I suggest we all gather together to discuss this over a cold pint ( or a 40 in my case), and I am buying!!
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I’d like the idea to have a google spreadsheet, where we list all our plugins, report plugins that do not work on all systems and also add a note about the CPU usage. This would be very helpful I guess. If not someone else will do it, I’ll as soon as I have some freetime… 
I just purchased Ravenscroft 275. A lot of tweaking was needed especially on dynamics and eq, but now I’m very happy with it. It’s not a big hog…but if you do a lot of sustain playing, it will increase the usage … but this is the case on any sample based instrument.
BTW: I do not differ from small and big gigs. I run the same sounds on both. Why should I use less good sounding plugins on a less good sounding PA? Doesn’t make sense to me. I try to give the FOH the best sound, which I’m able to produce. The rest is up to him.
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Hi Christian
While I agree on not differing sounds much between gigs, I don’t know your experiences, I can only speak to what I experience, and what I have seen. There are many gigs where there is no FOH. There are many gigs where only vocals are run through the small PA. I perform with many different people, with many different tastes and styles. Example: this past week…Wednesday I played a duet in a small venue. It was mostly an acoustic set with an acoustic guitar and me on a 61 key controller. Everything ran through a small PA which equated to 2 monitors and a very small powered mixer. I used a nice piano in stereo with a stereo pad. Nothing elaborate, just background music…Thursday I played in a 4 piece band atop The Peabody Hotel for a huge wedding reception for several hundred people. Had FOH, huge PA, played many different styles which required many varied sounds that needed to load quickly, and randomly. Friday I played with a 3 piece, and Saturday with a different 4 piece in a medium size clubs… Both used a different PA for vocals only, and I played through an amp. Many songs were random, not in the set list. A 20 gig piano will not serve me any better than a 2 gig piano, especially through a small amp. I need one that can cut through the jumbled mix, and through much trial and error, found the highly sampled plugs don’t always work in some bands, or in some venues. If I were playing in one band, always with FOH, with strict set list, I would have no problem using the same plugs. Just my 4 cents.
BTW…like the spreadsheet idea !
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WARNING - Be careful not to come to conclusions before applying Glitch free chapters 4 and 5. The only plugins that still pound the cpu after chapters 4 and 5 is Waves Element 2 and Codec. No fix for cpu heavy useage for those.
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Hi Corky,
thanks for taking the time to write about your work.
I work as a professional musician here in Germany. That said: Gigs without FOH are very very uncommon. So I may be in a different situation. But still I don’t really get your point: For me it doesn’t matter if the piano has 20g or 2g. The most important thing is, that you can hear it But the piano especially is the most difficult sound in a live situation in my opinion.
I share your experience, that (to be honest most of them) vsts are not made for live use regarding EQing and compression. But I made the exact same experience with a kronos and a montage. Most of the sounds are sounding wonderful if you use headphones and play for yourself. But as soon as you jump into a band-environment, it sounds dull, unresponsive and unclear.
Anyway: Since I did invest in very good inear-monitoring I don’t have that problem anymore. If you know how it has to sound to cut through, it’s quite easy to eq and compress the sound in that way. And this doesn’t mean that the sound is not working as solo-instruments anymore.
I do not change my sounds due to other venues… this is simply not my job. It should be covered by the FOH (if available) to adjust the whole band, that everything sounds well enough. But as always: Shit in, shit out. The mixer is not a sewage work
If you are interested, we could open another thread covering this topic. I found it interesting how other people work. We shouldn’t hijack this one
Hi Torsten! Do Addictive Keys acoustic pianos sound good in mono, or is there a good mono preset?
Thanks!
No problems at all in mono for me. YMMV, though - depends on your (virtual) mic configuration. But to my ears the samples work well in mono; no unpleasant phase effects.
You get around all mono/stereo issues by just selecting one mono mic in the Addictive Keys config. I use more than one (player perspective stereo pair plus some direct “under-the-hood”) and it still sounds good in mono, though
Cheers,
Torsten
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Here is a start for one with some fields I considered useful.
VSTs and VSTis lean on CPU usage (And NOT!)
Anyone with the link can edit.
Feel free to doctor it up - I’m a primitive when it comes to spreadsheets!
Terry
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Great! There’s a 50% discount sale, so I’ll get the Studio Grand (and maybe also the Upright).
Thanks!
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I like the upright a lot. It has a lot of character.
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Indeed, the soundman is God. The larger concerts I have played, I try to befriend the soundman. Of course, for the larger shows, the company doing sound was hired because they were good already. No need to befriend those guys. They know that they are good.
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I know that’s right!!! BTW…I created a new topic at the suggestion of @FantomXR so we wouldn’t be hijacking Terry’s thread, because Hogitis is a good subject.
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Nice work Terry, good to start the ball rolling. I wonder if we should also have a field for how the plugin is licensed - free, iLok, serial, free etc.
Neil
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I made some changes yesterday on the spreadsheet but it seems that they were not overtaken 
feel free to adjust the list! Everyone can edit. 
We should add a coloum which tells us if the plugin runs stable. This should be confirmed by at least three members.
Just added “iLok/eLicenser, Serial or Free?” and “Number of Authorisations Permitted” as fields.
Terry
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What do you mean? Your changes disappeared???
Terry
Ah, no! My smartphone didn’t view the changes. But my macbook does
But what do you mean by Rating?
You mean “Rating - XtraLite/Lite/Medium/Getting Heavy/Really Heavy!”
Well, I was thinking it could be a one-word indication of how light or heavy on the CPU it was. Perhaps should call it something else. Like “Score” or something? (Went with changing it to “Score” for now…)
Terry
Unless we establish a baseline I don’t think that’s useful. What seems light on one person’s system could be medium or even heavy on another’s system.
It’s more work but perhaps plugs could be compared to some free VST? Or three of them? Something “medium” I guess, we could even prepare a comparison rack. Then you could say “heavy” if it’s more than 5% CPU heavier than the baseline and “light” if it’s more than 5% lighter.
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