TBProAudio is a class act, a great developer, and nice guy. His products are some of the most underrated plugins on the market, and he deserves a lot more attention. Worth anyone’s time to check out all his stuff. 
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Smart 14 year old. Good post. Keep it up! 
Have you looked at Squasher? Yes it’s a multiband compressor, but that’s not the main point. It can do upward compression, ie. rather than squash the loud stuff, it can lift low level signals, leaving the peaks alone. I experimented a while back with just a single broad frequency band and I got somewhere fairly close to Vocalrider.
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This is the bigger question that I think many of us have wrestled with over the years. I have tried to do what you are doing several times by getting rid of third party plugins… actually, many, many times. And if it’s actually possible to do it in any DAW, Cubase is among the very few DAWs with which you could pull this off.
For me, I will say I can’t seem to live such a puritanical plugin life. As good as the Cubase plugins are, I have ALWAYS gone back to using my favorite third party plugins, no matter how much I have vowed to the DAW gods upon Mount Olympus that I will stick with the bundled plugins. So if you succeed in your very difficult quest, you will be one of my heroes. I wish you well on your journey, may you have 100% success, and then I hope you can report back to this forum with your secret of how you did it.
(But just in case, may I suggest you don’t get rid of your third-party plugin licenses…)
Making music (as most art forms I can think of) has long included self-imposed restrictions for myriads of artistic reasons.
In my mental model, engineering choices and economic choices are much more subject to questioning and debate than artistic choices.
I’m filing the choice by @ChrisDuncan to “make music with Cubase just with stock plugins” in that general subjective artistic category.
Which is cool - because “why not?”.
I’ve tracked this thread from the beginning, because I think it’s an interesting artistic exercise - even though I’m a very enthusiastic user of 3rd party plugins and I don’t see that ending any time soon.
So @ChrisDuncan - you have my best wishes and if you feel like it, please share your experiences on this journey of yours either here or somewhere else, where we can follow (I’ve become an increasingly enthusiastic RSS fan to be able to conveniently follow an increasing number of small blogs, where individuals share interesting stuff they do).
I haven’t, but I’ll check that out. Thanks, man!
In fairness, a lot of why this works for me is the style of music I do. My studio is purely recreational, primarily for my own music and a few friends here and there. I don’t have to worry about catering to clients who are chasing the latest musical trends, and I don’t have to auto tune someone who can’t sing in tune as I would with a paying customer.
A lot of modern music is more about playing the computer than playing a musical instrument. Cubase has lots of tools for chords, scales, pitch correction, etc. to help people who don’t come from a background of playing a musical instrument and helping them make great music nonetheless.
It’s not better or worse than playing traditional instruments. It’s just a different art form. I think it would be difficult to produce this kind of music using only stock plugins. It’s certainly possible, but when the creative focus is on what the computer can do for you, then the most sensible approach is to avail yourself of all the processing plugins that you can get your hands on. They’re your instruments, no different than a trumpet or a Les Paul in traditional music.
The genres I write in are mostly acoustic guitar, classic rock, blues, rhythm & blues (think 1960s / 1970s, not “R&B” / hip hop), some piano and synth stuff and the occasional dalliance with orchestral instruments. In lieu of virtual instruments I have a Kronos, a Fantom and a JV2080 rack unit. For electric guitar I use a Kemper. (I did keep EZ Drummer, but frankly I could use stock Cubase for that as well.)
Most of my music involves playing a musical instrument, getting a good take and using the sound of the instrument as is. I don’t have to mic the drums, keyboards or the electric guitar, and what comes out of those units is already good quality. I mic the acoustic guitar and my vocals. If it doesn’t sound right I move the mic or try a different mic until it does. My approach to pitch correction is to delete the take and do it again, this time in tune.
At this point the individual tracks already sound like I want them to. Therefore, for my scenario mixing is just making sure that they play nice together, that frequencies aren’t masked or have too much of a build up, no phase issues, the panning is appropriate and it’s a good balance. Maybe a little compression to bring it together or make something sit in the mix, some reverb / delay, but not much else. The goal is to hear a good rendition of the performance. I guess to a degree you could say that I use Cubase as a glorified tape recorder. And you’d be correct.
Capturing a performance is a very different beast than using all the software tools at your disposal to create modern music. Even for pop songs performed with traditional instruments, the vocals are processed to within an inch of their lives, as are most other sounds. Everyone’s always looking for the next new audio gimmick (e.g. Cher’s Auto Tune thing back in the day) to set them apart. The variety and creativity of third party plugins are the life blood of these genres.
So sure, I can get away with going native where others can’t. What I’m doing just isn’t that complicated. And frankly, the time I’d spend screwing around with plugins would be better spent practicing my instruments.
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Nico,
I couldn’t agree more. I just wrote a longer post before seeing yours and yeah, that’s really the heart of it. For the style of music I do, this sort of minimalistic approach works. I’m not a virtuoso musician, and my music ain’t rocket science. It’s just simple, old school songs.
And yet, there are many others who do the same style of music as me, and they would never consider ditching their third party plugins because of the value they bring to the party. For them, the wide variety of tools is a benefit, and that outweighs the cost of any occasional software / licensing / computer hassles.
For me, having fewer tools and learning them better, along with less potential for computer adventures, is a benefit that outweighs the additional functionality I was getting from my third party plugins.
My perspective isn’t that everyone should do this, as I don’t think it would make sense for most people. Like you said, it’s just an artistic choice for my particular scenario.
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Whilst the technology side is mainly fun and quite important, isn’t the over-riding reason for making music to evoke a reaction in a listener? Be it happiness, sadness, compulsion to dance or to cry. Like the written word, it’s telepathy. We transmit an idea or emotion through the medium of sound from Point A to point B. Author to listener. The technology has never been the message, it’s the carrier. Having fun whilst creating isn’t a crime of course. Enjoying the power of DAWs and plugins is fine too, but the connection A to B is surely the most important and the most fragile thing? There’s no plug in, Waves or Cubase stock that can fix a missing link.
I agree with your perspective, but would add one additional element. There are a lot of musicians who don’t do it for the listener. They play purely for the joy of playing and never perform or share what they do with others. Of course, in this case you could consider them to be the listener, so you’re still correct.
However, when you’re talking about the joy of playing just for the sake of playing, it brings up an interesting point in this context. There are engineers who play zero musical instruments. Working on someone else’s song in Cubase or (heaven forbid) any other DAW is, for them, the joy of playing.
It’s the same with someone who produces modern music. Creating all these songs “in the box,” often with no traditional instruments and sometimes with no other humans involved is, for them, the joy of playing.
For people who take joy in fooling around with computer software for its own sake, the quality of their software / plugins is the quality of their instrument. And as all musicians know, it’s much more fun to play on a good instrument than a limited one.
Personally, I’m with you. For me, music is emotion. But I understand there are others who take joy in different aspects of the process.
Yeah. I experience that every time I have to spend all night screwing with my computer because something went sideways.
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You make good points. Of course I include originator as a listener and that’s perfectly good justification.
I come from a split background of musician from pre teens and engineer from around 18, so I move in all areas without a sense of division.
I have been professional since 1975 and seen a lot of changes. I focus on mixing more than track laying nowadays (ITB) and I mix to please myself. Fortunately that usually chimes with my clients’ needs. Returning to your initial question, I have Vocal Rider, but rarely use it. There’s one more Waves plug that I would really miss and for which there isn’t a Cubase native vst as far as I know. It’s the Aural Exciter.
Let us know if you find a solution.
I wonder how many of us are knowingly or unwittingly slaves to fashion and fad? I had cause to open an old CB9 project last week, and I was astonished at the huge list of plugins CB couldn’t locate! Stuff I can vaguely remember buying and installing but never got reinstalled on my new PC rig, set up last year.
I think I am more circumspect these days and don’t jump in for yet ANOTHER Compressor/EQ/Delay or whatever I see advertised, and I have ditched most of the Waves stuff on account of their update policy.
Two takeaways for me are, if these plugins were actual physical bits of kit I would be truly embarrased at the huge stack of unused boxes and the money spent on them … and the eternal note to self: Remember to export stems of every completed project!
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Great response, @ChrisDuncan ! Many good comments, many I agree with thoroughly, and you’ve made me reanalyze my own situation, thank you for that. And I think your distinction about genres and how your overall music making process goes, etc., is very very important. In my case, what I failed to mention and what I sometimes forget myself in my own deluded zeal to get rid of third party plugins, is that I use a bunch of different DAWs for different clients and projects too, so it adds another layer to my decision matrix that makes it very hard to get rid of third party plugins. It’s a long story, but yes, our situations are very different, and I think if I were in your shoes, I’d hopefully be able to make the big leap to plugin purity like you are doing.
In my case, I keep coming back to third party plugins for three reasons. The first reason is just pure efficiency. I know I COULD do 95%+ of my project in Cubase, or Studio One, or in fill-in-the-blank DAW, but when I need to get something done quickly and reliably with muscle memory, and since I use a bunch of different DAWs, I keep gravitating back to my core third-party plugins.
Perfect example is FabFilter Pro-Q 3 as my workhorse EQ (well in all honesty, lately I’ve been loving Sonible’s recent releases a lot lately too). But let’s say I have a project from a client and I know I need to do X, Y, Z things to EQ it, and while I KNOW I can do pretty much everything in Steinberg’s Frequency 2 EQ (especially now that it has dynamic EQ), I still reflexively reach for FabFilter Pro-Q 3 because I can get the job done a little faster. Pro-Q 3 has a few nice extra features I use too, but overall, there’s no CRITICAL shortcoming of Frequency 2… which I think is one of the best bundled DAW EQs of any DAW on the market. Kudos to Steinberg for it.
Now if I am working on a different project for a different client in Studio One, for example, it turns out that Presonus has ALSO bundled a superb EQ that also has dynamic EQ features… the Presonus Pro EQ3, obviously a direct response to Steinberg’s Frequency 2 and FabFilter Pro-Q 3. Truth is, all THREE of those EQs will do the job I need to do… but again, for efficiency, I’ll reach for FabFilter Pro-Q 3.
The second reason why I use third party plugins is as you said, for certain modern sound design and production techniques. I do a lot of sound design, and as a result, I think it’s delusional of me to keep trying to get rid of them, since it just makes no sense to do that considering the work I do.
The third reason I use third party plugins is because I just have to for a client project. I’ve been trying to reduce, simplify, minimize this whole process, but sometimes there is just that ONE plugin that a project needs, and then… zap, boom, bang, I’m using third party plugins again.
Basically, I’ll never escape it so I should stop wishing I can do it. 
In some alternate universe I’d be using all bundled plugins and probably feeling a lot less stress.
I think I’ve come to a constant love-hate relationship with all these plugins, when it sure would be nice to simplify my life. Alas, it won’t happen any time soon. So maybe I just envy you a little bit, that you area able to do it. You’re in a different DAW universe and it looks more peaceful over there from my current universe. And I hope you succeed, and kick those third party plugins to the gutter, and rise triumphant in your projects with only the bundled Cubase plugins… more power to you! Cheers!
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So. Damn. True.
Words for the wise.
Isn’t aural exciter basically top end distorting/saturating and widening? I mean maybe quadrafuzz could do similar since it’s multiband…
The Aural Exciter is (I think) unique, and the Waves emulation of the hardware is pretty good. Yes, there’s saturation/distortion involved, but it has a special dynamic character of its own that would be difficult (if not impossible) to do with stock plugins, so perhaps it’s a feature request for Cubase. It’s also one of the few remaining non-Cubase VST effects I still use, and yes, I would love if I could replace it with a stock Cubase plugin.
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Exciters subtly add odd upper harmonics resulting in air and sparkle. I think it’s a sidechain distortion added to the main signal so perhaps Quadrafuzz would work, but I find the Waves plug in to be entirely stable and I like the results, so that’s for someone else to try.
Another similar result is possible by using an aux to send to a 1/3 octave graphic equaliser with the slopes going from -12db to +12 db low to high and then blending some of that signal in. That could be done purely with stock plugs. Would need to be alert to phase issues.
I want to acknowledge that this was a trick I picked up from Phil Harding at The Marquee, London. in 1983.
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@Uarte, if I was in your position of working in multiple DAWs I’d probably do the same thing. Trusted third party plugins that you know well, like FabFilter, would be a constant across environments, and that’s doubtless a big productivity benefit. Much less work than learning how to do it native in each DAW.
And like @manassas77 , I’d rather not think of how much money is just sitting there unused. A year or so ago I did a purge of all my live sound and lighting, along with other gear, that I wasn’t using. I did my best to not think about how much I spent on it all.
That’s actually part of this experiment. It’s so easy to succumb to GAS and always be chasing after the next shiny object, because there’s always a next shiny object. I found I was getting caught up in acquisition and drifting away from the point of it all, which was to create music.
I had Waves Platinum, for example, and it was easier to let go of once I realized that I was only using maybe 5% of the plugins, if that. And they were always things like compressors, reverb, etc. that Cubase has. It turns out that I already have everything I need (okay, I wouldn’t complain if Cubase released a VR in 14), so I can quit acquiring and start enjoying what I have.
@Jari_Junttila , @MrSoundman, @Parrotspain - Yeah, I remember the Aural Exciter from the 70s. It’s always been its own proprietary kind of voodoo. This is a good example of something that would be neat to use, but something I don’t absolutely have to have in order to do a good mix. It’s part of my current mindset of focusing more on the basics than the icing on the cake. But again, what I do is exceedingly simple music, and essentially I’m just looking to document it, so to speak.
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I prefer to see myself as a “collector” rather than a “hoarder”. 
And that even includes projects using only Cubase/Nuendo internal plugins, since Steinberg has been known to discontinue some of theirs over the years.
I was watching a Dom video today on the new VocalChain plugin and noticed that it does in fact include an Exciter.
It seems like most of what’s in VC are embedded plugins that you can also use individually, but that doesn’t appear to be the case for the Exciter. It’s only in VC.
I’m thinking you could create a preset for VC that only has Exciter enabled, making it easy for you to use. I don’t know how it compares to Waves, but at least it’s there and it’s native.
Let me know if that works out to be a usable solution for you.
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