James’ current top five plugins

Native Instruments Reaktor 6 225 » 10/10 » £169

“Blocks is an incredible step forward, and the User Library often throws up some of my fave sources, like the Minimoog emulation Juice 3 ( bit.ly/ReaktorJ3) – a perfect example of programmers delving into Reaktor!” www.native-instruments.com

Togu Audio Line TAL-Sampler N/A » N/A » £47

“TAL’s emulation of all the different 8- and 12-bit sampling topologies is bang on, and you can drag-and-drop to give anything a crusty, dusty sound. Amazing for emulating the E-mu SP-1200 and Emulator II.” www.tal-software.com

Brainworx bx_console N/A » N/A » $299

“This eats drums for breakfast and spits them out in a way that makes them blend beautifully, and is a great mixture of both circuit modelling and non-linear processing. You can overload it like the real thing and it will just sing!” www.plugin-alliance.com

Wolfgang Palm Phonem 228 » 9/10 » €119

“From the original designer of the PPG – the very first wavetable synthesiser – comes an immensely powerful vocal synth. As with all his latest instruments, you need to dig into it to get the best results… but it’s worth it!” www.wolfgangpalm.com

A.O.M. Invisible Limiter G2 235 » 9/10 » $119

“Bucketloads of oversampling capabilities. As intersample peaking can happen quickly, running this at 64x or 128x oversampling helps get your audio louder, minimising distortion on bad codecs or low-end systems.” www.aom-factory.jp