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August 03 2006
Sep. 16, 2013
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The Top 20 Plugins for Musicians and Songwriters
Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4
Gina’s Top Ten Effect Plugins
The best way to buy most effect plugins is in a bundle; you’ll save a lot of money over buying them individually. I have so many personal favorites that whittling this list down to ten items was hard. I chose these specific plugins based on which ones I felt give you the most bang for the buck, ease of use, and versatility. Again, I listed them in order of preference.
1. Sound Toys Native Effects Bundle
Sound Toys makes my all-time favorite plugins. This little bundle of joy is my magical bag of tricks; it can make even the blandest track come to life. The Native Effects Bundle contains six supremely creative plugins: Echo Boy, Filter Freak, Phase Mistress, Crystallizer, Tremolator, and Speed. Echo Boy is my favorite delay plugin; the presets alone will keep you amused for hours on end. Filter Freak, Phase Mistress, Tremolator, and Crystallizer are unique, edgy, and sometimes weird (in a very good way). Speed allows you to alter the pitch and tempo of a track. All six plugins have a similar user interface, making them easy to use while imparting their own distinctive sound. If I had to give up all my plugin collections but one, I would keep my Sound Toys. Retail price: $495.
Copy Protection and the Future of Plugins
All of the plugins in my Top 20 list are copy-protected. Some companies use simple serial numbers, some use the iLok USB dongle, and some, like Native Instruments, use their own systems of trading a series of numbers back and forth through the internet to prevent piracy. Regardless, plan on jumping through a few hoops to get most of these plugins up and running.
I am a big fan of copy protection because these companies lose so much money from pirated software. However, because few musicians can afford to drop $500-$1,000 frequently, I think there would be far less piracy if the plugin companies provided a rent-to-own system that charged musicians each time they used a plugin until it was paid for.
I’ve been trying to convince companies of this idea, to no avail. Digidesign does provide rentals for many of its plugins, but the rental fee doesn’t apply toward the cost of owning the plugin. I am hoping that as the home studio market grows along with internet speeds, plugin developers will come up with a more innovative way of allowing users to acquire their plugins and sound libraries. Do we really need a 40GB piano library on our hard drives? Why not access the sounds as we need them from a server on the internet and pay for that one use?
In the meantime, you’ll just have to save your pennies and your disk space, and buy and install plugins the old-fashioned way.
2. Synchro Arts VocAlign Project
VocAlign is one of my most used plugins. It’s an AudioSuite plugin that allows you to take one track and align it to another rhythmically. Its most common use is for doubling vocals. You highlight one track and capture it, then highlight the track you want to align it to and click on the Process button. It’s that simple. I use this plugin mostly on vocals, but I’ve also used it to line up a snare with electric guitar hits or line up kick-drum downbeats with bass downbeats. It comes in very handy in most every session. Retail price: $299.
3. Native Instruments Guitar Rig 2
I love this plugin! I don’t just use it on guitars; it’s great on background vocals and drums as well. Guitar Rig is the ultimate toolbox for any guitarist. Featuring a sexy new hardware foot controller that connects to your computer with USB, Guitar Rig gives you a software rack full of guitar amps, cabinets, distortion pedals, delays, multi-effects, and even a built-in tuner, metronome, and loop recorder. The plugin features an expansive preset list, but the true beauty of Guitar Rig is creating your own patches by combining amps and effects and changing the order of the signal chain. It’s very easy to use and very well designed. (See the O’Reilly review.) The only caution is that it uses lots of processing power, so make sure you have at least a 1.5GHz computer to run it. Retail price: $499.
4. Waves Musician’s Bundle 2
This plugin bundle is one of the best values for the money. With Waves’ exceptional Renaissance compressor, EQ, Multitap delay, and some incredible vocal plugins, the only thing missing in your mixing arsenal is a high-quality reverb. Retail price: $200.
5. Antares Auto-Tune
If you use a blow dryer, are you deceiving people about the natural look of your hair? If you use a spell-checker, does that mean you’re stupid? If you use make-up, does that mean you’re ugly? If you use a calculator, does that mean you can’t add? If you have a navigation system in your car, are you directionally impaired? Get the point? I have had many spirited conversations with people who think using Auto-Tune is cheating. If you can’t sing, then absolutely, I agree it’s cheating.
There are people who overuse this plugin due to lack of pitch and lack of vocal talent, but I view it not a crutch for the untalented, but rather as an amazing tool for the talented. It’s a vocal spell-checker that just double-checks your pitch and corrects it for you. If you’re going to edit your drums and your guitars and quantize your MIDI tracks, what is so different about tuning a vocal? I do not depend on this plugin as a vocalist or as an engineer, but I would not want to have a studio without it. Retail price: $399.
