I own every FF plugin except their synths and Timeless2, and I use them everywhere.  They're my go-to plugins for EQ, compression, limiting, saturation, de-essing, and filtering.

Native Instruments Flesh looks like a pretty intriguing sound design/composition tool.  It's a Reaktor ensemble/instrument made by Tim Exile.  It seems like its geared toward groove resynthesis, rather than patch creation, but I've never actually used it, so I'm not sure exactly what its limitations are.

http://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/synths/flesh/

I think it's worth it. It's probably the best value in software/samples around given the sheer number and GBs of content you get. The real question is how much of it you'll actually use.

If you're not in a hurry, then wait a few months. NI usually has their annual sale in the summer and you can probably get it much cheaper (up to 50% off IIRC).

Novation X-Station

i don't think we're going to this, would add too many sub forums

Yeah, definitely too many subforums.  But, I could see a single DAWs subforum for discussing all things specific to DAWs.  You could just have a rule/suggestion that all new posts begin with the name of the DAW, e.g., "Logic: how do I yada yada yada?".  Just a thought.  Then again, that subforum would probably just become an endless string of "which DAW is teh best?" threads, so maybe not. 

Quote from: cryophonik on January 13, 2016, 06:03:49 am

My happy place.

The Nord Lead reminded me about a Nord Modular I sold years ago. Kind of miss it. I think it's also in a happy place now though. 

I've owned all of the Leads (1, 2, 2X, 3, and of course 4), except for the A1, but I've never owned one of their Modulars.  I tried to win one on eBay a few times, but always got outbid! 

I also have the Yamaha HS10W sub that I use with my Yamaha HS80Ms and JBL LSR305s.  They're all connected through my Drawmer MC2.1 controller, so I switch between the monitors and engage/disengage the sub at the click of a button.  I do most of my mixing with the sub engaged, but I like to check my mixes and compare them to reference tracks with and without the sub because sometimes the sub masks issues in the low mids, near the crossover point, etc.

I've owned pretty much every Virus model ever made (A, B, C, XL, Polar TI, destktop TI) and I've owned my TI2 keyboard for about 5-6 years now.  It's a great synth, top build, excellent sound, very flexible/deep, and it has by far the best synth keybed I've ever played or owned, so it makes for a great controller for my soft synths and my Nord 4 Rack.  I grew up on hardware synths back in the 80s/90s, so that really influences my preferences.  If you want a really great hardware synth for any style of electronic music, the Virus is pretty much a no-brainer IMO.  But, as others have mentioned, it's not a necessity if your only objective is to get a good sound, so I doubt that all "top producers" use one these days.