Wondered if people had suggestiions for good plugins for trailers specifically, so hits, risers, fx.
Would be good to see some suggestions on stuff 
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Great question Ben, and I’m sure many of the composers in here are getting into, or focusing on the trailer music side of the industry (as it is very lucrative hehe). 
Risers/Whooshes/Transitions
- Rise & Hit by Native Instruments
- Gravity by Heavyocity
- Omnisphere for custom sound design transition sounds and risers
Impacts/Booms/Hits
- Any library by KeepForest for impacts & hits (Atlantica, Dragon, Viking etc.)
- Gravity has my favorite Sub Booms, Low Impacts
- Damage for metallic and “destructive” hits
Drones & Pads
- Omnisphere is my main plugin for all things atmospheric
- Alchemy (Logic plugin) is another great for ambience/pads
- Dronar Master Edition for Drones (no question)
- Forzo and Novo for Organic/Cinematic Pads
Those are the ones I could think of right now, I’ll add to the list if I can think of any more. Looking forward to hear more suggestions, as my toolbox always needs to expand lol
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Wow! This is a lot of stuff! Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of space on my computer
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I have external USB-drives for all my libraries. I can really recommend that. If you can afford it, get SSD-drives because it makes a huge difference in loading speed and computer performances.
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Thanks Mikael! So I can buy them in any computer store, right? I am not familiar with this stuff. And it is very helpful as I am really out of space on my pc because I just downloaded the full version of Kontakt.
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Yes you can Julia, the SSD drives are more expensive than “classic spinning disc drives”, but it is so worth it.
Samsung T5 is a popular external SSD, which is very good and reliable.
PS. I recommend having a dedicated backup drive too. That one can be one of the slower “classic drives” as long as it is big in space (Many Terrabytes of storage).
Yo @Mikael! I see you mention Omnisphere as your go to for all things atmospheric. What patches if you dont mind me asking? I spend a lot of time making atmospheric stuff from scratch. Sometimes I wanna just press a note and play something cool lol
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Depends if I am looking for pads, more ambient textures, or noisescapes.
I particularly love the category “soundscapes playable”, I think it is called.
But let me give you a bonus tip.
The best feature in any plug-in ever: sound match. Pick any preset that you kind of like, then use sound match to call up a list of similar sounding presets.
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Also, since I am so used to Omnisphere, I can edit presets with Soundesign to my liking very fast.
And of course there is the audio import feature which is so incredibly inspiring to create your own atmospheric sounds or whatever you want. :
Mike listed a lot of my favorites! Here are some others I use frequently:
-Collision FX by Sound Yeti (due to the massive variety of content, this is my go to for different non-tonal trailer FX)
-AVA Instinct
-Instant Sonics Silver Screen Toolkit
-Audio Imperia libraries (Scenes from the multiverse, event horizon, shredders, etc.)
-VSTBuzz Legendary.
I will check my pc tomorrow and report if I have any more that I am forgetting!
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Hey, totally got a load to say about this.
So strings wise I’d say Albion one would give you the welly you’d need, but douplicate this with a solo or ensemble library. I use Albion one and studio strings by spitfire. This way you get the huge sound with the detail that’s required.
Percussion. Action hits, Damage, all of the heaviocity stuff, Zimmer percussion and a half decent cymbal library (preferably with metal hits)
Horns. Totally subjective but fortzo sounds amazing and it’s basically great out of the box. I use ocean Atlantic’s for the low brass sound (which is actually a synth) but is totally what sound you need for this style. Again, spitfire Albion one does a decent job too but they’re a bit tame and have a top mid range thing that needs EQing out.
Piano. I mainly use NI’s the giant, Alecias keys and soft piano from Spitfire labs. Everything I’d ever need there but I also have about six other libraries (good to have a few to mix sounds)
Risers and hits I’d make yourself with the percussion plugins I suggested.
Pads. Make them yourself in a sampler. Soak a legato strings or horns patch in verb (extremely long tail) and stick it in a smaller. Choose a part of the sample to use and add more verb and rhythmic plugins. Save your preset. You can do this with any sample or wave form.
Use a distorted sine wave for low pluck sounds and automate pitch on low bass sounds to make downers and uppers.
Synths. Massive is great, still use it a lot. Though any soft synth (FM) will do.
White noise generator for risers.
Rise and hit is great for natural risers.
There’s loads more but these are probably the ones people most often use.
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I think everyone else has you covered for the best plugins, but just in case you / anyone might be interested; Audio Imperia have a couple of free packs of trailer sounds.
I wouldn’t recommend using them standalone (not because they aren’t excellent quality, but because they’re mostly “one-shots” so things will quickly start sounding the same), but for doubling with other sounds, or as a starting point for further manipulation, you should be able to get some cool results:
https://www.audioimperia.com/collections/free-stuff
EDIT: just noticed that Brian already mentioned Audio Imperia above - but still good for you to know they have free stuff too
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Thank you MIkael! Though I can’t afford lots of stuff here but I will definitely look into Gravity, Damage and Omnisphere.
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Just so you know, Omnisphere is never on sale, but Gravity and Damage are. Also, Omnisphere is the single best plugin investment I done in my life. I used it since 2009, and it is present in every single composition I created. I know it inside and out, which is a huge benefit. Learning and mastering the tools you use.
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Mikael, so if I buy Omnisphere is it ok if I download it to the external drive? It requires a lot of space and doesn’t really work with Windows
Yes I have Omnisphere on an external drive, as I have also all my Kontakt libraries.