MusicMan

I just checked that too figuring the email might be slow! No go for me... no real hurry though.. it will get there soon enough I'm sure.

In case it helps anyone else, after testing, I ended up going with: Novatron I actually didn't test this now, as I'd given it a demo previously and decided to buy it. Very versatile as it covers different compressor types. Blyss Wasn't on my list at all. But I love the saturation, and the EQ is quite capable with some light glue from the compressor for good mix. Omega 4 Pack I'd heard great things and I do like these. It made sense to just get them all at that price. Clariphonic I have Maag from PA but this is just nice and add some clarity to the top end effortlessly and opens up a mix. I skipped these: AR-1 I actually quite liked this, but it didn't wow me as much. Nice on some material though and if I hadn't bought the others, I may have considered it. It just wasn't unique enough, or add to what I already had. UBK-1 I like this one! But it's tiny on screen and no VST3. It's a bit of a shame and maybe an update is in the pipeline, but I had to look at now. Pusher This thing could be fun! But much like UBK-1 it's tiny and no VST3. Goldplate It's a nice plate reverb and I get the praise. It's just too heavy on the CPU and I've got plenty of reverbs. LX480 essentials also had some nice plates and I think I'd upgrade to LX480 full instead. Given Relab is more versatile and they coded it, I think that could be a better option. Silika Oddball compressor, but I can see how this would have some good uses. I just preferred the others I got. Electra DSP and Hammer DSP They're fine.. they just didn't wow me, or be unique enough, so they didn't make the cut. If you're thinking of any of these, sign up for the newsletter if you haven't purchased them before and you get an extra 20% off. My welcome newsletter didn't include it, but I waited and the next day I got the discount offer ?

That's funny you mention mpressor. I always love that and it's like an unsung hero! Although I did go through a project disabling all my plugins trying to track down noise floor and it ended up being that one.. but I normally turn off that in the plugin mostly now and happy days. I did end up testing the Deflector and it's pretty decent. Definitely not as versatile as the IK, but still quite nice and if I didn't have the IK I'd consider it.

Thanks Steven and I didn't mind the claws being out. I'm always open to hearing and appreciate other perspectives. Please don't decaf on my account though.. nothing compares to real coffee for analogue warmth! ?

Haha... My ears like the sound of lots of great synths, that have all of the pros that I mentioned and Sylenth only ticks one of them ? I do think Sylenth sounds nice, but there are quite a few great warm sounding synths, some old, some new. u-he, Cherry Audio, Spire, Largo, but heaps more as well, those ones just came to mind in the 5 seconds I spent thinking about warm sounds and I'm sure I have better examples than them ? Ease up turbo, I was still replying to your first message ? I'm not saying that Steinberg is right in VST3, I'm saying once they announced it, it didn't take too much (/any!) foresight to see that it was going to mean VST2 being deprecated, like where we're at now. There's resisting I get, but to look after the best interests of your customers, not updating by now is pretty lack lustre and those resisting now are in the minority and are losing sales because of it. So that mentality isn't customer friendly and doesn't make business sense. Not much going for it really. And yet people expect developers to update for every Apple OS release that breaks stuff, so 14 years to not move to the current spec of VST3 isn't much to ask for. The bar is low... real low!

I'd say having updated to VST3 14 years after it was released might be a step in the right direction ? That is interesting about it not being his fulltime job. I don't know a lot about him, so that could be possibly be true. As for Spire, currently on their site, it's $99.00 and the list is $189.00. But I'm pretty sure Loot Audio had it for around $60/$70 the other day. So there's a big difference in discounting and price. Serum isn't cheap and he's said from the start, he doesn't believe in discounting. But he has released VST3 and there's talk of Serum 2. Not sure if that will be a free update, or paid, but there are pretty frequent updates with Serum. But it's not about finding others that aren't great in those regards, for me I'm comparing it to other developers that are competitive on pricing and actively develop and innovate, of which there are many. If a company is either a lot more expensive (on street prices, not overly inflated RRPs) and barely discounts, then I expect more from them. I'm looking (and more importantly listening to how they sound) for why I would spend more money on them over the competitors. That's why I don't own Sylenth pure and simple. It lives off legacy and they haven't been competitive on pricing. They were a big fish in a small pond once, but now there are just too many great options available and they've been overtaken by equally as good and well priced options. We really are spoilt for choice these days ?

It gets cheaper, but still totally worth it even at this price. Great samples. And a lot of them for that price!

If they're barely going to discount, then they should probably be at the forefront of updates and innovation. In comparison to some of the others mentioned in the thread, Valhalla doesn't discount, but there are very regular updates and he releases new features for free. Fuse is a small developer and has a sale of 78%+ for his plugins making them all $14.90 right now. Massive is the same vintage and it's been in bundles for under $49. I see no real reason to pay Sylenth's asking price even at 25% when there have been a heap of more innovative and feature rich synths made since. I would say it's a competent synth and I do like the sound though ?

Are Slate still physical iLok key only for perpetual licenses?

Awesome sounding strip and swiss army knife, so very versatile. The built in clipper / limiter sounds great too. Up their with my favourite channel strips from them.

I would agree that it does seem like it might be a bit harder for them all at the moment too. Not necessarily across the board, some are barely discounting, but there are some exceptions to the rule where this BF has seen some of the deepest discounts yet. And enjoy, that's what it's all about! ? I need to get back to testing out the rest of the Kush plugins to decide which ones I'm going to buy. Gotta love this time of year.. so much new music stuff to paly with ?

Very pleasantly surprised seeing this pricing!

Yes, but this goes at least up to 78% off and I think higher for some plugins, which I've never seen from Fuse, ever. Not in a Black Friday sale, or any other sale that I've seen. Entirely possible I've missed it, but I don't recall anything. For me Soundwide wasn't a judgment... if Plugin Alliance, NI, iZotope, Three Body Tech, or Fuse if they were to join, make good products and the price is right, I'll still buy from them. It's more just wondering if there's anything else behind these sale prices which are a little more out of character and like I mentioned, they're already responsible for a truckload of plugins being sold in Soundwide now, so there's potential dots to be joined.

Deep to $14.90 levels? The link to Soundwide is that Fuse is the developer that coded a lot of the Plugin Alliance plugins including Brainworx, Elysia, Neold and more, so he's already responsible for a plethora of products in Soundwide. It's not much of a jump to enter Soundwide from there.

That does seem pretty unique! VCS I demoed a while ago and like it, but it's very clean. I think I would use my SSL strips over that one for clean and I have too many channel strips, but it is a nice option if I didn't have them. I've been giving some of them a test run and so far VCL-864U is the front runner.. it seems to handle a LOT of gain reduction. Flywheel I've heard lots of great things about. On the default settings it doesn't wow me, but I just got Overloud Tapedesk, which I do really rate so I'm A->B testing against that. When you start pushing Flywheel though, dial in some hysteresis and enable crosstalk it starts getting a bit more of a vibe. It's not an instabuy for me yet, but I'm going to spend a bit more time with it.. price is definitely right! I'm kind of wondering if this is a last hurrah sale and they might get gobbled up by Soundwide with PA/NI/iZo.. these prices aren't common for Fuse at all..

I just saw the email and was actually surprised! The majority of sale prices are boringly predictable... they're real sale prices! What are everyone's favourites?

Unless their new Magma collection doesn't involve WUP it's unlikely that I'll buy any of their collection, but I'm onboard for this freebie so far ?

I expected to much more underwhelmed... I'm somewhat intrigued by this now ?

Glad it helped and I'm a little the same with the lowest price like that too! I had thought I might get Effectrix at some stage, but I find using this is a little more creative and likely to come up with things that might not come to mind in Effectrix. This has all of the main effects that I wanted for that anyway and in some senses I prefer this as it's easier to hold an effect on for a longer amount of time.

Thanks Zo, awesome points and very useful! I do have the IK Distressor, but I had been hearing a few things around their version too. But it seems like everyone is jumping on that bandwagon at the moment, so it might be good to see some of the newer Distressor clones as well before jumping in. Out of curiosity, how would you rate the IK against this one? Electra I haven't tried at all, but I'm going to give it a demo just in case. Out of all your EQ plugins, what would be your top 3 and why? Looking Clariphonic for mastering duties, so in that same kind of area.

I'm pretty anti subscription, as I like to know that if I want to stop paying, or open a project years down the track I don't need to re subscribe, or pay extra, but their subscription does get some praise.

Yes, that's right and that's how I found them. But sometimes they go on sale and they forget to remove them from there, so you get a double dip on discounts, which I suspect is what's happened with this one ?

Thanks Fleer and these are pretty much definite now for me after trying them too. Goldplate has moved to a maybe.. I do like it, but given it's by Relab, I thought I'd try the Relab Essentials and in some settings I think I almost preferred that. I still want to spend some more time with it first though. I'm also trying the Hammer DSP and thinking of giving Blyss a go as well.

Now that is a solid freebie... I really like that thing.. I already owned it and just picked up the Cherry Audio Year Two collection which includes the Voltage Modular version too!

ANA can definitely be used for some great and analogue movement type sounds. It was literally updated to 2.5 which is a major release (free update) in the last few weeks too ? I find often that presets suck and don't show what a synth can do. Not always, sometimes they're the easiest way to test and they sound great, but some synths I would've passed on if I judged them by the presets alone. Some of the onboard effects are really good as well.