So - what's your 'best buy' VST instrument?

[andymcnish]

I'm stuck on this one - I have picked up some great bargains over the year...

Rapture for £5 (price of online sub to Computer Music 200 - with loads of other VSTs thrown in of course)
Dim Pro for $15 (Cakewalk sale about a month ago)
BFD Eco (today from JRR Shop) for $25
or Z3TA+2 on Steam Sale for £25

All of those are just tremendous value for money - I'm not sure you need any other instruments at all until you get really serious about this stuff to be honest.
I picked up AAS Acoustic Strum and Lounge Lizard Rhodes with my Korg Micro Key as free downloads and Plucked String and Piano One are nice freebies that I still go to for ease of use but I think I'm instrumented out now - all for about £55....

The only other paid for VST I'm thinking about is Spline EQ - it's only $20 but is a pretty amazing linear EQ with in-built spectrum analyser - I use the free version at the moment.
http://www.musicradar.com/reviews/tech/photosounder-splineeq-551181

Other than that it's just saving up for the big jumps to Sonar Producer from Studio and/or Full Polyphonic Melodyne - but that's a while off yet...

[tomatoes.dll]

I recently found out from ShellstaX that the Addictive Keys free edition is no longer available. That is really unfortunate, and I am very lucky to have grabbed it when I did. That thing is an absolutely outstanding, glorious, instrument, far and away exceeding Piano One and True Pianos, imho

It now costs about $90 (albeit a fuller version than the free one), but I have heard from folks that in the KLR Newsletters Addictive Keys is often offered at a nice discount price, so keep an eye there if you want to add it to the list of greats in your arsenal.

Check it out here![www.xlnaudio.com].

[andymcnish]

Yes - thanks for that - the Steinway Grand Piano there does sound gorgeous.
The very first paid for add-on I bought was the DSF Steinway pack for MC6T in a Steam Sale for £7.50 or so-and whilst it's OK for a decent basic piano noise the lack of configurability in Sound Center means it's very limited.
Dim Pro has 10 grands in it of course and you can play around much more with them - but for one killer 'go to' piano sound Addictive Keys looks fantastic. Sale price would need to be no more than $25 or so though - to be in impulse buy range for me...

[tomatoes.dll]

Actually Andy, I believe I was told that the sale price is around $20 when it hits. I have a friend I can ask to be certain.

[tomatoes.dll]

Oh, and btw, I believe Addictive Drums 2 has a free non-time limited, fully functional demo for free as well. Addictive Drums 1 and 2 are examples of superior, true mic'd and recorded, editable and interchangeable, drum VSTi, and believe me, once you hear Addictive Drums (If you don't have it already, that is), you won't look back to any other source for drums generally.. There are lots of links to see what they do, but here's an XLN audio promo one:

Addictive Drums 2[www.xlnaudio.com]

[Aztec]

Αναρτήθηκε αρχικά από tomatoes.dll:

I recently found out from ShellstaX that the Addictive Keys free edition is no longer available. That is really unfortunate, and I am very lucky to have grabbed it when I did. That thing is an absolutely outstanding, glorious, instrument, far and away exceeding Piano One and True Pianos, imho

Well ... it may actually still be avaialable ...

There's a 'demo' version - just have to register. It's in my Online installer ready to download.

Also the 'free' version is $0.00 at JRRshop. I might jump through the hoops to see if that's any different from the 'demo'. I'm picking they'll be the same - 1 piano, reduced mic placements, 4 octaves.

Also, for you lucky Americans, I chanced upon a full 3 piano Studio Collection Promo Pak on Amazon (Houston seller) for ~$90 delivered. Turns out Musician's Friend had this Promo Pak going for a crazy $25 last year!

[Aztec]

Associated thread started:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/241070/discussions/0/613936039378820783/

[Aztec]

Yeah - Addictive Keys 'Demo' from XLN Audio is the Studio Grand 'Free' Version
- Four octaves, 49 out of 88 keys
- Three out of six microphone perspectives.

The JRRshop 'FREE' version provided links to an old XLN Online Installer.
A closer read of the purchase page shows the same restrictions.

[Fredator]

To answer the OP, it seems that very good things are said of KV331's SynthMaster, which is on sale at JRRShop for around $46 in cart

[Invisible Man]

TAL (Togu Audio Line) and Audio Damage are the best "low-price"/"free" developers... in my oppinion.

[Aztec]

A couple small operators, good product, great ethos, small prices:
HoRNet Plugins[www.hornetplugins.com]
Klanghelm Audio Plugins[www.klanghelm.com]

[andymcnish]

I'm sure we can have a long discussion about best budget FX (though if any paid for FX beats the $19.95 for Spline EQ in terms of value I'd be suprised).
SPAN for free is a must as well of course (unless maybe you have Producer).
I picked up NI Supercharger free in their Xmas giveaway - and that is nice too...
But the stock FX (esp the Nomad ones) in Sonar Studio/Producer are more than enough for most of us unless we get really into mixing/mastering etc.

I did a quick you tube vid auditioning the instruments mentioned above...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvgeqglX1DY&feature=youtu.be

[tomatoes.dll]

I am serious about mixing and mastering, but more importantly, trying out new toys is just a hoot. I agree, however, that the build in stuff from Nomad (Bluetube processing) is some of the best I've ever heard at any price. Subcriptions to Computer Muic magazine has also yielded me a few processors which Have become my go to units, epsecially the CM Analogue EQ. Th
at this is fantastic and absolutely easy on the system.

[Imba™]

Now natiuve Instruments Komplete 10 is due out. it is worth watching for bargins on Komplete 9, to finish your collection. Many of the synth's in Komplete 9 (Massive, Absynth, FM8 etc) in combo with Zeta+2 allow almost anything in EDM terms. So it's worth looking about over next few months for bargins from music retailers trying to clear stock as v10 is now due.

[andymcnish]

Actually if you just want 800 sweet presets for £13 Synthmaster Player isn't bad value either. The proper Sythmaster is £32 -both until 30th Sept. at JRRshop.com

[bigcat]

Get Drum'ica free, install Kontakt Player from Drum'ica, wait for an upgrade sale and get Kontakt for about $125 dollars. Download endless free instruments including every single instrument (many have several versions) in the 128 instrument GM soundset here, http://bigcatinstruments.blogspot.com/2014/08/gm-midi-instruments-for-kontakt.html.
Kontakt cheep is best deal in music.