Producer Thoughts: When Buying Audio Plugins Is Lazy

With Black Friday deals only 39 days away I can hear the rubbing of hands at the sweet deals people are going to pick up. As a music producer, does this sound like something you’ve done before? 

You see a shiny new plugin from an audio manufacturer. The marketing copy sounds absolutely amazing. The demos sound so sweet. There’s a 40% off sale and you just know this thing is going to revolutionise your productions.

Myself, I’ve gotten those sweet deals and, like some pieces of hardware I’ve bought, I’ve embraced the new piece of digital kit with enthusiasm, used it a handful of times and then stopped using it.

The issue wasn’t that it was a bad plugin or that it wouldn’t have been helpful to my mixing workflow. The problem was me, I was lazy. How?

Didn’t Read The Manual

I didn’t spend time reading the manual and really understand the way the plugin works and the features it has. The developers have spent a lot of time working on it and I haven’t completed the most basic task to honour their investment. (Here’s a full post about not reading the manual)

Expectation VS Reality

This is the real kicker. There have been a handful of plugins that revolutionised my workflow. The reason I use most of my plugins daily is because I understand them and know how to get the sound in my head out into the mix through them.

A lot of the time I think we buy plugins because we are being a little lazy. We want the “magic box”, digital or hardware, to give us the missing ingredient in our mix. What we really need to do is put in the hard work, read the manual, dig in deep with the new plugin whilst we’re constantly upping our production and mixing game. (Don’t get me started on how you’re fighting a battle to mix a poorly arranged track).

The Takeaway: So as Black Friday looms, consider why you want to buy that bit of kit. Will it really solve all your problems? Maybe instead consider 3 things:

1. Is there something I’m genuinely missing from my set up. Not just another compressor/EQ that is slightly different than the others you have.
2. Are there bits of gear that will make your productions more unique or help you be more creative?
3. Will this bit of gear make your workflow more efficient so you can focus on creative stuff?