Secret weapons...

[Heatcliff]

4 of my go to tools that Don't seem all too popular or talked about!

UVI spark verb for reverb - great stuff!

Flux Epure 3 & Steinberg Neve Portico 5033 EQ's-  I have tried and tested pretty much every software eq extensively and these two are by far the best sounding ones to me

Antelope audio satori: full analogue monitor controller and 8 channel analogue summing device - extremely clean and accurate for monitoring - plus you get that analogue feel thanks to the summing

[Gabe D]

Might be a secret weapon, not sure.

To make that female voice sound like a deep male voice, Elastique Pitch plugin.

I've tried to transpose vocals and things like that but cant ever seem to get it to sound good. And Elastique Pitch doesnt work on every vocal but its simple to use and can get the job done.

[Johann Stone]

MUHAHA!!! you all fell into my trap!!!
no i will make shit tonnes of money from all your hard effort
but seriously guys this has been super helpful !
now for more of my own secrets since you've all been so helpful

now for some thumping uplifting kicks : what i love to do for the tail end of the kick is to take a sinewave put a moderately steep pitch envelope(steeper for housy kicks) ,some attack on the volume envelope and then delay the tracks a few milliseconds. after i learned this trick some of the big guys have actually been asking for my kicks

[vinceasot]

its gotta be the sausage fattener hehe one of my all time favourites

[JayRox]

Soundtoys Little Alterboy: for creating great effects, mostly on vocals (but also on leads sometimes)

BX Stereomaker: this thing does exactly what it promises. I just love it!

Voxengo MSED (FREE PLUGIN): for mid-side stereo widening.

Keep on coming with all these great suggestions. Makes me kinda greedy though...

   

[RAVÉN]

JV-880: even though this is a piece of hardware it can be bought at plugin prices and it is quite fantastic.

[phatscout]

It's not by choice (I'm using because it's probably one of the best values for your money synth wise but I'd prob rather use Massive or Serum to be honest) but I've been using KV331 Synthmaster a ton recently. I picked it up for I think $30 through both the academic discount and the 50% Black Friday deal but even then it's worth the $60 for the regular academic license.

I'll say this..... It does A LOT of different types of stuff. Hell I barely even use the non subtractive and wavetable stuff in it and I'm still impressed with the sheer amount of stuff packed into it. What I don't like is the user interface, which I've gotten used to but is seriously not really all that good. It's easily the biggest weakness with the thing and why I'm guessing more people aren't using it. Assigning modulation is pretty bad since you have to go through a very un-intuitive mod matrix rather than just dragging the mods like Massive or Serum, and other factors like the 2 different types of LFOs and Envelopes (you've have 4 LFOs and 4 Envelopes for each of the 2 Layers (2 OSCs each) AND 4 LFOs that are global but you can assign LFOs from either layer so it's basically 12 global LFOs arranged ass-backwardsly)

If you wanna get one synth for cheapsies or are just looking for an extremely versatile synth (a modular or something like Zebra2 will have more but those aren't cheap) , it's easily the one to get by far, but be prepared to wrangle with a very confusing interface.

[kokotte]

HI everybody,
mine is :
melda free fx bundle

[Aymen]

Ableton has a "Hip Hop Sub Bass" preset which I've found is heavy as hell. Great for getting a good pump in your song, if you set the decay right.

Was watching this NGHTMRE seminar last night and he also said he uses that sub on almost every track of his, it sounds really good actually and it's so easy to control.

[nehlz]

Hey guys and gals!
I was wondering if you were ballsy enough to share some of the plugins that define your sound or you use frequently to get some specific sounds .
Ill start

Maserati gti guitar compressor

This is my mothership.
I use this on leads and basses in almost all of my productions (i later found out that eric prydz is really fond of it aswell) this really makes my sounds come alive and makes them stand out nicely in the mix

Bbe sonic maximizer

Mostly use this on my leads to makem them crispier and more powerfull. This can make tinny plucks really stand on their own and heavy synths really shine.

Static phasers

I often use this to make sawy basses get a unique character and even stabby synths to sound experimental

Now what do you guys use ?

My complaint with the Maserati Waves GTi and other Maserati plugs is that they make it near impossible to level match bypass vs processed. The only way you can evaluate wether processing is helping a sound is to compare level matched before and after. Our brains always fool us into thinking louder is better, but without level matching we're potentially just fooling ourselves.

 On certain source material with even moderate "sensitivity" and "tame" settings  the GTi boosts the level +12db or more, but the output control only has a small attenuation range making it impossible to properly level match within the plugin itself. It sounds pretty good otherwise, but that quirk is annoying.

Yea that is definitely annoying, you should be able to do it within the plugin.  Quick workaround is to put the plugin in a rack with a utility/gain nob and match with that then turn the rack on and off (if you are in ableton).  However I'm sure you already knew that  love your music btw. Just  saying it for others.

[JessicaDaw]

Where can I Get some better weapons in the Secret World? Is there some vendor somewhere? or should I craft some? Savage coast is too hard for me

[Devout]

My secret weapon is more of a mixing trick to get your tracks to "pop", like they are going from 2D to 3D, and get them one step closer to sounding like a professional track.

1. Send all of your tracks (sometimes omit kick/sub) to a high-passed small room verb at very low (almost inaudible) levels.
2. Use analog-modeled plugins on each bus to get a tiny bit of preamp-esque saturation. I like to use IK Multimedia's Black 76 with default settings or SoundToys Decapitator with N or T style selected, dry/wet to 35%.

Also, the IK Multimedia White 2A because it takes 5 seconds to set up and works like magic.

[Wontolla]

Where can I Get some better weapons in the Secret World? Is there some vendor somewhere? or should I craft some? Savage coast is too hard for me

Well, at least this one's more convincing than Microsoft Tay...