What Plugin Will Make You Sound The Best?

You know why you aren’t getting hit record sounds out of your speakers? It’s because you don’t have any plugins. If you want truly great sounds, plugins are the only thing stopping you from that goal! Now all you have to do is spend $100,000 on plugins and you’re almost there! The next step is to realize that plugins actually contribute relatively little to the sound, and that you’ve just spent $100,000 to learn that lesson!

Photo by Joel Muniz on Unsplash

Why Are We Obsessed With Plugins?

Why are we? Well, it’s the easy route, and plugin manufacturers can take advantage of it. It’s a lot more appealing to say, “Hey look! Buy this software and your songs will magically sound professional, no work needed!” than it is to say that you need the knowledge and experience to be able to make the correct decisions when getting a “pro” sound.

Even though we’re constantly being told by every blog post, every youtube video, every guide to say otherwise, we still believe plugins are the key to getting a great sound, and it couldn’t be further from the truth. It turns out to be a very costly lesson.

I’m here to say DO. NOT. BUY. THAT. PLUGIN! If you aren’t getting the sound you’re looking for, I guarantee it’s because you’ve reached your limit of audio skills; everything can be done with simple plugins: 7-band EQs, compressors with a good amount of controls, a limiter, reverb and delay if you’d like and that’s IT!

That’s really all it takes.

Have I beat the dead horse yet? 😂

Someone I grew up watching that crafted my audio skills and mindsets was Graham Cochrane from the Recording Revolution. I can’t say enough good things about him, so I highly recommend checking him out if you want to improve your audio skills, specifically his 30 mixing tips in 30 days series. This is in no way sponsored/promoted by him, I just wholeheartedly think he’s one of the best if not the best audio teacher out there!

He made a video of himself mixing one of his songs completely using stock plugins AND recorded with one microphone across the board, and it sounds like something you could hear on the radio. If you aren’t getting a sound like this with stock plugins, take a look at what you need to improve as far as your ear and skills to overcome that problem! Plugins should never be a “fix it” sort of thing, only a “sweetener” thing; the difference is necessity.

When Should You Buy A Plugin?

Knowing that plugins are the icing to the cake and not the cake itself, you need to build the cake first; that being building your knowledge and skills. Learn every nook and cranny of every type of plugin you have (EQ’s, compressors, limiters, reverbs, delays, etc). If you learn one, you learn nearly all.

There are some differences, especially in compressors, that might be different. Once you’ve mastered the stock plugins you have, wait and master your skills a tad longer. Then, I’d say buy whatever will help you learn the most; not necessarily the “best sounding” plugins. If you have a compressor with a threshold knob, look for a compressor without one (you’ll have to play with the input knob to get it working).

In fact, I wouldn’t even buy plugins at this point either; I’d get a subscription to a company’s mass of plugins like Slate Digital’s All Access Pass or one of the Waves bundles. You get so many plugins for a fraction of the price, and you can cancel any time.

These are EXCEPTIONAL for learning. It might be a tad overwhelming, but take it one plugin at a time. Before I got a plugin subscription, I really didn’t know what I was missing from a learning standpoint.

But this is why all the top engineers have so many plugins; they used them to learn for the most part. If you took all of their third party plugins away, they’ll still turn out a fantastic sounding track because those plugins taught them what sounds good; it'll just take a little longer to get there.

This is to say that you should still wait to get a subscription; you can learn what you need from the free plugins you get with your DAW. They really aren’t bad, and I actually still use some of them over the third party plugins!

After you get the subscription, there may be some plugins you want to buy that you can’t get in the bundle… in which case I say go for it. As long as it’s different enough from what you have, which is a hard argument to make. Again, prioritize learning and filling in areas you’re lacking in!

What Are My Favorite Plugins?

I’m definitely a minimalist when it comes to gear; I only get what I need for a certain function and that’s it, no bells and whistles, nothing more, but I usually go for gear that can stand the test of time. I’ve got a subscription, and only a handful of other plugins.

I think Sonarworks is one of the ones not in a subscription that made the biggest difference in being able to make the right audio decisions, and it has only taken me up until a year or two ago to realize it’s a good investment.

This plugin is used to calibrate your room and monitors, and it’s actually so crazy the difference it makes. You really don’t know how whack your room and monitors are until you slap this thing on! They give you a calibration microphone, then tell you to you walk around your setup to get a profile of your room and monitors, then it creates an EQ curve to flatten the response. You can use it on your computer globally, and also in your DAW as a plugin!

I’d say my next favorite is Slate Digital’s Revival plugin, and guess what! It’s free! It only has two knobs: shimmer and thickness. Shimmer is my go-to for adding air and life into a track, both on individual tracks and the entire mix. Thickness I don’t use quite as often, but when I need some thickness, it sure does its job.

My third favorite, not exactly for sonics but more so workflow, is Ozone 8 by Izotope for mastering (there’s newer versions now, but 8 was the latest when I got it! I don’t have a need to upgrade, so I won’t 😊)

I use Ozone for the very last plugin on the entire mix. It’s a limiter mostly, but you can have EQ’s, compressors, multiband compressors, etc inside it as well. The biggest thing I use it for is the limiter, and you can load reference tracks into it to compare other commercial songs you like with your song!

It also has a matching feature to match your song to a reference track in terms of EQ mainly, and volume and compression. It’s definitely nice to have to make sure you’re in the right ballpark as far as tonal balance!

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So that’s it! I have a few other plugins, but these were my favorite 3. I never went crazy buying every plugin, because I’ve got a subscription at the price of one plugin a year! Since software depreciates in value very rapidly, it’s definitely the smart way to go for staying up to date and being cost effective.

What are your favorite plugins, and why did you get them? Was it an impulse buy or did you think on it strategically?

-Michael