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• 27 Dec, 2025 *

I started music production to create ambient DnB two years ago, and I feel it’s like p2w game. There are many ways to create the desired sound and someone says, "you can do it without VSTs", but I can confidently say good VSTs can help you not waste your limited time.

However, picking good VSTs are sometimes hard even with demos available. You might find flaws or feel unsatisfy after buying them.

I hope this list proves useful to someone.

• Instruments

• Roland XV-5080 https://www.roland.com/jp/products/rc_xv-5080/

• Someone says "CPU burn" but no problem in my PC.

• Adam Szabo Airwave https://www.adamszabo.com/vstplugins/airwave/

• Best JP-8080 emulator in my opinion.

• Korg Trinity https://www.korg.com/us/products/software/kc_trinity/

• Bought to try to create the ambient pad sounds.

• Why no sync option in effect LFO?

• LennarDigital Sylenth1 https://www.lennardigital.com/sylenth1/

• Old, bad preset browser, but good sounds

• Xfer Records Serum 2 https://xferrecords.com/products/serum-2

• Feels promising at first impression.

• Lives up to its reputation as a "modern synth" with countless presets on Splice.

• But I noticed it sometims makes saving the project slow by 1-2 seconds.

• XLN Audio XO https://www.xlnaudio.com/products/xo

• Good drum sampler with a decent quality of expansion pack.

• Effect

• Soundtoys Effect Rack https://www.soundtoys.com/product/effect-rack/

• Effect Rack is quite enough and there’s no need to buy the "Soundtoys 5" collection.

• Decapiator is a good saturator.

• Voxengo plugins https://www.voxengo.com/

• TEOTE, Tube Amp, Peakbuster, Elephant

• Valhalla plugins https://valhalladsp.com/

• Shimmer, Supermassive, VintageVerb

• W.A.Production Deres https://www.waproduction.com/plugins/view/deres

• Cheap but powerful for "De-Resonance"

• Free

• Airwindows Consolidated https://www.airwindows.com/vsts/

• Some good effects for bass

• Native Instruments Raum https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/effects/raum

• Xfer Records OTT https://xferrecords.com/freeware

• Tokyo Dawn Labs Prism https://www.tokyodawn.net/tdr-prism/

• Kilohearts plugins https://kilohearts.com/

• Compactor, Trance Gate, etc.

• Don’t buy it if

• it has unnecessary complicated ui or visualization like 3D something

• found bad reputation in forums

• no demo version available

• AI slop

Probably I won’t write "VSTs not worth buying" because there are too many.