Essential Plugins For Mid-Level Public Commercial Music Recording Studio NYC/LA/LON

[relaxo]

In 2012, what plugins are included in the category of “essential plug-ins for a mid-level commercial recording studio?”

The plug in requirements of a studio that survives off of a constant stream of visiting engineers and mixers is different than a studio with a set of in house engineers only. The “public” studio must have all the plugins that traveling engineers either EXPECT to see on the workstation and/or NEED to see and/or HOPE to see. The studio will likely be in a big music production city like Nashville, London, LA or NYC where hordes of visiting engineers is the way of life and let’s be honest, the workstation will be a Pro Tools DAW.

I’ve been running a medium level music recording studio for 8 years now in New York City where 50% of the sessions are with visiting, traveling engineers. Here is my list:

Bare Bones MUST have:
A larger Waves bundle (Mercury and Studio Classics Collection SCC is the best value)
Autotune
VocAlign
Drumagogg
CompressorBank - Filterbank
AmpFarm (or other top amp sim like Eleven. Most Amp sims are not quality enough for final tracks)
Altiverb
Soundtoys Collection

Bare Bones REALLY SHOULD have:
Focusrite d2+d3
Avid 1176 LA2A Reverb One Revibe Smack (all super cheap on ebay)
Massey L2007 (all Massey in fact because they're good and free or low cost, your choice.)

There are tons of others that really should be there if you have the money like Sonnex, other McDSP, Kontakt, VIs for drums, piano, synth, HEAT, Phoenix etc, URS collections, there are so many widely used plugins. This thread is for the MUST HAVES for a visiting engineer studio. (In this thread I am not talking about a top level studio where money is less of an obstacle and where ALL the common and popular plugins should be found.)