The last big purchase was Soundtoys 5 because I’m looking for saturation/distortion without using hardware. The overdrive on their EQ is subtle and excellent. A more recent small purchase is FFS Rhythmic Convolutions that my friend Jon got me into. It adds these interesting textures to your sound source. The effect varies greatly depending on what you feed it. They are impulse responses for whatever convolution reverb you are using

Effect Rack (prior to its standalone release) was used for Ray's vocals on "Old Town Road (Remix)", as stated by mix engineer Andrew "VoxGod" Bolooki in this August 2019 Sound on Sound interview.

Billy Ray Cyrus' verse lead vocal provides an example of the mind-boggling complexity of Bolooki's vocal treatments. The audio is spread over five tracks (36-40), four of them with the same insert effects chain of Melodyne, FabFilter Pro-Q 3, FabFilter Pro-DS and Waves CLA-76. The fifth track replaces the Pro-DS with the Avid ModDelay 3, and adds a send to the 'rvb2' aux with the Soundtoys Effect Rack. All five audio tracks are routed to an aux group track (35), which has the Pro-Q 3, Waves C6 and RVox, UA Distressor and SSL Channel, plus a whopping seven sends to delay and reverb aux tracks, and another Distressor aux. The quarter- and eighth-note delay auxes themselves each have four insert plug-ins (Waves H-Delay, Pro-Q 3, MetaFlanger, and DVerb) and a send to the 'rvb1' reverb aux. That means that the verse vocal alone has a total of 38 plug-ins, spread over five audio tracks, one group aux track, and seven aux effects tracks!

Bolooki: "I spoke to a mixer a couple of years ago and asked him how he got things to sound so polished. And he said: 'You can't just throw on a plug-in, you have to take more control, and make sure you purposely put things in different places in different ways.' So, for example, in this song I added the DVerb to the delay auxes, to create a distant effect, so it's not obvious. There are many effects going on, but none of them are overpowering. They are all set back. Nothing gets in the way of the lyrics and the vocal performance. I could probably delete half these effects and it would have sounded the same, but people liked it the way it was, so I left them all.

"This was the first time I used the UAD Distressors and I ended up having two on Billy's vocals: one as part of his main vocal aux, and another set much more aggressively in a parallel and blended back into the same lead vocal aux. This made his vocals really kick ass, and helped make each word crystal-clear. I also ended up copying the Waves SSL strip from Nas' vocals on some of Billy's vocal tracks too, just for some tonal continuity. I have no problem stacking plug-ins on plug-ins. If it's better, it's better.

"Just to highlight some of the other plug-ins I used, there's an aux called 'VoxDoubler' with the Waves Greg Wells VoiceCentric. It definitely adds a bit more of a finished feel and works well mixed in parallel. I put the Waves C6 multiband compressor on almost every single vocal bus, using the 'Pooch Vocal' preset. This cleans up some of the mud. You can solo the side-chain bands and sweep around until you find the annoying frequency, and then just cut that out. If I need to play back something for someone really fast, this is my emergency plug-in to get it to sound better really quickly. Also, the Melodyne plug-in is greyed out, because I printed it. I also like using the Pro-DS, and always put it before the CL76 compressor, because I think it just makes the most sense to fix issues before you boost the whole track with a compressor."

Key kit FabFilter Pro-R TAL-Dub Melda Production’s suite Soundtoys 5 Many UAD plug-ins iZotope Trash 2 and Mobius Filter u-he Zebra and Braille synths Numerous Spitfire libraries Numerous Soundiron libraries Omnisphere 2.5 Ohm Force Ohmicide Native Instruments Komplete

“I love the ARP 2600 plugin by Arturia, and Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig is very helpful, as is FM8. I can highly recommend the Soundtoys plug-ins, especially the delays."

In Magnetic Magazine, Sara states:

The money I spent on the Soundtoys suite remains the best money I've ever spent on plugins. I absolutely love this entire suite... I use many of these plugins on each element in both of these tracks, particularly the delays, which absolutely shine when used in a parallel processing chain.

Usually, artists only gush about software like this when they've been comped a license... so good on Sound Toys for getting this kind of quote from a paying customer. :)

As you can see in this interview around 3:12 you can see the Soundtoys Effectrack hiding behind the piano roll

In a livestream titled "FRIDAY LIVESTREAM - COLOR BASS in FL STUDIO 20," Nasko, at the 47:23 mark, goes through his effects plugins in FL Studio and selects his favorites. During this, you can see all 22 plugins of the Soundtoys 5 Bundle in his list.