🔥 How Many Plugins Do You Presently Have Installed on Your Computer?

[pseudopop]

I'm both relieved and sad that so many others have selected the "over 1000" option. It's easy to forget that this place is a kind of an echo chamber that often lacks a voice of reason that would say "don't buy it, you don't need it".

As an aside: It would be interesting if major DAWs collected statistics of installed plugins and plugins that were actually active when tracks were bounced. We could then use that data to create a table that showed which plugins people prefer over others.

This is something I often wonder when people recommend a plugin, because I don't know what other plugins they have. It's easy to recommend some cheap EQ if that's all you have, but if you have a dozen $200+ EQs and still always use the cheap one, that recommendation carries a different weight.

Edited October 28, 2022 by pseudopop

[Toffo]

On 10/27/2022 at 6:41 PM, Zo said:

I also heard bapu has 6 wifes ..... 

Right, but how many does he use?

 

If you can’t make the magic happen with the stock wives you’re not ready to move onto plugin wives.

[Bonjo]

G-Sus. It’s a sickness. A sickness I tell ya! iZotope & P.A. have just done updates, which I’ve installed and then did a re-scan in Bandlab: 2109 plugins. I use about 6...off and on. And that’s mainly in Wavelab. Most times in CBB I use the Pro-Channel stock stuff. I’m now tormenting myself wondering which Caribbean island I could have rented if I’d have save all that dough! Sheesh.

[Craig N]

58 minutes ago, Bonjo said:

G-Sus. It’s a sickness. A sickness I tell ya! iZotope & P.A. have just done updates, which I’ve installed and then did a re-scan in Bandlab: 2109 plugins. I use about 6...off and on. And that’s mainly in Wavelab. Most times in CBB I use the Pro-Channel stock stuff. I’m now tormenting myself wondering which Caribbean island I could have rented if I’d have save all that dough! Sheesh.

It may be a sickness, but it's our sickness. I think that's something worth celebrating. Perhaps with a new plugin purchase or two. 

[satya]

19 hours ago, PavlovsCat said:

Kudos to those with less than 100 plugins

theres no option to change the vote?

[craigb]

Maybe we need to create a new sub-forum: Plug-Ins Anonymous! 😆

Bapu: "Hi, my name is Bapu and I have 43,229 plug-ins..."

Group: "Hi Bapu!"

🤣

[chris.r]

11 minutes ago, craigb said:

Maybe we need to create a new sub-forum: Plug-Ins Anonymous! 😆

Bapu: "Hi, my name is Bapu and I have 43,229 plug-ins..."

Group: "Hi Bapu!"

🤣

Bapu should be the moderator there.

[craigb]

28 minutes ago, chris.r said:

Bapu should be the moderator there.

A better choice than CCLarry!  He'd be like "*Hmm... with just a little push we could get him to 50k!*"  😆

[Bapu]

13 hours ago, Brian Walton said:

I swear I posted about having over 1400 plugins (per a plugin scan who knows what the actual is) somewhere publicly and was ridiculed.

 

It was probably me, but not meant as a ridicule.

I typically say "amateur" followed by a 🙂 

[Bapu]

13 hours ago, Lemar Sain said:

I remember on the old forum, a guy was complaining about a bug in Sonar that happened when having over 800 plugins installed. He got trampled badly in the comments. 

That was me. Even Noel himself questioned the need for so many.

Edited October 28, 2022 by Bapu

[abacab]

1 hour ago, craigb said:

Maybe we need to create a new sub-forum: Plug-Ins Anonymous! 😆

PIA™

[Magic Russ]

13 hours ago, cclarry said:

Plugin count is VERY deceptive, and some plugins have "multiples" for different purposes,
which each gets counted as a plugin, when in reality, it's one plugin that has two or more
"types"...i.e..Mono and Stereo (just as an example)

Back in the day there were also plugins which had different versions for the number/types of outputs they had.   Some older versions of Kontakt did this as well as LinPlug's drum machines (RM III, RM IV, RMV)

There's also plugins having the FX version (original z3ta+)

[jim137]

How about doing a 100 plug breakdown of the over 1000 people?

[PavlovsCat]

I think a good follow-up poll, two questions actually, would be to ask how many plugins you regularly use and find out the number range and that number as a percentage of the overall owned plugins a user has. My expectation is that -- unless a person is truly a plugin hoarder -- that they may purchase several plugins that serve the same function, but after trying each one, they eventually settle on one or two that provide them with what they feel is the best combination of results and workflow. 

[Bapu]

13 minutes ago, PavlovsCat said:

 that they may purchase several plugins that serve the same function, but after trying each one, they eventually settle on one or two that provide them with what they feel is the best combination of results and workflow. 

^^^ this ^^^

[antler]

Maybe another good poll could be how many pianos do you have? 😁

[Starship Krupa]

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

My expectation is that -- unless a person is truly a plugin hoarder -- that they may purchase several plugins that serve the same function, but after trying each one, they eventually settle on one or two that provide them with what they feel is the best combination of results and workflow.

And if you remember my post about what I learned from doing a complete new system build, IMO, best practice is that once I find the ones I want to settle on, go through and cull the ones I now know I'll not be using. Hundreds of plug-ins bit the dust when I did the new build.

A less-cluttered plug-in browser is like a less-cluttered inbox: it means less distraction. It also means that I won't use some minor league plug-in in a project that I'll call up after I've culled it and get the missing plug-ins message.

This applies more to mixing plug-ins, the eternal question being "how many compressors/EQ's/channel strips/reverbs do I need?"

But it also applies to the oddball glitch-y sound design-y ones. If I browse through my plug-ins and can't remember from reading the name what it does, I call it up and make sure that I actually want to keep it.

If I'm telling myself that one day I might use it as a source of inspiration....well, if it hasn't inspired me yet, it can wait in my downloads folder instead of my VST directory.

I make exceptions for a handful of manufacturers that I especially like. Meldaproduction of course; their unified UI makes for quick work now that I know my way around it. IK Multimedia, their level of excellence is so high. Unfiltered Audio, Glitchmachines, Freakshow Industries, all so good at what they do, so much fun to play with.

[PavlovsCat]

1 hour ago, antler said:

Maybe another good poll could be how many pianos do you have? 😁

In my case,I have easily more than three dozen paid detailed piano sample libraries and that's just the straight piano libraries, not including the freebies, prepared and bowed piano libraries. I'm a sucker for a beautiful or quirky sounding piano library. So I guess another question I'd have is, what type of instrument sample libraries do you tend to have the most of.

For me, it absolutely would be piano. The next instrument I have an outrageous amount of is drums. But my first instrument was piano (in terms of lessons) and my second instrument was drums (originally self taught before years of lessons). It used to be guitar libraries and VSTs -- I had every high end  developer's guitar libraries and plugins, but then I came across Orange Tree Samples guitar and bass libraries, later developed a relationship with the developer and those are basically it for me, beyond the NI Strum libraries that come with KOMPLETE which are brain dead, easy to use loop players that are super convenient when initially working on songs. I suppose the next highest amount of instrument libraries after that would be synths and strings.  

Edited October 28, 2022 by PavlovsCat

[Zolton]

1 hour ago, PavlovsCat said:

I think a good follow-up poll, two questions actually, would be to ask how many plugins you regularly use and find out the number range and that number as a percentage of the overall owned plugins a user has. My expectation is that -- unless a person is truly a plugin hoarder -- that they may purchase several plugins that serve the same function, but after trying each one, they eventually settle on one or two that provide them with what they feel is the best combination of results and workflow. 

I've given in to plugin collecting as a separate hobby (thanks, mild OCD), so I happen to have a mortifyingly embarrassing spreadsheet with just these numbers.

I'm a new producer, with 45 pieces "completed" (based on whatever skill I had at the time) in the past two years or so. In those, I've used:

70 VSTis of 162 "active"
100 effects VSTs of 458 "active"

I'm pretty okay with that ratio. (The Kontakt libs used vs. owned looks a lot worse, but what do you do?)

I say "active" plugins, because I keep anything I've used, paid for or "other" (like wanting it available in Unify) in Cakewalk's scanned VST folders. I make one or two custom subsets to actually use day to day, based on what I like and want to like, etc. I keep at least one "working" instrument and effects plugin set small by just adding "containers" -- Snap Heap but not the individual plugs, etc. -- which keeps things pretty clean.

But I also shamefully keep shadow "inactive" VST directories with freebies and oddballs and ancient 32-bit monsters scoured from various corners of the internet. I've at least pulled each one up and tried it out, but that's as far as it's gone for most. Between effects and instruments / synths, there are 4479 of those. So much for that ratio, I guess.

[PavlovsCat]

4 hours ago, Starship Krupa said:

And if you remember my post about what I learned from doing a complete new system build, IMO, best practice is that once I find the ones I want to settle on, go through and cull the ones I now know I'll not be using. Hundreds of plug-ins bit the dust when I did the new build.

A less-cluttered plug-in browser is like a less-cluttered inbox: it means less distraction. It also means that I won't use some minor league plug-in in a project that I'll call up after I've culled it and get the missing plug-ins message.

This applies more to mixing plug-ins, the eternal question being "how many compressors/EQ's/channel strips/reverbs do I need?"

But it also applies to the oddball glitch-y sound design-y ones. If I browse through my plug-ins and can't remember from reading the name what it does, I call it up and make sure that I actually want to keep it.

If I'm telling myself that one day I might use it as a source of inspiration....well, if it hasn't inspired me yet, it can wait in my downloads folder instead of my VST directory.

I make exceptions for a handful of manufacturers that I especially like. Meldaproduction of course; their unified UI makes for quick work now that I know my way around it. IK Multimedia, their level of excellence is so high. Unfiltered Audio, Glitchmachines, Freakshow Industries, all so good at what they do, so much fun to play with.

I always appreciate your advice and posts, Erik. I will look at Melda based on your advice. Thanks for sharing. 

Edited October 29, 2022 by PavlovsCat