Over the holidays I got another DAW with some great addons.  Another VST synth, more Kontakt libraries, loop libraries, more effects.  I haven't even auditioned a lot of these yet.  I got some real monitors for $3 a month.  Plus 3 DAW upgrades.
 
 One of these days I may actually do a project instead of buying stuff.  My so called last purchase was yesterday. 
 
 I am starting to avoid $1 plugins.  As long as Plugin Alliance keeps giving vouchers I will buy.  I have a love/hate relationship with IK policies.  With Waves I only buy duplicates for the other machine and with other developers allowing more than one machine it's easy to hold off. I broke my vow not to get Spire since I don't need anymore synths. 
 
 I'm no longer impressed with price/gigabytes ratio (London Strings). That seems to change when it comes to loop lbriaries. I've gotten better at laying off those great deals from ADSR with their megapacks. I only bought two this time.
 
 The best holiday deal had to be the Samplitude Pro bundle.  Image that as your first DAW with all of the addons.
 
 Very surprised Propellerheads allowed a discount on the Reason upgrade.
 
 Good deals still out there
Time+Space - AAS instruments under $70 using BP.
Frozen Plain - complete bundle $174
 
 It's still hard to take in the closing of Cakewalk. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

ya I just got done going over my bills for the stuff I bought.....looks like Ramen Noodle soup all month for me. I'll survive but man this month is going to be tight....NO MORE STUFF !!!!!

Guys,
 
Bleed with you on this with every publisher out there fishing for your credit card number..
 
Some of the brightest of the groundhog day sales IMHO is with the Air music folks.
Good grief... They got Xpand for free. Vacuum Pro and Hybrid 3 for a dollar apiece.
 
Cheap thrills that won't be cheap for too much longer. Beautiful no brainer machinery.
 
John
 

It's just a hangover. Give it a week or two and you'll be right as rain.

I was very proud of myself this year! Resisted many things, no credit card purchases, only a couple of things from the PayPal which is all income from music so it's my play money to spend on my studio. It helps that I have so much already from being less controlled in previous years, but at a certain point you have to just say, seriously? What more do I need to make music? Not a whole heck of a lot. Bread and butter processors? I'm swimming in them. Mastering? Between Ozone and T Racks (not even the newest - neither tempted me enough to upgrade) I am pretty covered. Synth/samples/loops/presets? Please. My hard drive overfloweth.

The Cakewalk debacle did force me to do some Daw research and I ended up with a few new things but all of them quite reasonable - upgraded Reason which I wanted to do anyway, finally pulled the trigger on Reaper which is blowing my mind, picked up Mixbus for almost nothing just for kicks, am now taking a look at Waveform which is piqueing my interest because the promo price is pretty silly and it looks like they've come a very long way recently.

For plugins... I upgraded the Melda free bundle at half price because that's crazy value for a great suite of B&B plugs and they deserve a bit of support for it (and I was tired of looking at the nag strip). I''m going to start supporting Airwindows via Patreon for much the same reason. Ditto the OP re Plugin Alliance and their crazy coupons - my Unfiltered Audio collection is nearly complete, I do have a soft spot for oddball innovators like that.

But other than that... No Insane Bundles for me this year, no matter how crazy they seem. I checked out Samplitude, it's definitely powerful, but I just didn't click with it, same for Studio One. Reaper is just more my speed and I like that I'll literally never get a promotional email from them - just updates. Cubase is on my no fly list because of price and dongles. I'm done with expensive upgrades - at least until iZotope or Arturia makes me an offer I can't refuse...

This year I'm going to get productive and use my time and energy creating music instead of checking out software. And save up some money for the next time something seems really important. That's my one and only resolution.