I am a newbie here and this is my first post.
Being my first post I thought I would start with a rant.
That should get me popular in no time. lol.
Before I start my little rant, however, I just want to comment on how amazing this forum is and that I have learned so very much from you all and I thank you every day I read this, which I have been doing every day for months now.
Plugins are amazing in that you can take a perfectly shit mix,
uke: chuck a few plugins on each track, :Spin: quantise the shit out of it, and end up with a half decent mix. Maybe not an Andy mix but compared to what it was before 1000 hours of editing it sounds like gold shit at least .
Before plugins there was no rescue mission, if you could not get it on tape you had no business being in the studio in the first place. This also meant the musicians had to be far tighter and more diciplined as there was no one to wipe their musical booty if they missed a note or played off time. (And yet now even though we have unlimited undos, retakes and drop ins we still need someone to tighten it up a bit more lol)
This has also brought about a new generation of lazy, un-rehearsed musicians. If I had a dollar for every time I heard "yeah I fucked the riff up but you can fix it later,eh?" I'd have $57.
Not only do these plugins perform absolute miracles but they are also easily available and compared to the cost of its hardware equivalent, a mere drop in the ocean.
This brings me the main point of my rant. The cost of plugins.
At the upper end of the scale Waves and UAD produce some of the finest, albeit most expensive, plugins but are they worth the thousands of dollars you could pay for a suite of these shit shining beauties?
I say HELL YEAH!
For a home recordist that may never get to step foot in or work in a major studio, plugins are the only way we have to come close to sounding (or feeling)like a pro. Yes they are expensive to the average jo at home, but then we are not exactly their target market for the plugins they produce so they owe us no apoligies for that. At the end of the day a HUGE amount of time, money and most importantly a seasoned proffesionals opinion goes into the creation of plugins and that counts for something damn it!
I am willing to admit that when I first started I was guilty of using a few 'interesting' versions of various programs I found on the net, but as time went by I slowly brought one at a time as I figured out which ones I could not live without in my virtual rack, some of which are freeware.
We Dont need 100 different comps, 23 different delays, 107 reverbs and 43 gates but once you download a few bundles and look at the list it LOOKS expensive and makes you think you could never afford to go legit, so you never do.
But, if you narrow it down to the vital must have list the cost will be far more acheivible and with a bit of a savings plan you could be legit within a few short years.(take advantage of demos to figure out what you must have for your sound and production style)
So an emulation of a commpressor may cost a few hundred dollars, so what? The real life equivilant (if you could find one) was probably worth 10 x that amount and they dont come with presets!
Some other plugin brands such as Voxengo and Stillwell Audio make some incredible plugins, most of which are below $100, now come on give me an excuse to justify not being able to afford that, you have been charging people to record them, haven't you?
It makes me angry when people complain about the price of plugins.
Don't get me wrong, I am in the "I need them or I will sound like shit" catagory too, that is why I am happy to pay for these plugins because without them I would still sound like the worst kind of shit. But it is a different thing, I think, to use them every other day after downloading them illegily and then complain about the price as if your download was in some kind of protest to 'the man' at head office. Trust me, you will be the one complaining when the company goes bust and can no longer produce plugins for you to download.
I only put the internet 2nd because this has purely been the vehicle for the widespread use of plugins. I considered it being first on the list but changed my mind. Feel free to disagree.
Thanks for listening. I needed to get that off my chest.
Being my first post I thought I would start with a rant.
That should get me popular in no time. lol.
Before I start my little rant, however, I just want to comment on how amazing this forum is and that I have learned so very much from you all and I thank you every day I read this, which I have been doing every day for months now.
Plugins are amazing in that you can take a perfectly shit mix,
uke: chuck a few plugins on each track, :Spin: quantise the shit out of it, and end up with a half decent mix. Maybe not an Andy mix but compared to what it was before 1000 hours of editing it sounds like gold shit at least . Before plugins there was no rescue mission, if you could not get it on tape you had no business being in the studio in the first place. This also meant the musicians had to be far tighter and more diciplined as there was no one to wipe their musical booty if they missed a note or played off time. (And yet now even though we have unlimited undos, retakes and drop ins we still need someone to tighten it up a bit more lol)
This has also brought about a new generation of lazy, un-rehearsed musicians. If I had a dollar for every time I heard "yeah I fucked the riff up but you can fix it later,eh?" I'd have $57.
Not only do these plugins perform absolute miracles but they are also easily available and compared to the cost of its hardware equivalent, a mere drop in the ocean.
This brings me the main point of my rant. The cost of plugins.
At the upper end of the scale Waves and UAD produce some of the finest, albeit most expensive, plugins but are they worth the thousands of dollars you could pay for a suite of these shit shining beauties?
I say HELL YEAH!
For a home recordist that may never get to step foot in or work in a major studio, plugins are the only way we have to come close to sounding (or feeling)like a pro. Yes they are expensive to the average jo at home, but then we are not exactly their target market for the plugins they produce so they owe us no apoligies for that. At the end of the day a HUGE amount of time, money and most importantly a seasoned proffesionals opinion goes into the creation of plugins and that counts for something damn it!
I am willing to admit that when I first started I was guilty of using a few 'interesting' versions of various programs I found on the net, but as time went by I slowly brought one at a time as I figured out which ones I could not live without in my virtual rack, some of which are freeware.
We Dont need 100 different comps, 23 different delays, 107 reverbs and 43 gates but once you download a few bundles and look at the list it LOOKS expensive and makes you think you could never afford to go legit, so you never do.
But, if you narrow it down to the vital must have list the cost will be far more acheivible and with a bit of a savings plan you could be legit within a few short years.(take advantage of demos to figure out what you must have for your sound and production style)
So an emulation of a commpressor may cost a few hundred dollars, so what? The real life equivilant (if you could find one) was probably worth 10 x that amount and they dont come with presets!
Some other plugin brands such as Voxengo and Stillwell Audio make some incredible plugins, most of which are below $100, now come on give me an excuse to justify not being able to afford that, you have been charging people to record them, haven't you?
It makes me angry when people complain about the price of plugins.
Don't get me wrong, I am in the "I need them or I will sound like shit" catagory too, that is why I am happy to pay for these plugins because without them I would still sound like the worst kind of shit. But it is a different thing, I think, to use them every other day after downloading them illegily and then complain about the price as if your download was in some kind of protest to 'the man' at head office. Trust me, you will be the one complaining when the company goes bust and can no longer produce plugins for you to download.
I only put the internet 2nd because this has purely been the vehicle for the widespread use of plugins. I considered it being first on the list but changed my mind. Feel free to disagree.
Thanks for listening. I needed to get that off my chest.
