Have We Reached VST Saturation Point?

[rod_zero]

Ise just a couple of third party synths and effects, the rest I use Live stock fx. My wish list has two times: Pianoteq and Relayer.

I see the new stuff all the time and I am amazed how much people buys new stuff and have hundreds of plug ins. To me it just seems counterproductive to learn more than a few.

[DJ Warmonger]

I see the new stuff all the time and I am amazed how much people buys new stuff and have hundreds of plug ins. To me it just seems counterproductive to learn more than a few.

Same thoughts. I buy things only when I'm sure I need them and they have some unique features I wouldn't get otherwise.
On my wishlist there are for instance Harmor (image resynthesis), Oscillot (handy modular) and Stutter Edit (all the effects in the world under few keys). Better buy one top plugin that three mediocre.

[NystagmusE]

I was recently downloading about 15 different virtual analog synth freebies. And then I realised that Toxic Biohazard can get the exact same sounds and I already have that.
The GUI is just a factor in the confusion.

[Vectorman]

There's nothing like setting up a new computer to show you how many of the plugins you've bought you actually use. Always seems to result in some shrinkage of my vst folders due to the things I don't bother to re-install.

[SuitcaseOfLizards]

There's nothing like setting up a new computer to show you how many of the plugins you've bought you actually use. Always seems to result in some shrinkage of my vst folders due to the things I don't bother to re-install.

One month ago I moved to a new monster laptop for music/3D work, and.. I now have about half the VSTs I own installed. Nine VSTi and about 50 effects, down from about 15 VSTi and over 100 effects!

But, as a previous poster said, it hasn't been about NEED for years... it's just mindless G.A.S. that keeps me spending..

[Krezie]

Have We Reached VST Saturation Point?

Well...yes and no imho.
Yes, there are a lot of VST's which cover a whole lot of ground soundwise. On the other hand, computers get more powerfull over time, and with that there's room to create or upgrade VST's to make use of that power and possibly cover new sonic territories, enhance emulations, etcetera.

That's my 2 cents

[2ZrgE]

There's nothing like setting up a new computer to show you how many of the plugins you've bought you actually use. Always seems to result in some shrinkage of my vst folders due to the things I don't bother to re-install.

One month ago I moved to a new monster laptop for music/3D work, and.. I now have about half the VSTs I own installed. Nine VSTi and about 50 effects, down from about 15 VSTi and over 100 effects!

But, as a previous poster said, it hasn't been about NEED for years... it's just mindless G.A.S. that keeps me spending..

50 effects?

I use Live 9 stock effects and four or five more...

[BBFG#]

There's nothing like setting up a new computer to show you how many of the plugins you've bought you actually use. Always seems to result in some shrinkage of my vst folders due to the things I don't bother to re-install.

Setting up a second computer at home (20 miles from the studio computer)...

My short list criteria for VSTi and Fx on it so far has been lower CPU consumption and must have a stand-alone version incorporated without the need for 3rd party wrapper. ("Savihost" has suddenly been coming up with errors everywhere). I also don't care to carry the dongle from one place to another and instead just leave it in the main system. So Steinberg gets left in the studio too, along with some of my other favorites which find no reason to offer a stand-alone in their installer.

This 'home-studio' has Komplete-Ultimate/Maschine on it. No expansions, and many of the Kontakt libraries un-installed, leaving off almost all of the pianos including Alicia and George. Only "The Gentleman", which Komplete select looks for on start up, and "The Giant", which mangles into something percussive more than piano anyway.

I plan on adding Pianoteq and the Music Labs' Guitars and am hard pressed to find everything else as immediately unnecessary (although I still use the majority of them regularly in the "studio computer"). Looking at what else gives me immediate stand-alones, AAS and Tone 2 seem to be it. But given the premise in use I have for this machine, will probably leave them off.

FX are mainly what is bundled in Sonar, and many of them I've uninstalled from this machine and don't miss them at all. I also have declared a personal moratorium on Sonar synths until they settle in reasonably with CW first. I will be adding the Nectar Production Suite to it though.

On a side note, I've moved our Korg Legacy along with IL Harmor to our tablets under Stagelight simply for scratch padding efficiently under a two core i5. And will probably add only Nectar Elements and the Peavey HPse as Fx to them as they are CPU light enough as well.

Surprisingly finding that much of the time, it's more than enough.

I am researching building my own 'tosh too. Perhaps saturation for me includes three machines for three OS's (succumbing to my inner computer geek). And have posited the "Virtuals" I own that I would run on it specifically. Most notably, Iris 2 and Kaleidoscope...

In computers, I've always been a 'hobbyist', although I've been paid often for my work on them. In music, I was professional, but now considered generally retired. And everything I've earned has been by playing live or on traditional tape. Not a single cent has been made from the ITB digital realm. I purposely make no attempt at putting it out for a livelihood though.

[C-note]

We reached vst saturation point when Sylenth1 came out in 2006.

[Taika-Kim]

That was actually a very good observation about sampleware. I think there can never be enough high quality samples or presets, since when we are talking about actual sound design, there are no limits really.

All the tools are there many times over, but making samples and patches actually takes time, and that´s a very limited resource

Like, I have had this old simple analog preset keyboard lying around, and I´ve been thinking that it could be cool to multisample it so I could get rid of it. Then again, that would be days of work, and someone has probably done it already. So I might just better use those days to make some actual music, unless I wanted to sample it with some specific pedals, etc.

Somebody wants to do this for me actually? If you pay the postage for the synth and send me sfz files, you can keep the thing. I think it was the MT68.

Oh, no volunteers? See what I mean ?

So yes different VSTs might have quite similar performance, but the quality of readymade sounds and presets is a completely another question. Like, I would like to do all of my sounds myself, but there is just that certain amount of time. Do I spend 100 hours on songwriting, or 50/50 sampling and programming against that. Or 33/33/33 against coding my own plugins against those. Or 25/25/10/40 building my own analog hardware, against those... So you get the idea. I´ve had some analog stuff I started buildig like 6 years ago still unfinished somewhere. I have a ton of samples I´ve done, that should be cleaned, cut up, tuned, oragnised... And made into patches. And, with conflicting interests, anything that saves time becomes very valuable.

So yes we could say that the market with tools is saturated, but there is still a lot of market opportunities for allowing to people work faster...

[xoxos]

in many instances, yes.

in other ways, no.

caprice is something novel, useful, and very basic, so that various adaptations of the effect would still offer novelty in the marketplace.

all that's left is for you to download it, try it, and remember, that i am not the guy who tries to sell you overpriced junk every week so i can make lots of money. then, when you understand what it can do that you couldn't do before, be exultant. because there are still possibilities for this practice to grow.

[Timfonie]

In terms of emulated analog synths I feel we kind of have reached saturation even though there's still some space to fill up.

In terms of newer kinds of synthesis there's plenty to explore and develop. Think in the realm of physical modeling and all sorts of true morphing. I guess those are often too cpu-heavy to run and/or too complex to develop.

[RomanNoodles]

I think it depends on the genre. Rock is basically RealStrat and Shreedage for guitars and drums just depends on what you're going for. For Synth...Jesus, there are so many diffrent ones.

[jancivil]

could vanish from the user's toolset at the drop of a hat, usually by the company abandoning the user, which is almost a non-issue with physical goods that don't require a computer to function, like many of those aforementioned hardware synths).

Ever owned any hardware by Ensoniq?

I didn't own it but the house had the Ensoniq Mirage. Yeah boyeee. Describing loop points in hexadecimal on an itty bitty LCD. And you really needed to draw loop points, nothing sustained, impossible with that little memory. Who wouldn't miss that?

[AegisPrime]

Great thread. I come from a 3D/VFX background and I basically feel the same about that industry. All the big players do pretty much the same thing just in slightly varying ways and whilst once I had a vast (and expensive) collection of 3rd-party 3D plugins now I generally stick to a small subset of the included tools to create 90% of my work with a handful of 'irreplaceable' plugins that fill in the gaps.

The VST marketplace is pretty overwhelming to a newbie like myself but rather than download everything I've tried to adopt the same rationale - I picked up some Toneboosters stuff first (their TrackEssentials pack plus Barricade which seems well regarded) - then it was SlickEQ/Kotelnikov GE which are fab. Latest additions are MJUC and KClip annnd... that's it for paid plugins - I feel that's a pretty rounded collection for a beginner to audio production.

The only paid plugin I'm planning on buying soon is Acon's De-Verberate since I've tested it for some specific fixes for a film I'm working on and it works really well.

DAW-wise I went with the free version of Tracktion which seems to click better with my DCC-orientated brain than the likes of Reaper or other more 'traditional' DAWs - my one real extravagance has been a Korg Microkey which I've been having fun with.

I do have a few freebies - Alchemy Player (I'd have bought Alchemy for sure if it was still available), Camel Crusher, TAL's Noize M4k3r (like their sampler too - might buy that at some point), Grace, Proximity, Saturation Knob, Brainworx' freebies and Voxengo's Span. I figure this list will grow over time as I look for specific tools to deal with specific situations but it's plenty for a newbie like me to get to grips with