The Best & Worst VST Plugins of 2023 

It was AI everywhere this year

You forget an award, "Best at providing a poorer experience for their paid customers than the pirates", obviously won by Acustica.

What I like about the Sonible EQs is that it provides goo starting points. I slap that on at the beginning of the chain and I let it do its thing early in the process and I build from there. I don’t “just” use it as my one eq but as a “I am lazy and want to do things faster than I otherwise could” tool

Pretty sure the biggest scam in the music industry is Spotify...

I was gonna say the falcon 3 midi output makes it win imo- it’s honestly huge, I also liked Arturia efx motion & not sure if fragments was dropped this year but they’re both my mvps. Honourable mention goes to airwaves who just keeps keeping on

8:20 He was going to say Infiltrator 2 is better 😅

So I tried out Smart:EQ4 last night and all it did was spin the big green wheel forever, never completing the "learning" process on any track other than the first one. Apparently not smart enough to periodically check and terminate the process if it's not completing in the max permitted time. Which btw would be a basic coding practice. Yay for AI!

Honestly your videos start to be my got o videos for the morning coffee))) ❤

I love your videos man, you're always keeping it real!

Enjoyed this. Good content weaver

Was waiting all year for this

I actually like Scaler Eq, especially for color bass, automating the frequency knob gives some great results.

Thank you Mr. Beats for a great year of content !

"You talking to me ?" Your girlfriend was doing the scene out of the film 'Taxi driver'

You got lucky with the eyebrows haha

I’d also give award for the DAW. The DAW that f up the biggest was bitwig. Late 2022 they f up their user agreement, backed off and offered everyone 6 month of free updates and then didn’t release a single update for 6 month. Also when finally released it they f up good working browser for the in browser shop. Yeah, bitwig completely crewed in 2023…

My list: Amek Mastering Comp, MasterPlan, Drift (as it was free), Serato Sample I agree. Flex beat? Man this was difficult 😂. ScalerEQ the biggest snake oil, the spikes are just the GUI, it’s no different to any EQ that displays the pitch of the frequency selected (FabFilter) and putting your notches where the fundamental and harmonics are, aka, EQing your spikes

There’s one thing that I think will be revolutionary. There’s a new format called clap (clever audio plugin), the format itself is groundbreaking, but hasn’t been adopted yet. It basically multithreads the cores in your cpu, meaning that you can have really high quality plugins that aren’t taxing on the cpu. There’s only 2 daws that support it atm tho, but it’s already being adopted by a few plugins devs and all the popular daws are looking at it to see how it progress’s.

The humour on this one was *chefskiss*

Current was cool Falcon 3 would be my desert island plugin,. Think it beats out Phase Plant. And even just those two powerhouses make 2023 not such a bad year. Though it wasn't a memorable year. I liked Erica Synths Virtual Zen Delay too And props to Valhalla for adding two more algos to Supermassive. Noise Engineering quietely but steadily releasing their VSTs. Neural DSP Mateus Asato is very good. Idk, I sort of feel like have enough plugins come out now - my wish for the electronic music scene in 2024 would be for Bandcamp to live long and prosper.

Weaver, TE is a design company who designs products for Nothing (the phone) and IKEA and other companies. Their audio stuff is just promo for their design consulting services so they don’t really care if their table makes any money.

RELEASE HER

Supertone Clear is really good. Been using it in general media production as well.

It's a M4L device, not a VST, but my favorite plugin of the year is Opal by Fors (it _might_ have come out at the end of 2022 though). Super cool drum synth / virtual groove box with a really quick/easy and fun workflow. For me, the real magic is in it's sequencer... pretty sure it's my all time favorite sequencer honestly.

moog Mariana is neat IMHO. Not revolutionary, but a really nice-sounding synth.

Props for the award show. Everytime now when I open old DAW sessions, I inevitably get reminded that I have plugins running that no longer exist in my system. I then go to my mental list (and sometimes an actual spreadsheet) of newer plugins I use in place of WAVES plugins and slot them in accordingly. And sometimes, there's a lot. It's a PITA. And THAT is how much I hate the change that WAVES made. I'll happily deal with this every time. I got rid of all of it. EFFFF THOSE GUYS. Waves Shillers can suck a [DEMONITIZED]

Hooray, new video

Most annoying thing is youtube, when reading a comment and you click back you end up on top of the list every time again. Also I hate the autoplay shit when you are scrolling and then it puts every autoplayed shit on your watch history, so stupid 🤬

🌊😂 great video!

Great Video 😂 Ozone actually fix the 100% bass width 😅

You got me wanting to try out that Minimal Audio Synth now

I would mention Supertone Clear, wavesfactory Equalizer and also new gate from sonnible

This was hilarious. Thanks for making it.

I love your cynical humor, it's great man. much love Weaver! !

Serato Sample needs fx just like in their studio daw. Add those FX to Serato Sample so we can get even more wild. And it can use an infinite screen size...We all ain't got microscopes for eyes.

I love the idea of Synplant 2, the only setback is the engine is basically the same as version 1. So, I do hope Synplant 3 the entire synthesis engine changes.

Hilarious review🤣

Let's go!

uHE updated Filterscape that's pretty badass this year. Haven't used the trial but I'd say it would be one of the best this year

Session Percussionist by Native Instruments looks pretty good..underrated

i slept on this video until this moment right now, on purpose. 😂

BTW Antares has plugs where you can see pitch vs. freq. Not a bad plan if you’re more a musician vs. engineer.

xln life I feel like the whole point is the use the generated rhythm not so much the generated loop but also there’s random infinite sound generator

Ozone 11 master assistant doesn't increase the bass width anymore. That was a bug in 10 that got fixed.

For smart eq4, can’t you apply one on the “melody bus”, and then one on the “drum bus” and put them both in a group called “buses” or something and then boom they talk to each other.

He hasn’t even a T-Shirt Motive….but Boy i love this Guy 😝 Thanks for the great Show ✨🥂

I upgraded my NI standard plugin package for the first time in at least 5 years. Gotta say, loving the package more than I thought.

I enjoyed it...just not as much as i thought i would!..cracked me up!...Bonus points for the hardware that most resembles a bomb! Heading to the airport now with this! ..Weaver rocks

You missed music hack master plan, dope new limiter

GET THIS MAN TO 50K!!!

Honestly Im surprised Sonibles' Desser that came out this year hasnt gotten more respect

Falcon 3 has been cracxed already

ultimate vocal remover is one of the best tools of all time. So damn clean for something that is free and relatively new to the software game

I'm not a producer but I love playing with audio stuff. That being said dealing with Waves plugins is akin to a prostate exam from a 60 year old bricklayer.

Funny I thought about pre ordering a subpac a few years ago and decided it seemed fishy....

Weaver Beats for PRESIDENT. You're A REAL ONE my Dude. Keep on being a SOLID HONEST Soul NEVER change like that Jay-z Track Ya Heard. REAL recognize REAL You good peeps man. Happy 2024 stay blessed My G!

Your Santa hat looks like a turban for most of the video… The silent donning of the turban was actually my favorite part of this video!

Runner up for biggest blunder: Bitwig and their renegging on their user agreement

The Weaves! Nice hat! Moog's Mariana's CV interface with the Foogers is cool. discoDSP did some nice updates on OB-Xd. GForce came out with two nice ARP plugins this year, Oddity3 and Axxess Roland did nice, and free, updates to their JUPITER-4, JUPITER-8, and JUNO 106 plugouts Waldorf updated Largo, but only the UI, and the price was high. Digi did the same lame ass only sub mistake this year, then walked it back. You should have given SoCalLabs an award for best name. Logic came out on iOS, but sub only.

Its not a vst plugin (well, you can use reason as a vst plugin so technically it is) but Reason Studios Objekt Modelling Synth is one of my top plugins for this year, sounds amazing.

Bro I wind screen isn't a pop filter. I still hear pops... obviously and do you have wind in there? If so how you have the fan running with the greenscreen on

Shave or save? Eyebrow edition.

Mixbus 9 came out this year, and I'm pretty happy with that. Not a plugin....um... The only thing i bought this year was analog labs V, and only because i got an 80% discount. It wasn't a great year for plugins.

You missed Michaelgelo eq from tone projects. Best hardware emulation eq yet

What about Plugin Boutique’s Scaler EQ? That should be awarded as most musical EQ or not? I didn’t try it myself though

My resolution for next year is, I'm gonna shave my shoulders. I'm just a bit worried about being too cold without my fur, you never know with this psycho-weather. Happy New Year and all that! Cheers!

Next year we gonna be rating the best AI mixing engineer imbedded into our daws

VoosteQ Model N is the best for me. For 20$ I got a preamp, comp, eq and saturator, it’s a steal . Even the 100$ full price is a good value.

I like this

u gotta try my plugins i wanna be on the list next year

Random by beatsurfers is my fav this year. Best blob type plugin by a mile

Have you used autochorma yet?

smart:EQ 4, smart:comp 2 and smart:limit are very good plugins.Especially since I haven't found something similar.

When's the God Particle review?

Love it. The emperor has no clothes

haven't bought a plugin in over a year, did pay for some updates tho

It's sums it up!

hopefully next year will be more reverbs.

scaler EQ seems a bit like Spectre

Sonible definitely got Izotope tf outta here this year.

You have to put some effort in. Shave your eyebrows. Shave your girlfriends eyebrows. Swap eyebrows. Now THAT would grow this channel! 💨

Current Minimal is amazing

Appreciate the honesty. Transit and Life sound really cool on the surface but yeah wayyy overhyped.

Well the smart eq4 doesn’t work in DAWs that sandbox the plugins like Bitwig

An*l. Happy new year!

should try an m4l list and then decide what is actually made bad, because it kills me how good those are getting and I still don't like ableton

Not even a tuxedo T-shirt?

lol comp's design makes me want to destroy stuff

You forgot about waves silk

i gotta say the v-pan plugin.. it installed TWO separate drm softwares on my PC completely silently without ever mentioning either of them. so fuck that. the ai plugins don't even count, and at least they don't install bloatware. also the 'bassline' plugin that only worked for a few days, also GOYO, just straight up wanted hdd space and time spent

dude your discord link is expired

cherry audio pro solo is one of the best this year

idk i feel likes waves fuck up was way more egregious when you take into account that their whole structure been kinda scammy for a long ass time AND thousands of people were gonna get fucked into having to sub up if they wanted to keep getting the (paid) updates for the plugins they already spent hundreds of dollars on. (not even upgrades bc they almost never add new functionality to shit, just the regular ass updates to make sure the shit won't break on newer software, updates that do not cost them extra money for real bc every software company in business always has to put those together to keep their product on the market for new customers anyway, but that waves charges for anyway bc they're greedy as shit)

I love ScalerEQ!!

BTW, when you said "there is no real idea left to make into a groundbreaking plugin", it made me think, but it's not true. I just checked Sonible Smart Gate and it is still not "smart enough". You still are going to lose snare ghost notes when you want to get rid of the hats in between snare hits. The AI plugin I need and I don't find is the "drum track cleaner".

It's clear from the mic work you skipped the important "hardcore band vocalist" phase on your journey.

I really don't think SmartEQ4 shits on Neutron. I think they're both really, really bad. They don't even differentiate nor understand the difference between an EDM-Kickdrum and a regular Acoustic kickdrum. They will always try to mix kickdrums the same way. I don't believe for a second these are even 'smart' algorithms, i.e. I don't think they even really reference the input they're given. Hell, smart-EQ can't even tell it's a kickdrum unless you tell it it is.

To be fair did anything good happen last year either?

Weav you and wifey produce a great show. It’s true, plugins are running outta moves. The only thing that changes and stays fresh will be us! New application of applications. New non conventional uses. I don’t know the name of that plugin, but if I can drop a stemmed out old dusty string sample into it, and it kicks back a reproduced synth sound that mimics it perfectly, we got ourselves a plugin!

bro, you are hilarious