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[SMOR3S]

DAW: Ableton Live 8

Drums: Deadmau5 Xfer, 808, Breaks, then EQ'd and Compressed... I have been using CLA-2A, on my drums lately, and I love it...

Lead Synth: Massive, Sylenth1, Nexus, Absynth4, FM8, and occasional samples, EQ'd, filters, and manipulated, to sound how I want them to...

Bass: Nexus for my Trance/House Bass... Massive for my Dubstep, and DnB Sub... and if I am making a reese, I just use sampler/simpler, with a reese sample...

Pads/background noise: Absynth4, FM8, Nexus, and other samples... I use Sylenth1 for my whitenoise...

Vocals: Most of my songs (if they include vocals), are actually done by people, and not sample packs, but if I just need some quick vox loops, and they sound really nice with the tune I am producing, I'll just go that route... Samples packs, for vox are nice, but some get over used, so that takes the fun out of them...

Real Instruments: Lauren LA125 Dreadnought... I used to own an organ, and a piano, but I sold them a while back... I want to get a new piano though, cause I love my MPK Mini, for the physical keys, but actually having the full 88 keys, would be nice...

[bRRRz]

DAW: FL Studio 10
Drums: Blokhe4d samplepack, HR dubsptep pack, RC pack, doa snares, some random free ones
Lead Synth: Massive
Bass: Massive
Pads/background noise: Massive
Vocals: None
Incidentals: random free sample packs/selfmade
Real Instruments: in one track I'm currently working on I've played small guitar part

[OfficialDAPT]

DAW: Ableton Suite 8
Drums: I layer samples from sample packs
Lead Synth: Massive right now but I'm getting more into FM8 and Absynth
Bass: Massive but I'm trying to get away from it and move to FM8
Pads/background noise: Absynth and massive(for now)
Vocals: Vocals packs/Vocoder
Incidentals: Sample packs
Real Instruments: none really

[mthrfnk]

DAW: FL Studio
Drums: Sequenced one shot samples, sometimes layered with EQ'd top end loops or live beats/breaks
Lead Synth: Z3ta+ 2, Massive or Vanguard, sometimes my leads are piano lines from PianoOne.
Bass: Z3ta+2, Massive, Sytrus or resampled/granulised stuff courtesy of Harmor or FL Granulizer.
Pads/background noise: Layered samples/foley plus strings from free Kontakt packs and Z3ta+2
Vocals: Accapellas, my voice FX'd heavily or ripped youtube clips
Incidentals: Samples or recordings I've made, any stuff like white/brown noise comes from Massive
Real Instruments: Mostly sample packs used with Kontakt Player, PianoOne for piano, Edirol Orchestral for some strings and other stuff.

[ehbes]

DAW: Reason 6
DRUMS: kick is usually a 606 and the rest is from either garage or house sample packs. Tho sometime ill use random hits from recordings
LEAD: I don't use leads but if I did it be from Thor
BASS: in one of my sample packs I've got like 3 samples called vinyl sub that sounds great, ill use those or a sine out of audacity
PADS: mostly samples that I fuck with
VOCALS: not really my thing
INCIDENTAL: random samples
REAL: occasion piano sample

[Augment]

Synth: Massive, Sylenth, 3xOsc

Sampler: The standard FL sampler

EQ: Parametric EQ2

Compressor, (Multiband, Bus, Parallel etc...): FL's compressors, camelphat if I'm lazy, and roughrider

Limiter: Fruity Limiter

Delay: Classic Delay

Reverb: Classic Reverb and Fruity reverb 2

Filter: Fruity fast LP/WOW/an eq

Distortion: Camelphat, Ohmicide, fruity waveshaper, fruity fast distortion thing, and destroyer (dunno if it had a funny spelling)

Exciter: Camelphat/Fruity waveshaper I guess

[big_lurch]

Bass: Operator in a rack with Zebralette, or Curve.
Synths: Minimoog V, Kamiooka, Curve, Reaktor
Sampler: Simpler/Sampler
Filter: Cableguys Filtershaper, Crayon Filter
EQ: Equick
Reverb: Glace

Honorable mentions: Sausage Fattener, Bootsy plugs, Camelcrusher

[twilitez]

Before this turns into an ableton discussion... How is Fabfilter's volcano? I watch some tutorials on it and it looks pretty sick, but right now I am pretty content with bifilter2.

I honestly wish I had picked up Saturn instead of Volcano. It's a nice plugin, but it's almost got too much functionality if that's even possible. Although I really so like some of the compression settings on it (the smooth bus glue is impressive).

Tested volcano and it can probably be awesome, but im not sure what it is exactly though.. a filter, eq, comp, dist or all at once?
As usual with fabfilter you can envelope and/ or lfo everything into everything, but as strange as that may sound thats not always a good thing imo.

[NinjaEdit]

I think it's primarily intended to be a filter.

[twilitez]

Synth: oatmeal, synth1

I love oatmeal, its powerful, got most of the features you would want and a randomize button. Also theres a ton of GUI's around for it. Some are actually alot nicer then the stock one.

[sunny_b_uk]

Bass: Operator in a rack with Zebralette, or Curve.
Synths: Minimoog V, Kamiooka, Curve, Reaktor
Sampler: Simpler/Sampler
Filter: Cableguys Filtershaper, Crayon Filter
EQ: Equick
Reverb: Glace

Honorable mentions: Sausage Fattener, Bootsy plugs, Camelcrusher

equick is amazing x 10000

[Alan X]

Interesting answers. I actually like Massive a lot. Very simple to start using, but you can be extremely complex with it if you choose to be. It also can be automated with Ableton, which is not possible with all VSTs.

[smile]

DAW: Ableton
Drums: Vengeance, Assorted ones collected on the internet, my own
Lead Synth: Sylenth1, massive, might do some bleepbloop with FM8
Bass: FM8, massive

[Sinergy]

Massive, most of the stuff in Ableton I like. Just picked up NI Driver for free and it's better distortion/bitcrushing than anything I've found in ableton. Although I think I'd like an EQ that's got a spectrum (but I could wait until Live 9 has that sort of EQ) and isn't such a hassle to automate (maybe they're all kinda like this?),

I also swear by LFOtool, buddy gave me the extra license that comes with it, and it's so great for making unique sounds. I guess you can sidechain with it but i haven't really tried that yet.

I feel like these lists you guys are posting have to be worth like 10grand... so many times I'll see a plug that does more or less what I already have somewhere else and it costs like 100$. I know that's cheaper than production used be, but still, idk where some of you are getting the money for all this assuming you aren't making a ton of money off music itself.

Just seems a bit excessive

[outdropt]

Wub made the post official guys, i finally made it

[Aphile]

VSTi
FabFilter 2 (keys, leads, bright warm sounds)
Sylenth1 (reese, leads, pluck bass)
Fm8 (everything! esp reese and plucked simulations)
subfreak/subatomic (simple 2 osc plugs. ideal for subs and creating kicks)
operator (use it for all sorts of stuff)

DSP
Fabfilter. All of them. I never touch EQ 8 or EQ 3. SOMETIMES I may use a waves EQ for a specific function, but basically I treat everything with PRO-Q.
I find myself using the ableton compressor out of familiarity and ease of SC.
I don't touch auto filter, as micro and volcano will do the trick.
saturn for distortion

Glue
Kramer PIE
Aphex Exciter
Saturation plugin with Analog clip mode

utility plugs to separate stereo bands