In Short
It’s easy to dismiss stock plugins, however there are reasons that professionals choose to use them. They offer continued compatibility, are often system resource friendly, and more than anything, can hold their own against premium versions… with a couple of exceptions.
In Depth
Compatibility
When you are working on professional projects there are two things to keep in mind. One of the criticisms of digital audio production is the lack of consideration we sometimes give to archives and backward compatibility. You may need to open the session you are working on at a later date to make changes. In some cases this can be decades later. Stock plugins are usually compatible for decades, as their core code remains the same, even if there are updates to deal with when OS or DAW get updates. It’s nice to think you can open an old session and many of the plugins still work.
Secondly, a lot of professionals pass sessions around a workflow, especially in post. It can be a real pain in the ass to open a session and find there’s a load of plugins used that you don’t have. In some cases this can change the whole sound of the session. At this point you either need to request for the audio to be printed with effects or buy the missing plugins, that’s not a good option for a professional.
Stock plugins often mean sessions are compatible for years.
Optimisation
The second reason some professionals choose stock plugins is that they are often far more efficient than their paid-for counterparts. In some mix sessions, especially in large post mixes, you’ll find hundreds of instances of EQs and compressors across the channels, all doing necessary jobs.
A mixer wants to know that they won’t run out of either DSP or native processing power.
A lot of third party developers work hard to optimise their code, but some don’t and it doesn’t take long before a plugin or two is bringing a system to its knees. We know of entire forum threads asking how to get more instances of some plugins on systems that can’t handle the CPU load.
Another thing to mention is that in Pro Tools, the DAW most likely to be found in post houses and many large studios, even if mixers run out of DSP power, many of the stock plugins (and some third party plugins) can jump over to native versions, and vice versa. This is another reason some mixers use stock plugins.
Some audio professionals are sitting on expensive bricks that used to power DSP plugins that are no longer made or supported.
Sound
A third reason many professional mixers use stock plugins is that they sound great. A recent audio blind test showed that it was difficult for professionals to tell the difference between premium plugins and their stock counterparts. Furthermore, some of the alternatives require third party DSP processing to use, for example the UAD ecosystem needs cards or interfaces.
It can be easy to write off stock plugins and think that because they come free with the DAW you buy that they can’t be very good. Many of the plugins found in Pro Tools, Logic Pro, Studio One and Cubase are excellent, finding their way on countless records, movies, and TV shows over the years.
Listen to our Experts talk about this on a recent podcast about stock plugins.
So Stock All The Way?
Well no. There’s a couple of areas where stock plugins are either not supporting certain processes, or are just no match for the premium counterparts.
Two clear examples of this are, specialist audio processing plugins, such as noise reduction. This is being pioneered by brands like iZotope with RX, ACON Digital, or Waves. Clever phase trickery found in plugins like Sound Radix Auto Align and Auto Align Post. There are many other plugins made with one specific purpose in mind. It’s a long list when you start to think about it.
The second area is reverb. There’s some nice stock reverb plugins, but put them up against reverbs from brands like LiquidSonics or Valhalla and you soon realise there’s a huge gap in quality. Good reverb algorithms aren’t easy to write.
Summary
For bread and butter work, especially areas like EQ, compression and limiting, it’s worth considering the stock plugins that come with your DAW, after all, what have you got to lose?
If you’re thinking of spending money on plugins, then choose wisely, you may already have the plugin you need sitting on your system.
As we’ve said, there are still some areas where you’ll need to invest in a third party solution, but for everything else stock plugins can pack a punch.
What are some of your favourite stock plugins?