Definitely a hard question, have a few favorites personally:

- Omnisphere is probably the plugin i'd pick if i had to choose my absolute favorite. it come with pretty much every synth engine you could imagine, and the modulation capabilities are second to none IMO. theres also literally thousands of amazing presets & soundsources by Eric Persing and his team over at Spectrasonics. (plus, it comes packed with a bunch of the classic sample CDs they made back in the day.) it's literally a dream plugin, and i've used it an almost all of my compositional work since getting it. there are some flaws to it though, mainly the UI. i dont think its as bad as many others say, but it can still be a pain in the ass to make more complicated sounds because of how the whole thing its structed. plus, it takes up a lot of storage space, i have to keep my copy on a seperate external drive. =_=

- Arturia V Collection (plus Analog Lab) is always a staple in a lot of my projects, there's just such a huge variety of both old & new stuff to play around with. got recreations of all the classic synths from Moog, Roland, Korg, Yamaha, etc. (including stuff like the B-3 Organ & Clavinet) along with newer original stuff like the Minifreak & Minibrute. i like making my own presets in them, but if I just want to browse presets, the included Analog Lab comes with a bunch of cool ones. only thing is that, like Omnisphere, it relies heavily on samples & takes up a bunch of storage space.

- Roland ZENOLOGY is great for more bread-and-butter sounds. not as many cool sound design capabilities as the other two, but Rolands team always makes super good presets, so its not that much of a bother. very reminiscient of reFX's Nexus to me, if i just need to get shit done quickly, it comes with all the essentials i need ready to go. some people think it sounds pretty cheese, but i disagree. theres a lot of really good stuff on it that still works in modern productions (but if old-school Roland cheese is what you're going for, don't worry. it comes with all the classic presets from the JV/XV series, alogn with some soudns from other classic synths by them)

- Phaseplant by kiloHearts is a semi-modular digital synth thats perfect if you're really into sound design. comes with wavetable, virtual analog, FM, sampling + granular, the works. also you can use all the other kiloHearts effects plugins inside of it to really get create. im pretty sure you can literally have an infinite number of modulation sources/outputs going on, but even if im just misremembering, i never found a limit to how much shit you can modulate in it. you can basically connect anything you want to anything else, and its great to get come real cfrazy sounding shit out of it. if you're into Vital i think you'd love Phaseplant as well!

- E-MU Emulator X3 is probably one of the most under-rated plugins i own. its biggest flaw is definitely the audio quality, as all the sounds have a pretty low sample rate, but if you can get past that its AMAZING for those 90s/early 2000s style sounds. you can find banks with all of the old E-MU ROMpler patches for it online if you look hard enough (pretty sure you can find them on this sites resources as well? idk its been a while since ive installed it) and it also has a bunch of cool original ones. while it probably has the worst UI out of all of them IMO, the presets are so good you don't really need to go further into designing your own sounds (plus its still learnable if you can take the time to delve through the manual). basically, if you're looking to make some old-school shit, its the perfect plugin. <33

Serum by Xfer forever<3

ChowDSP's BYOD distortion patch thingy, there are lots of modules to mix and match so you can always make some crazy noises with it

All Arturia V collection and Pigments. Microtonic, Permut8. And I love Ableton stuffs and some max for live, so creative.

For the E-MU ROMplers, yhea there is on the site resources.

Synths:
SurgeXT subtractive, wavetable, audio in, bunch of quirky oscillators, FM, per voice osc drift, a lot of filters, fuck-ton of modulation, fuck-ton of effects. If it's too ugly, just get a skin from the skin database.
Vaporizer2 subtractive, additive, wavetable, sampler, mod matrix.
These two beat the crap out of serum.

FX:
Anything airwindows. But to name a few.
X-series filters: Super dirty
Z-series filters: Extra dirty
Pocketverbs: Multialgo reverb
Matrixverb: Metallic reverb
Galactic series: Long ethereal reverb
DeRez series: Multiple flavors of sample reduction and bit crushing

Any XP-era ROMpler VST really.
So EMULATOR X3, Edirol stuff, Hypersonic 1/2, RAVITY/PURITY, etc.

literally anything by Plogue. i have thrown out all my other FM synth vsts since PortaFM and OPS7 came into my life, and i have ghosted the fuck out of C700 ever since Chipsynth SFC dropped. i use Chipcrusher in everything, and Chipspeech is such a slept-on voice synthesis plugin.

Cableguys Shaperbox because its Gross Beat on crack, and cuz i discovered it before Infiltrator lol

AAS Lounge Lizard is a great electric piano sound. RealGuitar and RealStrat are the guitar plugins i never knew i always needed. Addictive Drums is good, i dont care or give a fuck. IK Multimedia dissapoints me most times but i love their Hammond B3 emulation. Purity has like. 5 presets i use in every other song i make, and even tho Xpand and Korg Triton and Hypersonic 2 and Sound Canvas and all the other rompler vsts are way better... i still be using that shit!

RC-20, Inphonik RX950, Spectre, AIR Flavor Pro and Chow Tape are invaluable to my workflow because they add that gritty sound my old SP-404 had but without the headache of a workflow! (fr, i dont get how DOOM, Dilla and DJ Harrison even used that shit fr)

Cherry Audio made one of my favorite Memorymoog emulations, and i like their Minimoog emulation more than Arturia's!

Glow is a dope 80's style digital/gated reverb for that Prince/electro-funk drum machine sound, and Wasted Space is an excellent lo-fi 80's digital reverb. i know theyre both vintage emulations or whatever but idk vintage analog effect gear like that.

Falcon and Kontakt are great, uh.... sample library hosts? i like their stuff. Falcon moreso cuz i dont have to pay (lol) to update the shit evert 2-3 years like an iphone just cuz a cool new Kontakt library dropped and i want it.

woulda put Waves' dbx-160 here but apparently you gotta pay for that shit yearly so fuck em! UAD got better shit anyway.

tbh... I don't feel like giving the same very valuable effort and descriptions everyone gave, but;

iZotope Ozone 11:
- Imager, Limiter, Dynamic EQ, and just the whole Suite is AMAZING for mixing/mastering

Xpand!2:
- amazing synth vst, I've had it since I was gifted my first M-Audio midi keyboard, just a great slew of high quality presets and instruments for ANY genre

Blackbox Analog Design by Brainworx:
- Saturator / Tube processor that I use on almost everything. great on vocal bus, instrument bus, master bus, etc.
- I used the real hardware while mastering one of my projects and fell in love with/ it, the emulator/official VST version is affordable on pluginboutique

bananalizard said:

Shaperbox is a top notch plugin for people who hate automation (like myself!)

Lounge Lizard is one of the only purchases I really regret, though, cause I end up using either AIR's Velvet for its versatility or Arturia's Stage-73 V for its smooth sound.

And also, Cherry Audio's Minimoog isn't bad. It has pretty good presets, but I'm just not the biggest fan of its UI.

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lowkey.... i wanna check out AIR's Velvet just to see what im missing. i was already thinking about checking out DB-33 cuz i need a quick, low-CPU hammond organ sound and NI's b4-ii isnt compatible with my modern systems. everything by Arturia is great tho. if im feeling like i need the realism for the arrangement, ill put an Arturia on it. other than that, i feel like Lounge Lizard is super versatile and quick when i need a EP or Wurli sound.

also, something i didnt mention.... Serato Sample. probably the most goated sampling plugin ever. ever since i discovered it, ive been questioning how i was even able to sample stuff before. i make a lot of sample based music like Boom-Bap, French House and Future Funk, so Serato Sample is a welcome addition to my arsenal. shame its so expensive now. wish i had bought it back when it was only 99. imma stay on that unlimited free trial for now then lol ;)