help request
šš½ hey guys, reaper noob here. Iāve learned a lot from creeping this thread šš.
Thereās a lot of diversity and if you want to entertain me, what are your must have plugins and what do you mix (genre wise)?
It would be a great help for me. If this has already been asked I apologize for the annoyance.
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Reaper stock plugins are awesome, and the JS ones are great too
If you want some pretty looking things that sound good, try the Tukan ones
But seriously, if you're just starting out, develop your ears and skills first, then get distracted by fancy and expensive toys
Iāve been mixing for a little over a year (my own songs).
Iāve sat through quite a few vids and exercises, where Iām failing Iād that I have a sound in my head but canāt get it to come out in the mix.
Where I really need some serious education and tooling is frequency isolation and where things should sit in the mix.
I appreciate your thoughts!
Have you tried mixing in mono? I've got a little speaker in a home made box that I push a quiet mono signal into, and it's so freaking revealing for those frequencies that are piling up (usually the mid-range for me...) A small Bluetooth speaker will accomplish the same thing, just make sure you got the mono button on the master fader. If you can make a mix sound compelling, clear and interesting on a little grot box, it's going to around awesome when you hit the mono button again and open up that stereo field on your monitors per headphones
Dodging a mix in and out of Mono will tell you a lot about how the mix is coming together. I also recommend having a pair of not-so-great headphones to listen to things from time to time.
Go to soundgym.co and try it out. Before you pay do the free exercises each day.
Start with the reaper tutorials and learn how to use the stock plugins first. They are extremely good. As a beginner, the only other plugins you'll need are actual sound producing instruments like a synthesizer or piano. Vital and Decent Sampler over at Pianobook should get you there.
Thanks spiff, Iāve done quite a few tutorials (pro mix academy being the longest), but Iām having trouble understanding spacing the frequencies in the mix.
Being a noob I know what I think sounds good, but I know itās probably not proper.
Don't worry about proper, if it sounds good, it sounds good. A lot of what's done is based on how it sounds to the artist.
If it sounds good to your ears, you're most of the way there already.
Plenty of people make money from good folks like yourself with claims like "to take your mix to the next level BUY THIS PLUGIN FOR SCADS OF CASH, you rube." You don't need to do that, ever. There are plenty of free alternatives.
Sounds like a Parametric EQ will do you some good.
FYI You don't need to keep all the frequencies of all the instruments in your mix. The more you can remove, the less cluttered your mix can sound (a great example of this kind of mixing is the entire Rio album by Duran Duran, which is never a bad idea to listen to on any day so you're in luck. Many of the instruments have a relatively narrow frequency range.)
Grab TDR Nova, set up a high-pass and low-pass filter on a track and carve away some of the high and low frequencies, do the same on a few other tracks and see how that affects your mix. After a while of messing around (give yourself some time, this shit isn't easy) you'll get the hang of it. Alternately you can set up a Bandpass filter using ReaEQ to get a similar result.
Done the pro mix academy - did you take Sara Carterās fundamentals? She provides awesome quick reference guides you can print out.
i'd recommend working on getting a mix to sound "about right" with just volume, a little EQ, and some compression. not focusing too much on what frequencies professionals typically cut or boost to really dial it in. i think fumbling around and turning knobs and seeking to fix specific things that arent sitting right in your particular mix is a good way to start. that's how i learn, at least!
There are no "must have" plugins.
This is really important to realise. Companies obviously bombard you with advertisements, and people try to get others to buy the same as them in order to justify their own purchase.
This all comes down to knowledge and experience and that is worth everything. I use paid plugins mainly to save time or for specific workflow reasons. But you give me Reaper stock plugins and I will be able to get good results just fine. I think it's better to focus on getting better recordings more than anything else.
That said, for a good value to performance ratio, I recommend tone boosters and kilo hearts. But there are tons of free plugins available.
I strongly recommend staying away from Waves. Their plugins were a big deal over a decade ago. Now they have policies and charges that should have ended last century. There is no need to pay annually to have 2 installs or get support or updates for your plugins.
I have spent a lot of money on plugins over the years, but the only paid one that I would have a hard time doing without is Waves RBass and Scheps Omni (random I know but it is like a Swiss Army Knife plugin that just reliably works).
My three must have free plugins are Voxengo Span and Airwindows "Desk" and "Purest Gain"
Thanks Sapphire, what music do you usually work with?
I mix and master various things, mostly indie and folk.
My experience was that eventually I could get stock plugins to do almost everything that more expensive ones could do, but early on I really didn't know what I was listening for. So even though I rely much more on CPU-light JS and Reaper plugins, I am still glad that I bought a big Waves bundle early on (on sale though!!) because it was a big learning tool for me. Hope that makes sense.
There are a couple of plugins that do something special that I find hard to get conveniently any other way, and now that I think of it they both have to do with low end. That Rbass is not expensive and it's really helpful for getting fat low end on DI electric bass. The Scheps Omni can do almost everything (it's a whole channel strip) but I most often use it for kick drum. It also has a saturation module that just sounds right to me most of the time.
Oh, will also add that the Fab Filter Pro Q 3 is expensive but absolutely worth it, and can genuinely be the only EQ you ever buy.
Much thanks. Iām probably a little behind your early on phase and this helps big time.
Plugins4free.com - sort by popular for each category.
I'm a metal guy. I like the stock reaper plugins and the js ones
Besides that headcrusher free, or even anything from audio assault is good. Ivg2 klanghelm compressor, tyrell u he n66 for a lightweight and versatile synth, the entire variety of sound bundle. Really great value since it's free
Also the melda audio free bundle is good as well
Lots of good stuff out there ngl
Neural dsp, bruddah its so good
I could never bring myself to pull the trigger on it because so many ppl use it, and the price /value vs similar plugins that are better priced
Maybe one day I'll join the neural legion Hehe. Almost bought the plini n gojira ones a few weeks ago but didn't jump in
Same! Metal already suffers from a perceived sameness in production so it's hard to lean in to that and literally use the same amp sim as everyone else, haha.
I've been partial to STL free versions and Audio Assault stuff as of late.
I love the audio assault offerings, very solid and very well priced
Did you use the demo versions?
I haven't found too many other vsts that compare myself, what's your setup?
No I haven't so maybe I'm not coming from experience tbh
Usually I use an audio assault amp sim like rvxx or ahm with some of my favourite irs, bussed to one channel usually. I use reapers reaeq equalizer, the klanghelm compressor and some light saturation with tessla se from variety of sound. That's for rhythm guitar. With leads and cleans I tend to put a pedal sim like the greed smasher or tse 808 tube screamer and play around with different amp sims like the ignite emissary or Stevie T djent god. Some really good free stuff out there. I bus the leads to the same bus and then send all guitars to a room bus, and sometimes use parallel reverb for the leads and cleans. I like the way it sounds so I use that template with different amps and settings for every release that I have
ahhh someone mentioned headcrusher! also a metal guy, when my writing partner found headcrusher, it was such a game changer on my vocals. im really loud, and i have a piercing tone with my yelling, but recordings never really captured exactly how aggressive my vocals sound raw. now i can literally slap headcrusher and a bunch of compression on a track and demo without needing to really mix anything (for the sake of a demo, at least).
shameless plug
I love it for that reason and more! Such a useful tool
Fab filter bundle and rock.
Fab filter bundle is great, but super overpriced
ReEQ ticks all the same boxes as Fab Filter and it's totally free.
ooooh thank you for this, this plugin is amazing haha
Oh it has dynamic eq on it now?
My favorite part about ReEQ is cutting and boosting only mid/side stuff. I've never tried fabfilter. Other than that my goto is still MEqualizer. Not sure why since ReEQ is so good, guess I'm just used to it. And it's got that saturation knob and the mid/side neg mode that I haven't been able to find the same effect in other non-melda plugins. I'd like to know what that is doing so I could find it in other dedicated plugins and have more control of the intensity of it.
If you are going to invest in something - Fabfilter is the way to go - itās a big $$$ commitment but I wish I had done it sooner. Some of the courses Iāve taken show the pros using it quite a bit.
SSL Bus compression. Oxford Inflator. Non Linear Summer.
For "must have" plugins, I'd say stock plugins as you don't actually need anything else.
But for ones I find useful, Analog Obession has some really nice (free) emulations of analog gear and I prefer using plugins (especially compressors) that have limited controls, so you're not spending ages trying to find the exact right combination of attack, release, ratio and threshold.
Jumped into Reaper recently, from stock plugins my go-to are:
MDA Pseudo-Stereo, Stereo Width, JS Convolution/Amp modeler, Waveshaping Distortion (as i find Saturation not often enough)
these are the ones i used really often.
Other are Saturn, Q3, C and L from FabFilter.
I mainly mix punk rock now.
I mix indie rock and indie pop. I have way, way too many plugins, so hopefully you can learn from my wasted time/money:
If you learn how to use ReaVerb - and its not hard - there is literally no reason to ever spend money on a reverb plugin. You can get hundreds of free reverb IRs, and it lets you add echos, pick the shape and length of the tails, anything you could possibly need. Seriously, spending a few minutes familiarizing yourself with it will be more valuable than any comparable plugin you could buy.
I have a ton of synths. Diva, Pigments, Omni, Syntronik 1, Syntronik 2, Massive X, Vital, Serum, etc, etc. If you're not planning on learning sound design - which you could literally spend years just learning how to build patches on 1 specific synth - then preset packs will be as valuable to you as the synth itself. For versatility, I'd recommend Serum, but honestly if I was broke, I could get about 10x more use out of a free download of Vital and a few $10 preset packs than I could from a ~$200 synth like Diva by itself.
I would recommend getting a maximizer/limiter or just maximizer for mastering; waves L2 and L3, Izotope Ozone, and the Oxford inflator are all good, but you can actually get the same effect (with a little work) for free using Melda's MWaveShaper. Its good to have something to add "air" when a track needs it; I use PA's SSL 9000J for that, but you could get one of the Maag EQs for less money or even this free EQ with an air band. Idk how familiar you are with the "air frequencies" but if you're mixing vocals especially it will come in handy. You'll probably wanna have a few places you can get different flavors of saturation from... I like the RC-20, IK's tape emulations, and PA's Lindell 50, but you could even use Reaper's clipper or distortion VSTs for that.
Beyond that, I'd say dive into the stock features and plugins on Reaper, because you could absolutely mix a professional-sounding record using only Reaper's stock plugins plus what I listed here. Knowing how to use what you have is infinitely more valuable than having the best plugins. Lots of plugins are either total snake oil, or do something you could easily do if you just used 2 or 3 stock Reaper plugins together with the same settings. Don't fall for the "louder = better" trick they like to play and don't think you need to shell out money to some corporation just so you can make music.
For channelstrip try VCS-1 by Fuse Audio Labs. It's a good start for an all purpose plugin š
My advice is not to worry about it right now. There are no universal āmust haveā plugins. What everyone thinks is a āmust haveā depends on their individual workflow and what they like to make. When you are in need of a new plugin, youāll know what you need. Until then, learn how to use the plugins you have, train your ear, and save money
As other said, stock plugins are good enough to get you good mixes. Having said that, I don't use any of them. I mix (and light master) hard rock and metal, from NWOBHM to extremes stuff. If we exclude amp sims (Helix Native), drum libraries (big fan of Ugritone raw and almost unprocessed samples), and synths/orchestral sounds (mostly free libraries), my must have plugin are mainly from Analog Obsession, Waves, AirWindows, and Tokyo Dawn. I recently re-introduced some Variety of Sound plugins, now that have been updated to 64bit.
Channel strip: I prefer to use separate plugins, but for an all-in-one solution I use Waves Scheps Omni. Sounds great but it is a bit CPU heavy. I also love Analog Obsession STEQ (more of a EQ than a channel strip), but 2-3 instances kill my PC.
Saturation/colour: Waves NLS, Airwindows Tape. For a lighter effect Airwindows Console 7.
Compression: Analog Obsession Fetish and LaLa on individual channels or busses. Analog Obsession BusterSE for the rear-buss channel (and for parallel compression when I master).
EQ: Tokyo Dawn Nova for more surgical EQ and filtering, Analog Obsession Rare for Pultec emulation, and sometimes Analog Obsession SSQ.
Delay/reverb/ambience: What I mix doesn't require fancy ambience, but my go-to is Waves CLA Epic. I know many people hate this plugin, and I agree that it sounds quite bad, but it is just perfect for my style. I started using Variety of Sound EpicVerb again, mainly on drums.
Master buss: Airwindows Tape and Waves CLA MixDown. I used to go with TokyoDawn Kotelnikov and SlickEQ, but I like the simplified workflow (and better metering) of CLA MixDown, as well the character of the compressor(s). For lighter songs, though, the Tokyo Dawn combo is still my first choice.
There are a bunch of free synths and effects that are as good as paid plugins, try them first before buying anything as they are good enough for many uses. Note that the TDR equalizers are more CPU intensive than ReaEQ.
Synths:
Vital
Effects:
Tokyo Dawn Labs (https://www.tokyodawn.net/tokyo-dawn-labs/) - DL all free plugins
Klanghelm (https://klanghelm.com/contents/freeware.html) - DL all free plugins
Voxengon Span (https://www.voxengo.com/product/span/)
Oril River (https://www.kvraudio.com/product/orilriver-by-denis-tihanov)
The basics are EQ, Compression, Delay/Reverb, and probably Saturation. Get a few in each category that does things what you like. If you compose/write/produce then you'll also want a bunch of instruments and sample packs that work for your genres.
I think two of the stock plugins from Reaper are problematic, especially for a beginner/intermediate: Reacomp and ReaVerbate. I think ReaVerbate just sounds bad and far better results can be had with a nice impulse response for ReaVerb or other free reverbs like EpicVerb from Variety of Sound. ReaComp has way too many parameters for a beginner to understand and they'd be far better served with something like Fircomp or the super simplistic DC1a from Klanghelm (both are free).
I mix & master anything and everything pretty muchā¦ I use the following:
Compressor: POWAIR by SoundRadix
EQ: Gullfoss by SoundTheory
Dynamic Resonance Suppression: Soothe2 by Oeksound
Limiter: L2 by Fabfilter
Reverb: Perfect Room by Denise Audio
Dynamic Phase Interaction Suppression: Pi by SoundRadix
Channel Strip plugin (turn off the noise emulation though!): 9000J by Solid State Logic
Volume Rider (for vocals, bass, and Electric Guitars): DynaRide2 by TBProAudio
Processing Electric Guitar Direct Input tracks: ToneForge by Joey Sturges
All these plugins have sales so I would recommend accumulating them over time vs paying full price!
Iāve found Metal to be the hardest genre to mix while Rap and EDM are dead-easy
How do you set Gullfoss? Sometimes itās a bit noticeable on the low end
Gullfoss has a draggable hi and lowpass filter on each side so I set those to only target the frequencies I want to change š. Also, click on the Gullfoss logo and set quality to āBestā
How did I not figure that out? Thanks so much!
Youāre not the only one; thereās a ton of people using Gullfoss āwrongā š
Thanks Berry!!! This is a great list to research!
This thread is beyond awesome and I can't thank you guys enough for the responses!!! I have about a 5 years worth of recommendations and help from this post.
I can't thank you guys enough!!!
Following
Waves gold bundle for me and i mainly mix symphonic metal or cinematic orchestra
Try the reamixed.com mix contests. I'm a rubbish mixer. But it's a stock Reaper mix contest where you can get access to everyone's project files. And so you can learn a lot from others as to how and what to use.
JS Tukan reverbs are nice and easy to use.
I've bought so many plugins that I don't really need in hindsight.
I'd save money and use
Airwindows TDR free Analogue obsession Kilohearts free Plugin Alliance freebies
If you sign up for some Facebook groups you can get lots of paid stuff free when they come up on offer.
But stock is good enough for Kenny Gioia so good enough for most of us
Fabfilter plug-ins all the way!
there's so much you can do with Reaper, i'd have no idea where to start. if you have a midi controller, resynth is a fun stock plugin. if you're recording vocals, i have no idea if this will be any use to you, but there's a free plugin called Headcrusher, and it magically makes my voice sit into a metal mix perfectly. Joey Sturgis has like a $30 metal guitar amp sim called Menace, and it comes out of the box sounding professional and angry. SSD5's stock drum samples are incredible - almost a must-have if you want to start playing with "real" sounding programmed drums. those three plugins can get you REALLY far if you're going for a typical band arrangement.
Melda plugins are free (nagware) and fill in some gaps that stock doesn't address (I like the stereo phase meter, autopan, flanger)
KClip (regularly on sale for 40 usd) lets you drive a sound to crazy loudness before distortion/artifacts, much more so than the stock clipper in my experience
Vital is a free, incredibly versatile soft synth. Even if you never deep dive into synthesis, you might benefit from a simple sine wave on occasion
I'm just a nobody hobbyist making poor attempts at Drum and Bass
I do movie scores, and also film/podcast sound design.
As others have said, there aren't many plugins that aren't replaceable, most do the same things as stock plugins, just faster/easier (which can be important, sometimes "fast/easy" is the difference between doing it well, doing it crappy, and not bothering to do it at all). Also, a downside to YouTube tutorials, even the ones are just someone teaching a skill, is that they make you want to want to buy plugins.
Free advice that you didn't ask for and likely don't need to hear, but just in case: Always download the demo and play with it before buying. Don't buy anything that you don't intend to spend some time learning how to use. And only buy plugins to solve specific problems you already know about, not because they promise magic.
Some plugins that are truly unique:
iZotope RX - Audio repair. I probably use it more in narrative work than music, but I still use it a lot in music. I'm using standard, but years ago I paid full price for what became the "Elements" version and I still don't feel the slightest bit ripped off.
YouLean Pro - Loudness meter/analyzer. Great for dialing in precise delivery specs. The free version is also great, but I love being able to drag/drop a file into the pro version. There are probably others that do a similar thing, but it's world above Reaper's stock analyzer.
Waves Center - This one of those that I don't use on every project, but it saves the day when I need it and I haven't found anything that can do the same thing (If you use a Mid/Side plugin and mute the Mid, you get a mono signal). I mostly use this for stereo field recordings when I want to isolate the reverb, or the lower the background noise.
I also think it's good to get an EQ that doesn't show you the EQ curve, a la Slick EQ, Maag, or The Hoser.
Reacomp, reaeq, realimit, js saturation, js multiwavshaper, event horizon, mda pseudostereo, js deeser. For reverb, try the free valhalla supermassive.