I haven’t bought a plug-in in ten years. Might be time.

I found these plugins a couple days ago The neve strip has a Nice vibe and the N comp in it is great.
There Material compressor is awsome and both are dirt cheap ! Neve strip 19.90 and Material com 16.60
www.voosteq.com/model-n-channel/

Also Klive audio has just released a Complexx plugin
www.kiiveaudio.com/

I know nothing of the UAD ecosystem. Or the general, and specific advances in plugins since I was last in the market. I’m pretty out of the loop, in other words.

Cheers,
Cheers

It’s seriously great.

The 1176 and la2a bundle from UAD are great, and available natively, with and without subscription. They’ll be on sale if they’re not already.

But if I were you I look for something modern, something that software excels at rather than just emulations. Soothe 2, a good dynamic eq, some type of low end control like Maxx Bass, Subsynth etc

I have no idea what an Octo card is/does. Nor anything really about UAD. Probably not the direction I want to go, but let me look into what that means.

 Cheers,
 Geoff 

And honestly some of the best sounding plugins happen to be less expensive ones. Look hard at Fuse Audio Labs and Tokyo Dawn Labs. @tomegatherion has been singing their praises for a long time here, and I have to agree that most of them are very, very good.

UAD has special DSP cards/boxes/interfaces-with-DSP that run all of their plugins. Over the past several months, they've been opening up some of those plugins to Native processing. The 1176 Collection and the LA-2A Collection can both be had Natively now. I recently got both of those for a combined total of $100, maybe? There'll be more big sales over the next few weeks, obviously.

Yes, hoping dan pipes in here.

 Cheers,
 Geoff 

I cannot get into the UA plugs for my own sanity. Simply because they sound good and if I get into their ecosystem, I will eventually need everything to add to the click through distortion stuff production work flow, even the ones that kinda fart out because fart bass and kicks that rip can be cool. I already dropped 600 each on the Sound Radix and MDW bundles last year. What I really need is some more better post stuff than RX like the Acon and HitnMix

If you're mostly an electric guitarist, Klanghelm MJUC, SDRR2, or Goodhertz Tupe are superb buys. Klanghelm is dirt cheap too. They're great additions to what is in your DAW. There is a lot to discover in them, the presets are a good starting point, and you can just turn knobs and make your tracks sound better.

I'd LOVE a good Quad 8 EQ plug. I can't remember the exact model, but Elliott Smith shipped a Q8 board to Portland years ago, and it wouldn't fit in the front door of Jackpot's location at the time. I think Larry ended up racking up some of the spare modules from that board, and a couple of friends lucked into a pair each. They're stepped in 2dB increments like API 550a/b, but IMO sound smoother and less grainy. Where 2dB of API's are often too much for me, that was never the case with those Q8 modules.

I use pretty much UAD plugs when I use plugs these days (which is also less and less), and the standout for me is the Ampex ATR-102 tape plug. I think I read that it's coming to Spark, UA's native plug collection, so it may not require an interface or accelerator card soon.

If you're looking for an EQ, I'd also check out DMG Audio's Equilibrium or Equality plugs. Equilibrium is the most powerful and interesting eq plug in I've ever used. It seems to do the impossible...brick wall filters, magically smooth mid cuts, etc. Uses some serious CPU in full quality mode, but worth it if you have the horsepower. Equality is the slightly less expensive version with less features and maybe without the super galactic hifi setting.