazy BYOME FX bay. The limitations might breed creativity, or you might find yourself just hooking it up to BYOME or another multi FX plugin. Either way, seems worth it for a tenner. It’s also got pink and yellow skins for those of you who feed off the colors. Oh, that’s just me? Allllrighty then
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This one sounds killer. I haven’t really figured it out yet, but I have done a song or two with some of the bass presets.
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Some IK Multimedia stuff for cheap at HumbleBundle:
The cheapest bundle for 1 buck gets you Sampletank with a 64GB library. I don’t need more stuff atm, but sounds like a nice deal…
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IDK if these are cheap per se, but oeksound do rent to own now.
I think they have a pretty fair model, and you can pay off early if you want (which I like).
One downside, having done rent to own before on Kirchoff EQ is that when you make the payment each month, you get a new liscense for the month and have to reactivate the plugin each time. That’s a hiccup I’m not eager to go back to, but I’m also not sure I’d pay $200 plus for any resonance suppressor, transient shaper, “adaptive tonal shaper” (which sounds an awful lot like Gulfoss to me without having been hands on with it yet). So maybe I’ll do a bit more research and demo one of these, see how I feel. It is that time of year where I shop plugins.
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I was thinking about buying some oeksound plugins a while ago, they make quality stuff for sure, but I got Gulfoss and DSEQ - that one is a bit similar to soothe and cheaper (and more flexible with lots of options).
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