Inside the Studio – How many plugins do we “need” for a mix?

I don’t know about you, but between my Waves, Universal Audio, Plugin Alliance, Slate Digital and iZotope subscriptions, I have hundreds of plugins on my machine—and that doesn’t include the non-subscription plugins from FabFilter, Antares, Avid, SSL, etc.

Truth be told, I currently have more than 600 items in my plugins folder. There is really no justification for this, yet there they are. I keep telling myself that one day, I’m going to experiment with a bunch of them, find some new gems, and change my workflow and while that does happen in small doses, it still never gets close to justifying them all.

Back to the original question: What do we need? While I can’t speak for you, I can tell you what I use daily. More so than brands or specific plugins, it’s really about what types of processors I have to have and why?

The answer, not surprisingly—or perhaps surprisingly, seeing as my plugin folder is overflowing—is not that many.

So, let’s explore; first up: Compression.