+1 to what justin said for sure.

As for artists by name, it's really hard to narrow it down to just a few, so here is a short list:
Madeon, Haywyre, Volant, Suken, Tennyson, Virtual Riot, Daft Punk, Grant Bowtie, Sakuraburst, Televisor, Sanjaux, Puppet, Lenno, and many more.

Freesound is a great resource, and yeah I'll also have to say for the money it'd be your best bet to go out and buy a portable recorder like a zoom.

Here are a few articles / documents / images /pages that I love to show people and will occasionally revisit myself when working on sound design! First let me say that these links aren't directed towards making very specific sounds like a tutorial may be, but are instead intended for wide-application use and general knowledge gain from factual / experimental evidence. That said, don't be afraid at all to post links about "How to make this certain reese base" since it is my personal goal that anyone from any production background can gain knowledge from this thread!


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Here is an article that shows how compression affects the timbre of a sound:
http://theproaudiofiles.com/compression-and-timbre/

Here is a chart showing formant frequencies of many vowels:
http://cnx.org/resources/e79a89273114bf4418fb78a75aba02640b1f922d/sub_formants-voweltable.png

Here is a data chart on some Orchestral Instruments. I often use this when trying to get similar sounds with synthesis:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/music/orchins.html

This is a visual reference of the frequency spectrum in terms of mixing and some instrument placement:
http://i.imgur.com/HMDQzXt.jpg

This one is kind of a mix of the previous two links:
http://i.imgur.com/HMDQzXt.jpg

Article by iZotope giving a general explanation of what Mid/Side processing is:
https://www.izotope.com/en/community/blog/tips-tutorials/2014/06/what-is-midside-processing/

This link contains all of the sections to the Article series "Synth Secrets" by Sound on Sound writer Gordon Reid. There is tons of content on here that explains creating sounds of all different types and calibre:
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/allsynthsecrets.htm

Thats all for now, I'll try to post more links as I find them! Thanks for reading all, -Nogan

I would say yes if you can get it on sale, otherwise I'd just save up for Komplete because it has so much more than just default Kontakt.