What is your favorite VST?

I love Izotope Trash 2. Got it on the cheap but it's such a versatile monster. Apart from the distortion, it has pretty neat filters (two of them) that can double as pretty good EQ's.
There's multi-band dynamics and I upgraded the Convolve unit with a whole stack of impulses so it actually works like a convolution reverb as well now.
The best part is that it can do all that with zero latency, meaning I can use it wherever I want in my Maschine. It doesn't have PDC which makes a lot of fancy plugins like this impossible
to use.. unless you want to manually offset notes like a chump. Since I want to do as much in the box as possible I'm on a quest for good zero latency plugs. Judging by what some manufacturers
like Izotope are managing, high latency plug-ins really come off like lazy and outdated programming by comparison.

For sound design tools. I'm also a big fan of everything Twisted Tools makes, Polyplex in Komplete being the famous one. I'm looking to add their Scapes, Ultraloop and S-Layer as soon as I can because it's just amazing
creative and legitimately innovative. Oh, and cheap if you already own Reaktor. I also have Izotope Breaktweaker, which is a different flavor of an idea like that. It's the ugliest plug-in I own, the presets suck ass but once you dig into it, it's such a nifty smart little device...the synth engine could be better, but the idea is to layer and deconstruct sounds anyway so it's functional and comes with really cool wavetables. I use it more for bass, weird percussion and FX sounds than straight up drums, but it would be good for that.

Both Trash 2 and Breaktweaker are on deep deep sale ATM. Trash already was a steal at 99, but I've seen it for 45 Euro now. I know Izotope is kinda divisive as a company, but their stuff is good.
At bargain basement prices, it's amazing.

I also finally went ahead and got the Komplete bundle. I was always reluctant because everybody is using NI and I don't want to sound like everybody else.
And bundles like this are total overkill... I don't actually like that, it kills creativity IMO. I don't like having bucket loads of plugins to choose from. I'd rather pick them deliberately, learn them inside and out, then decide where to go next to add to my sound. There's so much available and I see a lot of people that are just hopping from one thing to the next. Oh, everybody is using Massive? Cool, show me to the presets! Oh, it's Serum now.. cool, let's Serum. I wonder if these people even pay for their software.. probably not, else they'd be wasting a lot of money. Most of the sounds they end up making with it... if they don't just lazily flip through the presets, are pretty generic anyway. NI seems pretty happy to capitalise on that lazy insta-producer crowd, which is kind of a shame. I get it.. they need to push new products out to counteract all the piracy and keep customers coming back for more Session Strings.. that's where the money is. More than with the Reaktor geeks or kids like me that get 10 years of basslines out of Massive alone.

Giving a startup producer Komplete is probably the worst thing you can do for him.. "... teach a man to fish..."
If you can already fish though... it's a fucking nice pond! I definitely need to compartimentalise and take on things one at a time.. I haven't even looked at Kontakt, Guitar Rig or the Reaktor FX yet.
Some highlights so far though:

Solid Mix and Supercharger: really like how these sound. Supercharger is perfect for getting that smooth rounded bottom end.
I have no idea what a SSL console has to sound like, but these sound good. Really like the EQ for boosting things and the compressor in parallel mode.
It's all light enough to be used across a mix, not just busses.

Maschines internal FX: much better than internal FX have any business being. Nice compressor, nice limiter, some really cool delays and reverbs.. especially considering it's all
very light on the CPU and zero latency. Most of the standards you need are there.

Rounds: super cool with the sequencer, but most of all it sounds really really good. Excellent simple but smart interface too.

Polyplex: already talked about it.. Get Reaktor, get all the Twisted Tools.. now. Just do it. The way NI demo's Polyplex, makes it look gimmicky, random and a one trick pony..
it's actually very precise, deep and fun to work with.

Reaktor Blocks: another reason to get Reaktor. Making my own synths is a step too far for me, but the ability to easily mix up Blocks into your own modular kind of music machine is really cool and
very accessible. Great way to teach and learn about synthesis too. Can't overstate how good it actually sounds too.. that won't come across in a YouTube video. It does eat CPU for breakfast though.
 
Since I don't build any synths I use Reason & Cubase/Ableton.
I usually just Mix and match the propellerhead modules to get what I need.

If I really wanted to dig into synth creation, I'd use synthedit or max for live instead.
 
been demoing filter freak and the drop.
Will definitely by one if not both. amazing filters
 
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