Voxengo Crunchessor
After a phase of trying other plugins, mostly analog emulations, by other makers, I once again have to commend Voxengo for the quality of their plugins.
If you want a compressor that can tame the peaks of a vocal while giving it a polished sheen, I highly recommend Deft Compressor.
For giving warmth to vocals? Or a bass compressor that (in my opinion) works much better than most LA2A emulations? Use Crunchessor. I use the 2A preset to keep the levels of bass tracks consistent without sounding squeezed (something I often hear from LA2A plugins).
Deft Compressor going into Crunchessor is my preferred version of "1176 to LA2A", that is, a fast attack compressor going into a smoother attack compressor.
I still highly prefer CRTIV Tape Bus compared to other tape plugins I have if I want to keep an open high-end sound to the track. It's really good at keeping the punch and transients on the master bus while improving the crest factor (push the record gain).
I have to say that Warmifier is great since unlike other saturation plugins, it's not easy to overdo the amount of saturation. It's super subtle, and these days I find that using too much saturation has a blurring effect on tracks.
Sobor is just unbelievably good. You have to try it.
Voxengo is just really good DSP - high quality digital - without the mask or crutch of trying to emulate old, classic analog gear. There are a handful of small devs like that, and just like Voxengo I highly suggest you try them out.
What can I say? These plugins are the bees knees! Crunchessor, GlissEQ and VariSaturator make an absolutely killer plugin team; stick them on each of your audio tracks and you have a key which unlocks a whole new sonic world of possibilities.
I have to say, Crunchessor is a FINE compressor, absolutely spectacular on everything from drums to vocals and all in between, with a whole range of different compressor types, from clean to vintage models. I'm not sure if this is emulating a hardware compressor, but it's definitely doing something right!
GlissEQ is one of the most flexible and versatile EQ plugins I have ever worked with. This analyses the audio as you work and gives you an extremely detailed spectrum analysis of your audio, allowing you to make informed decisions on where to boost or cut. If you leave the dynamic control alone, it provides a great EQ experience and will only allow your sound to be made better. Anyone new to EQ should get this, it's superb. Even better, if you have recorded frequencies over 24kHz, like on a vocal take recorded through a top quality mic, GlissEQ lets you observe all frequencies up to 48kHz and beyond, so you can add that airy quality to your vocal tracks.
VariSaturator, in my opinion, is just brilliant. If EQ doesn't quite work, use this instead and you have your solution. Brilliant on drums and guitar tracks.
If you are considering buying some top quality plugins, I would definitely recommend Voxengo time and time again, and I can almost guarantee you will be more than satisfied. If there is one thing I would love to see from Voxengo, it would be the manufacture of yet more stellar processors for audio applications.