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Would you ever go back to DAW stock only?

charlieclouser said:
(...) Instruments load so fast that I never see a progress bar, and it NEVER throws a "sample not found" dialog. If the samples are on a drive that's mounted and Spotlight has indexed it, the sample will be found no matter where it is. No "Batch Resave" needed! (...)
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I'm currently browsing VI Control and fell on this gem because I'm waiting for this to complete:

1706196633636.png

...ooooh the irony, heh?
 
ShidoStrife said:
I need the round-robins more than anything else in an instrument, and that's where stock DAW plugins fall short.
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Same, severe machine gun allergy, no matter what instrument.
So ... no RRs no fun and even though most of the built-in instruments, FX and samples in Bitwig are really good, some of them (Sampler, Polymer synth, ...) nothing short of amazing and everything can be pimped, modulated, feedbacked and extended ad nauseum I wouldn't want to work without at least some of my trusty 3rd party plugins and above all my own recordings and sample collection.

charlieclouser said:
• For the tv series, most of them used almost no orchestral sounds, so all of the samples were coming out of EXS-24 - my own custom samples, and some that were extracted / converted from Kontakt libraries, like a simple tremolo strings ensemble or something simple like that.
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I've converted a good bunch of Kontakt instruments as well over the years; all sorts of instruments, NI's AR Drummer series, the percussion and some instruments from Cuba, India, West Africa and Middle East and some more 3rd party percussion, many to SFZ, at some point to Bitwig multisamples and lately drums and perc all over again for TAL drum (4RRs in each cell) which is somewhat of a little dream come true and not at last very CPU friendly.
 
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Alex Fraser said:
I'm also in the final process of purging Kontakt from my life (I find it a creative buzzkill) and am currently auto-sampling some of my favourite patches into Logic's Sampler for my own use in a post-Native Instruments world.
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I’ve thought about going this route as well. I’ve never been fond of Kontakt, especially Kontakt player libraries, and now that the back end of player libraries is increasingly closed they are just rompler libraries in an unfriendly rompler engine. So I’ve thought about using Autosampler to make Logic Sampler versions of all my Kontakt libraries where that makes any sense. The autosampling process is simple and easy so long as you don’t have to deal with legato.

Nico Schuele said:
I'm currently browsing VI Control and fell on this gem because I'm waiting for this to complete:

1706196633636.png


...ooooh the irony, heh?
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Yes, this too. I’ve also been staring at this screen a lot recently since I changed machines and rearranged my libraries and there doesn’t seem to be a good way to tell Kontakt where to look for non-Kontakt Player libraries, at least in Kontakt 6. (Does anyone know how to resolve this globally, that is, for all projects rather than having to fix it for each project, which seems to be the case?)
 
Well.. i think i will not go stock only
.. because if i would change daw, i cannot get the same sounds or effects (settings, presets etc). And trying to recreate them is in the stock plugins is, well, daunting on many levels. (learning those plugins itself, their pros cons etc)

With third party libs/synths/fx, switching daws is pretty easy (not taking into account of learning the daw ofcourse), i have all the well known tools ready to use.
 
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jbuhler said:
Does anyone know how to resolve this globally, that is, for all projects rather than having to fix it for each project, which seems to be the case?
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I don't think that this is possible. My understanding is that (at least in Cubase,) the state of Kontakt including the location of libraries is saved with the project file.
 
Nico Schuele said:
I don't think that this is possible. My understanding is that (at least in Cubase,) the state of Kontakt including the location of libraries is saved with the project file.
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Yes, and this applies to all hosts (DAWs). The complete state of the NKI is saved and recalled with the song/project. That's also the reason why replacing the NKI file of a library (when a library is updated for example) won't replace it in existing songs.
 
Nico Schuele said:
I don't think that this is possible. My understanding is that (at least in Cubase,) the state of Kontakt including the location of libraries is saved with the project file.
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So it's as I feared and I have many days ahead staring at this screen!
 
I am rolling out my new 2024 DAW this weekend - and it will be a VERY minimalistic version of what I ran with for the last 3 years.

During that last timespan (March 2021 - Dec 2023) I realized that I bogged this thing down with so much crap that it was getting ridiculous.

Decision paralysis was rampant and when I compare the actual "output" over the time span (AKA finishing quality work) vs dinking around listening to "cool" presets all day OR veering way into the weeds trying a billion plugins during mixdown - it was time for a change.

I use Studio One here - which ships with an outstanding array of stock plugs - but I won't be 100% stock. I do need several specific Waves plugins for voice work and a couple of utility type plugs like Nugens awesome Mastercheck along with a small complement of others. But this build will be drastically tighter than it's ever been.

I need to use what I have instead of adding more crap to the pile.

Sonic.
 
VSTs no, pretty much everything is 3rd party.

Mixing plugins yes. I do use a lot of stock plugs, only reaching for others where I actually can't get it done with stock, or where it is just highly convenient to get a very specific outcome. For example, I often go for a 3rd party Pultec plugin when I want that high-freq lift, as it is so much easier to grab the knob and twist than to finesse the frequency and bandwidth settings in a generic EQ.
 
I use Logic on both the Mac and iPad now and I find myself using a lot of the default logic sounds as it’s fast to do things.

I like the third party Kontakt and other vendor libraries I have in addition to Logic on the mac but for the first time in several years I didn’t buy any end of year end holiday related library deals as I just got tired of the whole gotta have something new thing.

That, and to use Kontakt (and other sounds) on the iPad I would need to do a lot of autosampling in logic on the Mac to bring the sounds to the iPad and honestly I really don’t want to work that hard (as well as iPad related storage space limitations).
 
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I have plenty of third party plugins, but if I had to go back to 100% stock, then that wouldn't be a big issue for me. I often use stock plugins, even though I also have tons of third party alternatives to choose from. I'm on Logic. Sometimes convenience and speed wins over auditioning a handful of third party plugins.

There are a few third party plugins that have no equivalent in stock plugins, but the majority of bread and butter plugins are easily found amongst the stock plugins and they sound just fine.

I collect and buy third party plugins because it's a hobby for me and I do enjoy collecting and having lots of alternatives, but I would say that it's not something that is absolutely essential to getting my music done. I could get by just fine using stock if I had to.

Having said that, I have no plans to ditch any of my third party plugins and I have no plans to stop buying plugins whenever I see something interesting that comes along. I've spent a lot of time and money collecting them throughout the years and I plan to keep using them whenever I fancy.
 
I am at the point now that I use only 3rd party plugins for things that the DAW plugins can't do. For standard EQ's, Compression, etc that's not too aggressive or where I don't need "that" sound then I use stock all the way usually on the track level. For the buses and the final bus, I use higher quality 3rd party plugins.

For synths and samples, I only use 3rd party products. I may use the built in drum libraries on occasion but rarely now.
 
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José Herring said:
I am at the point now that I use only 3rd party plugins for things that the DAW plugins can't do. For standard EQ's, Compression, etc that's not too aggressive or where I need "that" sound then I use stock all the way usually on the track level. For the buses and the final bus, I use higher quality 3rd party plugins.

For synths and samples, I only use 3rd party products. I may use the built in drum libraries on occasion but rarely now.
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I'm guessing Cubase?

Of all the DAWs I've used, Cubase is by far the one with the worst stock plugins. I really like the MIDI editor and the arrangement window but 99.99% of the times I go for third party plugins.

The mixer channel stuff (eq, dynamics, etc) is convenient but as a whole package the plugins in Logc, Live, and Bitwig are simply lightyears ahead.

Steinberg keeps adding stuff but every plugin seems made by a different company spanning multiple decades. It's like in Windows where you have the modern UI mixed with stuff from Windows 95.
 
Pier said:
I'm guessing Cubase?

Of all the DAWs I've used, Cubase is by far the one with the worst stock plugins. I really like the MIDI editor and the arrangement window but 99.99% of the times I go for third party plugins.

The mixer channel stuff (eq, dynamics, etc) is convenient but as a whole package the plugins in Logc, Live, and Bitwig are simply lightyears ahead.

Steinberg keeps adding stuff but every plugin seems made by a different company spanning multiple decades. It's like in Windows where you have the modern UI mixed with stuff from Windows 95.
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That may be true but the channel fx are quite usable in Cubase and have had no problem using them on individual tracks. There are many that do. The limiter being one. It does its job without coloring the sound.
 
Probably wouldn't go back to stock simply because I have a reliable workflow established that's based around a small selection of favorite plugins. What I would do differently, however, is not waste so much time and money accumulating hundreds of plugins that I don't really need or ever use.

Minimalist is definitely the way to go when mixing music.
 
Pier said:
I'm guessing Cubase?

Of all the DAWs I've used, Cubase is by far the one with the worst stock plugins. I really like the MIDI editor and the arrangement window but 99.99% of the times I go for third party plugins.

The mixer channel stuff (eq, dynamics, etc) is convenient but as a whole package the plugins in Logc, Live, and Bitwig are simply lightyears ahead.

Steinberg keeps adding stuff but every plugin seems made by a different company spanning multiple decades. It's like in Windows where you have the modern UI mixed with stuff from Windows 95.
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@Pier I agree with you lots of times but this time I vehemently disagree; I think Cubase (or in my case Nuendo) has the best stock plugins I have ever seen in a DAW. It can do so much on it's own it's ridiculous!

Not a slight against you, I just read what you wrote and my first reaction was: wtf?!
 
Crossroads said:
@Pier I agree with you lots of times but this time I vehemently disagree; I think Cubase (or in my case Nuendo) has the best stock plugins I have ever seen in a DAW. It can do so much on it's own it's ridiculous!

Not a slight against you, I just read what you wrote and my first reaction was: wtf?!
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No worries :)

We all have different needs and preferences.
 
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