Would you ever go back to DAW stock only?

It’s the old ‘restriction increases creativity’ mantra reappearing again and it makes me want to throw everything away (delete) and just use my daw, Logic, in a minimalist disciplined way….it would be like starting over!

You see it in real world too…guitarists can be the worst. I think classical musicians are the only ones who don’t suffer so much from this ‘over consumption’. They tend to arrive at their instrument and maybe change once or twice in a lifetime.

Tom_D said:

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.

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I agree.

I think a better question, or maybe alternative question would be if you were to distinguish between DAW mixing plugins (reverb, delay, compression, eq, etc) and 3rd party sample libraries, especially ones that cost more than a DAW as well as VSTIs.

If you consider just mixing plug-ins, you can't assume 3rd party is "better" any longer like you mostly could 20 years ago with stock DAW plugs. DAW developers can and most likely do outsource to these same people who under specifications may develop a stock DAW plug that is very comparable to a 3rd party plug, but with a completely different GUI. It's more about marketing and the looks of a plug-in than listening to the sound...and even then, everyone resorts to Plug-In-Doctor for afmiration of their thoughts.

Naturally, with any DAW, the marketing is still "everything in one box" such as Steinbergs Iconica Sketch, but as good as it sounds, that a far cry from what is achievable in an expensive library. And even with Halion Sonic, you won't get as much IMO as NI Reaktor.

Lukas said:

This depends on the genre and if it's a sketch for a song that I finally will play with a live band or if it's going to be the final production. For example, electronic music can be perfectly done in Studio One only with stock instruments. However, I wouldn't want to make an orchestral mockup with Studio One stock sounds. Either because my results won't satisfy me or because it's far too tedious to get an okay result through elaborate programming (more elaborate than with good orchestral libraries).

But people like Max Konyi show how to do it and how to make good tracks by making clever decisions with any sounds. For example, he has a whole playlist of videos showing how he creates tracks in all kinds of genres (orchestral game music, jazz funk, synthwave, dubstep, minimal house, chill hop) using only Studio One stock instruments.

Stock Instrument Tutorials by Max Konyi | Studio One Toolbox

Studio One Toolbox - View song details online, export Presets and Sound Variations, download Studio One Scripts and search our Video Tutorial Database!

s1toolbox.com

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Electronic users would probably use more third party stuff over S1 stock instruments.

greggybud said:

I think a better question, or maybe alternative question would be if you were to distinguish between DAW mixing plugins (reverb, delay, compression, eq, etc) and 3rd party sample libraries, especially ones that cost more than a DAW as well as VSTIs.

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This is a good point (and thanks for the responses everyone, enjoyable reading.)

Naturally the purpose of any DAW maker is to make a great DAW. The included effects and instruments (I would imagine) are nice add ons and starting points, but not necessarily the selling point of the DAW (that’s a lot of people to please otherwise.) Yes the stock life has its advantages, probably best suited to those with deep sound design knowledge and who can coax a great result out of an ok synth or sampler. But nonetheless, having good bread & butter included content is something most producers would want and so they all have (from what I can tell) a fairly cobbled together selection of devices where some are very good and some just do the job. This is most obvious in Logic because of the lack of updates to the old GUIs.

To your point, this means that for most tasks the included effects are fine for a lot of producers. Sure it’s nice to get different flavours sometimes, but that’s nice to have rather than essential. Effects to me always feels like you need a solid reason to upgrade stock. I agree that for channels it does the job mostly, but it can be fun to have a couple of top plugs for busses and mixdowns. When it comes to instruments and sound sources, here I think it’s a bit less clear cut. Obviously the goal of a vst maker is to give you a suite of amazing sounds and often presets. They don’t have to make a DAW as well so their focus is just on that one thing, and if it’s not good people won’t buy it. A daw by contrast can have no stock plugins at all or even only average ones, since the goal is to get you to like a workflow, not a sound in order to buy. Put another way DAWs can’t always be as focussed as a vst can be, as there’s a need to sell the DAW to a wider audience.

I’ve not cracked the code but having felt close to wanting to sell my VSTs, here’s where I landed. I hear many musicians frustrated by preset browsing. Which I understand completely if that’s the entry point to coming up with a song. But what I tend to find is that it’s best to see where I can get to with stock everything. Once I’ve been through that process, and have the vibe of the track, I will often go through and replace elements from the library. This has the advantage of not getting lost in the weeds early in a project and keeping focus on the song itself. Plus all the stuff about native devices backward compatibility etc. What’s nice here is that I find you do discover some DAW gems that stay in the track as well. By doing this I’d say my use of stock sounds has gone from close to zero to 30-40% and effects wise it’s a 50/50 split. This allows me to keep my vst bundles for a rainy day, removes any pressure to learn them all and places an emphasis on the Daw doing half of the heavy lifting. Once an idea is there, it’s time to go into the toolkit….

For mixing plugins, I'm about half and half. I've owned hundreds of plugins over the years but nowadays pretty much just use stuff from FabFilter, Valhalla, and a couple odds and ends, and the rest stock. I have a UAD interface and I've poured some money into the plugins but I don't use them all that much these days except for a couple classic compressors.

Virtual instruments? 99% 3rd party.

Though I was recently having a conversation with a session violinist friend and we got onto the topic of virtual instruments. She composes & records commercial work from her home studio, and told me that nowadays for mockups she uses only stock strings for mockups – "the shittier the better" she said. She used to use Spitfire etc but said that the quality is good enough for clients so they would no longer spring for a session with live musicians. But with stock instruments, clients can understand the arrangement but she says they're more likely to budget for a live recording. I thought that's an interesting perspective and a valid reason to use stock instruments!

100% depends on the project, but eg using ableton LIVE without MaxforLIVE would be like eating food without any herbs or spice...