Are Standard DAW Plugins Good Enough for Pro-Grade Music Production?

The number of available DAW plugins is still growing every day. In this article, guest-blogger Davey Jonez looks into the biggest differences between the standard plugins you get with your DAW pack, and separately available, commercial plugins. Are the latter worth the investment?

The Evolution of Plugins

The evolution of plugins began over twenty-five years ago when Steinberg was the first to make it possible for developers to come up with external plugins for their software. My very first external plugin was DB Audio Ware’s Sweep Delay and, like most plugins released at the time, it wasn’t particularly great. Thankfully, times have changed. Take sampling. Back in the day, samples took up megabytes, but these days, you’re talking about gigabytes. I mean, the Arturia V Collection X alone requires a whopping 32GB of free disk space!

Everybody Runs Plugins

Plugins aren’t just extras, they’re a staple of music production software nowadays. Most DAW titles offer extensive support for various plugin formats (e.g. VST and CLAP), making it super-easy to expand your set-up with virtual instruments and effects. The downside? Choice overload. But more on that later.

Streamline Your Workflow

The standard plugins you get with every DAW aren’t always the cream of the corp as far as their graphic interface goes. Ableton Live is a good example of this. That said, Live offers up more than enough standard plugins for polishing off tracks. Logic Pro’s plugins look a lot better which, for some users, makes them subjectively better.

Additional Plugins Are Essential Sometimes

It’s not just synths like the Reveal Sound Spire that are a welcome addition to any set-up, sometimes, you just need the right tools for a specific job, like Fabfilter’s plugins. Their Pro Q3 equaliser plugin serves up various different filters, a dynamic EQ, EQ setting matching, and more functions and features that you typically don’t get with standard plugins.

Emulation and Saturation

Digital audio has been a thing for 30 years now, give or take. During its dawn, many industry professionals felt like digital audio sounded sterile, and they weren’t necessarily wrong. A decade or so ago, we figured out that what was lacking was the saturation needed to create a certain timbre. Digital audio also led to many companies breathing new life into old analogue equipment, synths and outboard gear in the form of plugins. Are these plugins as good as the original hardware? In a word, no. Compression plugins respond slightly differently than their hardware counterparts, but they do boast a unique timbre and control interface, making them interesting for anyone who’s looking for something that standard plugins can’t offer.

There’s Always the Exception

In all fairness, some plugins are actually fully identical to their hardware counterparts. TC Electronic have built a solid reputation on their superb hardware, but only offer up studio plugins and software licences these days. Even the illustrious master engineer, Bob Katz agrees that plugin versions of the System 6000 perform just like the original hardware. The same goes for Softube’s Weiss Collection plugins.

Choice Overload

Let’s get down to brass tacks. Do you really need twenty different EQs, a small army of virtual synths and a few massive sample libraries? Choice overload isn’t an issue when you simply look at things the right way. Ask yourself: do you really need that one plugin and does it actually make your tracks sound better? For me, everything changed after I got my hands on an SSL UC1 controller. The included plugins are excellent and meant I could cut my old list of plugins in half.

Clean-Up Tips

Finally, let me give you some tips on how to create the perfect list of plugins:

Start with a clean slate. Delete all of your external plugins and stick them in a separate folder.
Load up some of the tracks you produced in the past year and take note of the plugins that you actually used.
Add only the essential plugins to your DAW set-up again, so plugins that you can’t do without plus any external plugins that outperform their standard counterpart.

This may take you some time, but it’s definitely worth it. An uncluttered set-up makes working on music a lot easier and a lot more fun, and that’s exactly what it’s all about.

Got some of your own tips to share? Drop a comment below!