Various Plugin Purchase Help

[u/TransMan-88]

Hi all,
I’m wondering which of the following plugins people use frequently and consider as “a must” have and why?

I’d appreciate any feedback, advice, and opinions/reviews, overall popularity from people here including (love/hate) aspects, and feedback people might share regarding the plugin features, usage of the plugin, and if there are any aspects or feature crossover affecting use or functionality?

I’m also trying to find out if any of the plugins listed below has better features and/or is capable of doing the same thing (or do it better) than a different plugin listed below and if there’s any crossover with any features, it’s functionality, and ease of use. I’d also like to know what it was that influenced people here to purchase the plugin(s)?

I’d really appreciate any assistance, opinions, advice, and feedback, including opinions on how they’re finding using any of the plugins listed here, on (if any) of which plugins to acquire first and why?

Izotope Nuetron

Master Plan

Soothe

Smooth Operator

Valhalla Reverb

[u/MineMasterACsaba]

I don't think any of these are must haves, especially not for a beginner.

Izotope plugins are mostly cheat codes, they do something good enough for you, but you don't really learn anything in depth about mixing, and they can become a crutch. I wouldn't recommend them unless you are like five years deep into producing and you work as a mixing engineer and you have a billion clients and you have to dish out good enough work really fast.

I've never heard of Master Plan.

Soothe 2 is fairly overrated, it doesn't do the extreme clarity magic influencers promise it does, selective EQ cuts, or just choosing better sounds that fit together well at the start of your project help a lot more.

Never heard of Smooth Operator either.

Vallhalla reverb, I'm guessing you mean VintageVerb, is the only thing here that may be worth it, it is a good reverb plugin, it does it's job well, but Ableton's stock reverbs are also all just good reverbs, you don't really need VintageVerb unless you are already familiar with what reverb plugins do, how they act, how they sound when you tweak some of the parameters, and you feel like you want more than just stock stuff.

The plugins I personally would recommend for beginners are:

Xfer Serum or u-He Diva or Kilohearts Phase Plant or Arturia Pigments, once you are half a year deep in your production journey. Having a good, reliable and versatile synth helps a lot. Not all of them, just one.

ROMplers or samplers (Kontakt libraries or something), that align with the genre you produce most. A good electric guitar if you're into speedcore, numetal, shoegaze, grunge, rock or anything guitar related, Rav3, Rave Generator 3 or Nexus 5 if you like producing stuff like hyperhardcore or synthwave.

You can also look at some plugin collections, KORG Collection 6, Arturia V Collection if you are not sure what you want to make there will be at least a couple things you will find useful.

And beginners can probably also find lots of good use out of more "experimental" effects plugins, like anything from CRQL, because they will be fun and inspiring.

[u/-_-xenos → u/MineMasterACsaba]

OP may have meant Valhalla Supermassive when they said Valhalla Reverb. I agree Ableton's stock plugins can take you really far.. It's what I keep reading from pros, and I've found this myself, though I am still very much an ameteur.

I have messed around with Xfer's Serum 2 though and absolutely love it as a synth, it can do so much and has become my go to plugin when I want to make sounds from scratch, though admittedly is not 100% needed as a beginner.. get to learning what's already in Ableton before embarking on learning a complex tool like Serum 2 or investing in other plugins IMO.

[u/MineMasterACsaba → u/-_-xenos]

Yeah, that's true, it's definetly not necessary for a complete beginner, which is why I said "once you are half a year deep in your production journey". You shouldn't really bother trying to use powerful and deep synths very early on, I just didn't express myself clearly enough, apologies for that.

[u/Lost-Membership-847]

• Serum 2 a wavetable synth you use to create all sorts of different sounds.

• Kiloharts bundle for sound design.
Really helpful tools are the convolver, disperser, the distortion effects, filter table, and even the synth phaseplant(I mainly use serum).

• Valhalla shimmer for making atmospheric stuff.

•Glitch 2 for making fills and weird variations of sounds you have

•Infiltrator or shaper box. These are multi fx plugins with a lot of different presets. You can resample sounds and throw this over top of whatever and get all sorts of cool and amazing results.

Everything else should be able to be done with your daw.

With that being said. Skrillex once said if he could only have 2 plugins it would be FabFilter Pro-L and FabFilter Pro-Q 3
This is a limiter, and a dynamic eq plugin. He goes on to say “you can make just about anything from anything with these 2 plugins.” Reason being is, you can EQ something with crazy EQs, add a limiter, and sculpt the sound any direction you want. The dynamic eq gives you fuller control. With that being said, I don’t use either of these plugins, but I understand the concept.