Free or Paid, which ones do you use most often or consider essential?

tone boosters plug in suite has some very nice plugins for saturation, distortion, bit crush, tape emulation, and reverb. i use them all the time for drums

the native instruments stuff is pretty great. i have komplete but i mostly use battery, massive, guitar rig, and fm8

emonizer is a great stereo widener for vocals

ferric TDS for tape emulation limiting and compression

there's just so many plugins out there that basically do the same things as each other. at the end of the day, you just gotta find some s*** that works for u

fruity soft clipper

Waves bundle is all you need, soundtoys

UAD plugins are some goat s***, can't believe I made music without them tbh

A***og Lab, Spectrasonics stuff for instruments
Effectrack, Valhalla bundle, some waves stuff (j37 tape, s1 imager), rc-20 for effects

Valhalla

Melodyne and Saturation Knob GOATED

Electrax
Nexus
Electrax
Nexus
Electrax
Nexus
Electrax
Nexus

Which ones specifically?

Patcher for sidechaining is Goated

good looks i’ll try it out

Serum

Vital (FREE VST)

Omnisphere

Serato Sample
Arturia Prophet
Arturia Solina
Kontakt

Synths: Vital, Omnisphere, Ableton Operator

Nectar 3
OTT
DimensionExpander
Ozone 9
Output Arcade
Ableton Drum Buss

Virtual Mix Rack by Slate, on pretty much every bus. the glue on Virtual Mix buss/channel is perfect for dry ass digital daws and replicates Neve mic preamps stupid nice. Some of my favorite saturators of all time in there too, and the FG-Stress comp which is fyyyyyreeee

Speaking of compressors, Goodhertz Vulf compressor is my absolute go to, best compressor of all time. I used to have to rig up my whole ass SP-303 and deal with rca cable hiss and chocablock ass cables everywhere, just for that beautiful madlib-ey Vinyl Sim. Well guess what playa, this plugin pretty much emulates it, better than any I've ever heard. Except with way more fine control. I throw this s*** on pretty much every single sound/melody, it's just a automatic liven up the sound knob

Soothe 2, its to the point now where I can toss one of my presets on any sound, turn a single knob, and by the end of the mix everything I threw it on fits absolutely perfect in every mix ever. s*** is truly bananas. (u can go a bit overboard with it tho, I'd keep everything at around -3db reduction max)

for mastering, Newfangled Audio Elevate is the greatest most transparent mastering and limiting plugin I have ever heard. not only that but u can do some STUUUUPID s*** with adaptive transients and adaptive release times to make literally anything slap even if the mixdown doesnt. most fine tuning controls i've ever seen in a limiter in my life

Kclip for all things clipping, just a perfect vst in my eyes

as for a***ysis type s***, Ben Schulz's Oszillo Mega Scope is the best oscilloscope on the planet, and Youlean Loudness meter is also the best I found to make sure your s*** at the right levels for Spotify/AM

Directwave flanger Grossbeat Fruity Philter
Hardcore