Am I sick? What's happening...

You're fine. Just coming to grips with "amazing new-itus". Everything is still progressing and getting better. But just how much better and in what ways better is the definitive question. Most times not much and few is the answer. Just keep having an objective eye on tomorrow and wait....just wait before pulling the trigger. I know it's hard. But you're already doing it.

I've been feeling that also...plus the lack of finances has been doing a fine 
job of helping at keeping the urge "at bay"...

Quite a bit of it comes from "just how many more eqs, compressors, verbs, etc... do I really need???"  I find myself now being drawn to only interesting instrument libraries and oddball fx processors.  I think folks, like Waves for instance, are well aware of the plugin market saturation and that's why they're continuing to have constant "no-brainer" sales and such.

yorolpal
Quite a bit of it comes from "just how many more eqs, compressors, verbs, etc... do I really need???"  I find myself now being drawn to only interesting instrument libraries and oddball fx processors.  I think folks, like Waves for instance, are well aware of the plugin market saturation and that's why they're continuing to have constant "no-brainer" sales and such.

Interesting as I am doing the identical things.
 
FWIW I find that Cakewalk's effect are pretty good once you learn the ins and outs about them.

Relayer is real good, totally agree with you. The step, tranz option is powerful. But my question is trying to look back at the psychology, physiology of what we are getting sucked into...
 
Can't speak for nobody but me.
 
Just seems that we are chasing the perfect sound without ever creating the perfect sound.
 
Needs may be totally different for a studio engineer versus a bedroom musician with a DAW and a bunch of plugs.
 
My testimony, though may not represent anyone here.
 
Back in the 70's, practiced 10 hours a day and cranked out mega volumes of stuff. Downstream effects were limited to a Ross comp, MXR distortion, noisy substand Ross delay. Inferior effects (minus the Ross comp), but had to produce because there were only so many knobs to turn and only limited time to chase sounds around.
 
UVI comes and had to just cold hard look at the bigger picture. Absolute feast of technological advancements. Cannot deny this.
 
Me only, hit a point of diminishing returns, not making my creative endpoint any better by buying another echo box.  Maybe missing something, but don't think so.
 
John

Wait, WHAT???  You haven't updated all things electrical to have gold/uranium plated connections?
 
All of those effects will sound lifeless, until you run your signal through a gold-plated something or another that also has a healthy dosage of uranium.  I'm TELLING you - your signal will POP!  Just get a hold of a decent Geiger counter and you will see what I mean - your signal will push that Geiger counter off the charts, without even playing a NOTE!
 
Yeah - at last count, I had nearly 900 effects, and I think I may (repeat MAY) have actually tried about 40 or so of them.
 
Ultimately, I fear it is the quality of the composition and the skill of the performance that just might be on par with the production addition of the latest and greatest console emulator.
 
When you realize how GOOD stuff from the 60's could sound, where everybody shared 4 mics into two tracks, and everything was bounced and rebounced and bounced some more.  When the Kinks recorded one of their most successful songs for something like $500.  Yup - I think if I put in as much time into the composition/arranging/performance of my material, it would go a lot farther than my hitting the 1000 mark on the number of effects I have.
 
But in the meantime - AAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH :)
 
Bob Bone