I was worrying today about the costs of my recording hobby, having assembled a collection of VSTs and recording software. Once I put the numbers down, however, it actually doesn’t look too bad. Since I’ve also been asked a couple of times what I use, and figured it was about time to link it all up in one place.
My current software stack looks like this:
- Reaper v3 DAW for tracking (20110521 - £25)
- Addictive Drums 2 with Black Velvet kit for V-Drum noises (20121224 AD1 - £100, 20140629 AD2 upgrade - £80)
- Peavey Revalver HP for the amp selection and pedal effects stacks (20140515 - £7.50)
- iZotope Nectar Elements for vocal colouring. Still a bit meh over it, but it has some nice easy options on presets (20140629 - £0 with AD2)
- IK Multimedia’s Miroslav Philharmonik was the cheapest orchestra library I could find to play with. (20131201 - £63 IK Multimedia’s Total Workstation XL Instrument Bundle)
- AuraPlug’s Freetortion California Sun is a nice thick amp/combo, but is starting to sound pretty artificial to me. Still good for tracking and doubling.
- Ignite Amps mostly for the bass tube amp, the SHB-1.
- Martin Eastwood’s MVerb is the best goddamn reverb for tracking that I’ve played with. I keep going back to it again and again. For bounce down I’ve moved on to ReaVerbate, I’m not sure why.
- Studio Devil’s British Valve Custom is much nicer guitar amp than the California Sun, but is a very specific sound. I use Revalver for other sounds.
- BlueCat Audio is a collection of FX. Most of what I need I can get from Reaper FX or elsewhere, although the Chorus stuff is nicer to use than Reaper directly.
- mda-vst is another collection of FX. Again I can get 99% from Reaper. I’m not sure I’ve used any of these in anger, but it’s nice to have options.
- Native Instruments makes a couple of different , a much really huge set of samples and presets and shizz, but the stuff I’ve bought (or gotten accidentally for free, like Revalver) is working just fine for me now. This is pretty heavyweight for what I really use.
All of this is running on a Mac Book Pro, under OSX.
Total cost of about £275 in software between 2011 and 2013. Plus any associated costs to get the Leap Motion controller and the Geco Midi up and running.
So the total software costs really are nothing compared to my current musical instrument collection of an electric guitar, an acoustic guitar, a bass, a set of Roland V-Drums and most recently a digital piano. So far this seems like a good balance in where the money goes.
I should remember that when I start freaking out about the cost of software.