The Plugins I Stopped Missing
Hey friends,
About a year ago I made a decision that felt slightly reckless at the time. I moved the Ableton Push 3 Standalone into the center of my live setup, which meant leaving the laptop behind — and with it, every VST I had spent years collecting.
The thing I didn’t expect
What I expected was to feel limited. What actually happened is that I started using Ableton's own devices properly for the first time.
Not because they were better than what I had lost, but because they were what I had. One evening with Operator taught me more than two years of loading presets ever did. I found out that Hybrid Reverb covers most of what I had been using three separate plugins for. But I owned all of this already. I just never bothered, because there was always something newer sitting one folder away.
Where the native devices stop
They do not do everything, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. There are things Ableton's stock devices genuinely cannot do, and that is where Max for Live came in.
That search turned into a habit. Over the past year, five devices have earned a permanent place in my sets: Sting 2 by Iftah, Dyad and Retur by Fors, the Brain Recordings collection by Emiliano Pennisi, Celestine by IJO Audio, and the GMaudio Clipper.
What I would tell my past self
It would not be "buy fewer plugins." It would be this: before you go looking for a new tool, spend one honest evening finding out whether the thing you already own can do it. Most of the time it can. And the times it genuinely cannot, you will know exactly what you are looking for, which makes the search short instead of endless.
I made a full video walking through all five devices, in case you would rather see them working than read about them. And I am still hunting. If you have a Max for Live device that changed the way you play, I would love to hear about it.
Stay creative,
Milan
P.S.: My patrons get every video a full week before it goes public, and that support is what makes it possible for me to spend a year finding this stuff instead of rushing something out. If you want to come along for that, you can join at https://www.patreon.com/kvndra
