6 Most EXPENSIVE Plugins I Own 💰 | Are They Worth It?

There are a lot of great free plugins out there, but what about the most expensive plugins on the market?
Plugins Featured:

My Awesome Partners:

Gear I Use:

▼▼▼TIMESTAMPZ:▼▼▼
0:00 Howdy
0:42 Unison Sucks
1:23 UVI Falcon
2:22 Falcon Sound Demos
7:26 Is Falcon Worth It?
8:52 Kilohearts PhasePlant
10:00 PhasePlant Sound Demos
13:03 Is PhasePlant Worth It?
14:14 Arturia V Collection
15:09 V Collection Sound Demos
22:58 Is V Collection Worth It?
24:48 Modartt Pianoteq 7
26:00 Pianoteq Sound Demos
30:32 Is Pianoteq Worth It?
32:06 iZotope Ozone 9 Advanced
33:04 Ozone 9 Demo
35:58 Is Ozone 9 Worth It?
38:00 Cherry Audio Voltage Modular
39:40 Voltage Modular Sound Demos
43:36 Is Voltage Modular Worth It?
44:55 Closing Thoughts

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#musicproduction #plugins #vstplugins

[VenusTheory]

What's your most expensive plugin? Was it worth it? 🤔

[Tr-znob]

Unison is an absolute abomination. Its so insane how they shut down any form of criticism. Thank you for adressing them!

[elizabethsteele]

I'm a retired film re recording mixer and the Ozone plug ins are outstanding for " repairing " location dialog problems . Ironically, and you'll think I'm crazy, one of my favorite plug ins in the ancient Waves R compressor - for me it works very well on dialogue and is very transparent .

[mikeexits]

I'd like to say for anyone who ends up reading: If you're patient and wait for sales you can get just about any plugin you want for a pretty damn steep discount (except maybe Omnisphere which I've honestly never seen go on sale once).

[delscoville]

I have V Collection, Pigments, and all the Augmented plugins. I used Arteria for a long time, but only had Storm 3.0 for ages. When my Power Mac HD finally died a few years back, I got another PATA drive off eBay and when I went to install and register Storm 3.0 they said they can no longer register it, and gave Analog Lab to me for my trouble. Keep in mind Storm 3.0 was a different beast, a plugin/modular style DAW that cost me about $349 way back when. So since then I gotten a KeyLab, V Collection, and FX. What I like about V Collection, is I can mess around with the classic synths and really get a feel of sound design on each one, It's great for learning. While I won't use it all in my new tracks, they are still fun to play with. I'm mostly a hobbiest, though, I do occasionally get some work. But not often enough to justify my studio. What does justify it, is it keeps me content.

[ulyssesatsea]

phase plant sounds so good it makes me want to cry.

[baronvonbeandip]

Falcon is so good. I hardly ever use Omnisphere and Kontakt anymore because of it. Make your own multisamples with IL's Directwave, MPE, multitimbral, microtuning. The only problem is, for preset junkies, the 3rd party library support is kinda weak so Kontakt might edge it out.
If you prefer making everything from scratch, the only comparable is, maybe, Reaktor.

[CalendulaF]

Let me throw in Newfangled Audio here. They only have two big products as of now, one mastering suite ("Elevate") and one synth ("Generate"), both of which are absolutely worth their money. I'd use Elevate over Ozone anytime (esp. when using the processing blocks individually), it basically does the same things but even quicker. It lacks some features compared to Ozone, but is a whole lot faster and can even sound better (imo). Also, Generate is the only softsynth that I wish a hardware-version of. Apart from being quite unique it just sounds good. It's not very versatile though, I'd rather compare it to a Wurly or a Rhodes: It sounds magical but within a rather confined sonic space. I find it extremely usable in tracks which contain real instruments as well as electronic sounds, it just blends very naturally and nicely.

[pierbover]

I just got into Falcon and your videos were really a major influence on the decision. Most Falcon demos out there sound kinda sterile tbh which worried me, but your stuff sounds excellent and gave me the confidence to buy it.

[musicexplorations]

As long as you enjoy it, it´s totally worth it. I own most of them, and a few extra, as well as some HW synths. Honestly, there is some redundancy, soundwise. Let´s not even talk about the fact that buying a cheap rack plugin, a few free VST synths and effects propbably covers it all. But it´s the hours of fiddling, modulation etecetera, it´s such a beautiful hobby. The most dangerous one I own is Voltage Modular, but hands down, this one made me learn synthesis! Dangerous, yes, all these modules ;) A special thx to you, lately I added UVI Falcon to the arsenal! Thx, channels like yours should have a warning label, highly dangerous for addicts! Love your work on youtube!

[countk]

I just bought Ozone 9 advanced. I am reentering sound engineering after being absent for more then 20 years. I always worked with audio tracks (metal and rock). The step from 90's hardware mastering to this plugin is huge! Good plugins just didnt exist at the time. The main differences to me are a way more reliable and constant result, ease of use, more possibilities... The implemented analysing tools are pretty awesome too. In the 90's you mostly had your ears as the most reliable analyser unless you invested in effing expensive hardware. This meant stepping away from mixing, recalibrating your ears one way or another and listen again. And after that you needed to do the same when mastering. So it was time consuming. Really glad with the current trend of streaming loudness and what it means to mastered exports btw. I just love Ozone for how it works as a whole. I bought the advanced version just for the Low End Focus alone actually. Really good feature if you get your mixed instruments in that area right first of course.. I had some sort of hardware tube filter available back in the day that did just that, It did more but i really enjoyed it for making recordings more punchy or warm.Forgot what the brand was. I still think hardware mastering sounds better, as does recording through through decent hardware, but it's a pretty damn good alternative (and way cheaper) if you're in a home studio situation. So yeah... Ozone 9.... Big plus.

[gadjox]

Izotope has good sales. Can be had for 250, i think.

The one behemoth missing from this list is Spectrasonics.

[johnhawranick]

I have purchased the V Collection twice now. Initially when it was version 5, and again to version 8 when they dropped the bottom out of the price. I agree with your assessment that it's not always best to install every instrument if you're only looking for a certain sound. That being said, I do have some non-synth keyboards installed. Until I can get a Reface YC, I'll keep using the organs from here. Also, to your point, there is Analog Lab, a freebie with most Arturia controllers, and it can be handy in a pinch, especially for those non-synths.

I'm also with you on Cherry Audio. I have a couple of their products. My first real synth as a youth was the Realistic MG-1, which has gone to Analog Synth heaven. So the free Surrealistic is a trip down memory lane for me. Also, the DCO-106 has lightened the load of my rapidly aging Juno. And of course, I had to try the Voltage modular, to see if it was for me... The jury's still out on that one.

Keep up the great content. I've started down the road of FM synthesis, using your videos and advice. Thanks for all you do.

[BadOldBuzzard]

Good video! Keep your eyes on the lookout for VCV Rack 2 which is supposed to be released this month. A free standalone version called "Community Edition" and a version which includes a vst plugin for $99 (intro price, then $149) called "Studio Edition". Over 2, 000 modules available (many are free).

[mekosmowski]

Thank you for mentioning the rent-to-own style model of Kilohearts. Steven Slate Drums is doing something similar and I want to support this business model.

[Unibabble]

The most interesting thing I have found so far with Ozone 9 is that it has identified several problems I have in my studio listening environment. The Automated assistant makes common EQ adjustments in the same frequency bands on all the different tunes I've run through it, regardless of genre! So time to invest in some more sound treatment!

[gossamyr]

Komplete 12 was my most expensive, super large files and I like that some/most/at least one is something that doesn't exist in hardware form. That's the thing for me. The purchase I have found the most use out of? Pigments full stop. It's like Komplete is this crazy time-eating carnival in my bedroom, but Pigments is the vorpal blade I always reach for when the religious knock on the door. lol

[AndreasR]

Kilohearts' collection is hands down one of the most complete production bundles you can own.

Phase plant, multipass, and snapheap, plus all the snapins are great.

I also can't wait for the 2.0 release. The promised upcoming features looked great.

[lokelosk]

I always wanted Falcon, but always considered it a bit expensive (as I'm a hobbyist), so instead I bought MSoundFactory in a sale, which is as close as I can get to Falcon. The interface is not as nice (typical for Melda), although it is functional. It's a good substitute for a "do-it-all" sound design, and sounds pretty good in my opinion.

[KameraAuge]

I also have an older version of the V Collection from Arturia, but I hardly ever work with it. Falcon is really deep and offers the widest range of possible sound design of all my instruments. But if you don't work with it all the time, you quickly realize how complex it is to build patches, because you forget a lot. I had Phase Plant only once as a demo and was fascinated by the structure and the easy accessibility of the instrument. But only the big collection with all effects makes sense - that was too expensive for me so far. And subscriptions I avoid on principle, you can also only apply the vouchers to effects at full price, so it takes many years on this way until you have all the effects.On Black Friday it will probably be $350 again, but I still have other programs I want to buy before that. Because there is mainly Voltage Modular and there are a lot of interesting modules for that.... You have to be interested in the modular principle, that's for sure, but it opens up so many possibilities! Basically you only need two programs, Falcon and Voltage Modular, so with Falcon you cover the sampler/synthesizer/sound design area and with Voltage Modular you cover everything that has to do with classic synthesis, vintage sounds and the very wide experimental area.
In practice I work most of the time because it is faster with Pigments 3 and sometimes Rapid. But for the special sounds and projects, I tend to go for Falcon and VM.