Stay away from the Deals forum below.
My plugin count has tripled since checking in there the last few months.
Bjorn

I've actually not upgraded a lot of my plugins this year, even though I've bought more this year than any other.

I've found that some clients are so well educated they sometimes ask you to use particular plugins. Have others found this? Especially Waves plugins, the name is so widely known that clients equate them with a well setup studio. Kind of like Pro Tools being perceived as the essential DAW. Especially for the younger guys that have grown up with computers and not seen the high end audio gear. For them Waves equate to the high end studio hardware. I admit that years ago when I got into digital, I had perceptions like that. I guess you get sucked up in the marketing hype.

Like a wise man once said;
"Maybe it's time to cut down on the VSTs"

Noel Borthwick [Cakewalk]
If you have the Waves suite you get around 600 plugins just from there :)
FWIW I've tested with over 1000 plugins and SONAR still does the startup scan in less than 5 seconds for me.

is this from a cold start (i.e., after a reboot of PC) or after Sonar has already been loaded previously with no PC restart?

I have 190. I know my way around them fairly well.

There are some, like Melda wobbler that I always think will be fun when I finally get to it, but I never do.

stevec
PS...  Looking forward to more CA-X amps, Craig.  Love 'em. 

I did a preview video for the Cakewalk folks...shhh...don't tell anyone. Who knows? It's pretty close to finished. Maybe it will come out in 2016...
 
 

 
 

I'm just reading this - I thought I was doing something with 170 I haven't even touched the tip of the iceburg in comparison with many....

Anderton
 

 

Can I run vox thru that Vox?

Soundwise
I'm amazed at how much can be achieved with Sonar built-in tools and bundled plugs. That's really inspiring. Thanks for sharing this video, Craig!

 
Thank you very much!!! The other new amp rounds out the high-gain amp collection with a very different tonality. It's not finished yet...but even though I'm not a huge high-gain fan, so far I'm finding it really useful.
 
BTW the "Al Green" amp that was requested in this forum last month is a long way from being complete (these things take time, the first group of CA-X amps took a year) but I haven't forgotten about it. Gets me in touch with my inner Wes Montgomery. 
 

 
And BTW...I realize this is way-OT, but...the way Wes got those "fat" octave sounds was he muted the two strings between the octaves and hit those as well as the octave strings. Your trivia for today...back to VSTs.
 

Anderton
[Wes Montgomery] muted the two strings between the octaves and hit those as well as the octave strings. Your trivia for today...back to VSTs.

Cool...is there a plug-in for muting strings as you play octaves?  

Soundwise

Paul P
This doesn't help for the freebies scattered all over the place, but do you really need them ?

You never know. Some free plugs are superior to paid for ones. 

I know this exact feeling. :)
 
Tried out TH2 a while back, didn't like it very much. Downloaded TSB-1, TPA-1 and Emissary from Ignite Amps as well as LePou's amp sims and cab convolver, bought some cheap IRs from RedWirez. Never looked back. Quality is amazing, probably the best (and cheapest) way to do guitar chain simulation. Cost me $40 CAD or so in IRs but the signal path to use them was free.

irvin
Thanks for the kind words. I feel we often don't get the best of the wonderful tools at our disposal. I'm 55, a 'veteran' of the music scene, going back to the 80's and tape machines. I went through the ADAT 'revolution' and my journey has made me very appreciative of all we have: it's a small marvel to think what products like Sonar and others I won't mention can get us for a very small price.

We can do far more in our PC than what the best engineers could do at the long-deceased multi-million Variety studios in midtown New York thirty years ago (young guys know about Pultec emulations, but nobody talks about the balls needed to do tape splicing on a 2" master - there was no Control-Z back then) The only thing the digital revolution has not made available to us is a nice recording room, but even the cheap microphones and audio interfaces are delivering great quality. All we need to enjoy this great era is to spend enough time learning our tools.

 
I could hang out with you Irvin!  

Looking forward to the new CA-X!
 

LpMike75
True story, I am terrified of upgrading my PC due to having to DL, update, re-register all of the plug ins.  I have no idea where some of them even came from at this point!  All those freebee deals over the years, who could resist?

 
I resisted upgrading to Windows 10 because I didn't want to wipe the drive clean and re-install everything from scratch, which was the recommended way to upgrade prior to Windows 10. However, with Windows 10 you can do an in-place upgrade, no need to wipe anything or start over. In fact when the upgrade was done and my desktop appeared, I was bummed because I thought the update hadn't worked - everything on the desktop was where I left it. But it had updated! 
 
Windows 10 has improved performance, works great with SONAR, and has some really useful features. The only complication was a couple times, Windows asked if I wanted to re-install a driver. So I clicked yes and all was well.
 
I haven't shaken out every single corner of my setup, but I have to say Windows 10 is the most painless OS upgrade I've ever experienced.