Reply To: Free plugins to use in Podium

Maybe RoughRider’s biggest issue is that may end up suffering from its own popularity. “Oh, listen. He’s running his drums through RoughRider.” Still, I love it. I’m keeping it as one of my standard favourite flavours.

I warned about Strings1 because I had posted earlier here that it was one of a couple of plugins that brought me to the list of D.C. 2012 free beta offerings. This gives me excuse to mention also that, while I have kept Piano1 on a flash drive somewhere, because the one free piano you get with it — the Yamaha Concert Grand — is exceptional, I had dangerous volume pops when switching certain parameters on it. Not that you really have to change the default sound, but it requires muting when you do. If you want one stock no-hassle ‘real’ piano around that is close to perfect (and for free) just in case, you can keep it in a folder like I have. It’s fat — at roughly 300 MB for the entire plugin altogether with its sound.

LimiterNo6 is a keeper but I must confess I’m not completely ‘at home’ with it yet. Did you look over the fancy stuff it will do? — ordering of the separate modules, 4X sampling but only if set a certain way, CPU savings if set such and such? Blah, blah, blah. I’d really rather use the quaint old Russian GUI on that, but it makes me distracted and takes up a little too much of my efforts.

What I really want to post about just now concerns our talking about testing new plugins. I have basically a 3-stage process. Like you, I look at CPU and basic stability — it must work well in Podium and in the (all-forgiving) REAPER. It also helps if I can stand to look at the darn thing, but UI design has improved so much overall that this is not much of an issue anymore.

Next comes whether I actually think it works in a way I will be happy in using fairly often if needed, AND does it have a sound — that colour — that I think should be on my producer’s palette. Colour and Parameter possibilities. Also, can it justify being in that particular FX folder when so many great other free or ultra-cheap plugins are competing for a slot?

Assuming it gets this far, it goes in the folder, say, Compressors/Limiters, of which I am currently carrying perhaps 16, because of the great importance of having good comp capabilities.

After this comes time. My freezer is only so big, so a can only keep around X flavours of ice cream and don’t want to lose or forget about some flavour lost in the back. This is the final thing about flavours, or “Colour” as we’ve been talking about. I believe every good musician and producer should have his/her own distinct recognisable sound. It’s what makes great artists out of good ones. Assuming my schedule doesn’t go crazy, this final testing can run anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. In the end, the goal is to have a folder for that particular type of processing that contains extremely reliable plugins whose sounds and controls I know well and provide me with some choice for whichever way I decide to take a given track.

The best news lately is that I’ve noticed I’m not turning over entire folders of plugins anymore. Even though new freebies hit the market all the time, I’ve found certain ones over the last few years that have in some ways become my ‘friends.’ In those cases, I just keep an eye open for occasional updates, new editions. My folders have, as you might expect, the ‘usual suspects’ filling them, with the rare oddball here and there.

Regarding ‘usual suspects’ — for free instruments and especially the awesome assortment of synths out there that they have for us, I’m pretty well settled too. Although I have a few of the ‘celebrity’ free synths out there, at various points I always come back to the freeware softsynths such as Synth1 and Oatmeal. I don’t know about you, but of a few of the supposedly must-have softsynths, free or not, like Sylenth, Glitch, IndependenceFree or daHornet, I honestly can’t stand to muck about with many of them. I think this is mainly a matter of personal taste, but it is also a function of time. I’d rather know a small handful of great free synths really well than to spend half my life learning the confusing inner secrets of the much-touted Sylenth. How about you?