Strongly recommend this plugin. The formant pitch shifting is pretty much the only way I can get a good femme vocal recording from my testosterone laden cig-y vocal chords. The rest of the Soundtoys collection is pretty fantastic, but replacable. Alterboy is the only plugin I know of that lets you pitch shift the way it does.
Awesome writeup. I knew the whole ST suite is used in loads of mainstream tracks, but I didn't know those specific examples. I've long had the feeling that 10 d E A T h b R E a s T ⚄ ⚄ by Bon Iver also uses it for the fucked up drums, although don't quote me on it.
And yeah, Decapitator specifically has a character to its sound that I just haven't found in any other plugin. In techno I would throw it on almost any channel on a low setting just to add a little bite to stuff. It also sounds good at almost any setting, from barely noticeable warmth to completely mangling sounds. I really like others in the suite too, for specific needs, but that one is the only really unreplaceable one.
If you could help me get my hands on a good crack I'd be eternally grateful, but otherwise no stress.
PM'ing you
But just to say it, Bon Iver LOVED Soundtoys on 22, A Million. You hear a lot of Alterboy on the harmonies, especially the artifacting. You also hear Crystalizer a couple times too. Devil loc as well. Probably used Decapitator, people in his circle have talked about loving the plugin, Mike Dean being the biggest fan of Soundtoys in the pubic eye. I can hear it on the album very clearly, but have no proof. His mix engineer at that point was bigger on analogue equipment, so I could be wrong and he could just be using analogue equipment I haven't heard of. Devil Loc is modeled after the old Shure Level Loc, so it's entirely possible. But ST can still get many of those sounds