@XaoslordErie
I have been a hardcore RX devotee for years, all the way back to version 2. It gets used for pretty much every live concert recording I do.

Ozone is a pretty amazing mastering tool as well.

@voltronic It is indeed. To be clear, I have a UAD-2 Quad card in my recording rig with a slew of amazing plugins from API, Neve, and others, but not everyone can afford things like that (full disclosure - I can't, either, mine was a gift along with plugins), so when Izotope and other folks put out good free stuff, I tend to grab what I can because I never know how much longer my UAD card will live.

@XaoslordErie
Those UAD units are nice because they take the processing load off the CPU. But I do wonder what their longevity is.

I don't use that many plugins or FX; what I do use is mostly free stuff but the paid ones I absolutely can't live without are iZotope RX and Pianoteq. Pianoteq is really great because it's all physically modeled instruments; not sampled. So you have a pretty low CPU and RAM hit, but also unlimited polyphony and the ability to tweak every aspect of the instrument.

@voltronic I've been using a UAD-1 card for a number of years now, and when I was gifted my UAD-2 card, it, too has lasted me a few years. Since it uses a PCIe 1X slot, as long as the card was built well, it should last a long while. But again, I still have lots of other plugins because I don't know for sure how long that will be. I do have some excellent instrument plugins, many free and some paid. I get those from either Plugin Boutique or KVR Audio.