VSTs I like
I thought it would be fun to go over a selection of plugins that I pretty consistently use on most of if not all of my tracks. The music I make is often fast, loud, and distorted breakbeats so keep in mind they might not work for your own sound etc etc etc. I'm not gonna include the ones everyone knows about (Serum, Kontakt, Pro-Q) because who cares.
Also shoutout to Unplugred's VSTs. I havent used these yet as I'm in the process of moving my setup but I've heard great things and they look very nice. Might end up replacing some bits I use currently!
Sampling
Amigo
Lovely little sampler with a lot of breakbeat specific features included. The built in bitcrush gives off a nice 90s vibe and the timestretch feature is suuuper AKAI-like. The pitch shift if fun to play with too.
Synthesis
Portal
This thing has some crazy presets, you can really just make anything from this. I like throwing vocal samples into this and transforming them into something fun and weird.
Distortion
Devastor
I abuse this plugin heavily. It's a really nice way to quickly transform the profile of a sound with its presets and has a fun almost analogue sound to it. To be honest, I throw this on first in a lot of cases and then fine tune from the presets which sounds sick on amens and pads.
CamelCrusher
You probably know about this one, its a bit of a classic. I find myself throwing this on my bass and even my kicks sometimes to saturate and get a dirtier sound from them. This thing is kind of old and unsupported on mac through so I'd really like to find an alternative im satisfied with. lmk if you have one :)
Reverb/delay
Toraverb
This is usually my reverb of choice. I really do like the Vallhalla reverbs (especially Vintage Verb) but this thing comes with so many good presets that to me its faster to get the sound I want out of it. It also has a more raw quality to it I think, I dunno how to define that though so idk.
Freq Echo
Trippy echo delay where you can shift the frequencies about, its a lot of fun. I've also found that setting the feedback high and resampling it can net you some nice sounds (use a limiter pls).
Tekturon
Another D16 thing, this one is a multitap delay where you can delay select frequencies by different amounts. Honestly I dont really get how it works because I just tweak the presets but you can really do a lot with this
Other stuff
Crystallizer
I think this is like, a delay with some pitch shift. Sounds really cool whatever this is especially on some super washed pads to get some neat harmonics.
Ampbox
Multi FX vst with a nice sounding amp sim. I use this for my bass guitar tones and sometimes my synths.
Kilohearts Tape Stop
Look it's cheesy I know but I cant resist sometimes. This lil tape stop plugin does it's job well. You can tweak the start/stop times and draw stuff in with automation to fine tune it.