10 Swiss army knives
From creative multieffects to mixing toolkits, these gadgets place multiple processors within easy reach
Waves Butch Vig Vocals
cm 210 » 8/10 » $149 A-list engineer Butch Vig (Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Green Day, Garbage) has teamed up with Waves to give instant access to the EQ, dynamics, saturation, and focus functions he uses to shape his signature sound.
Waves JJP Drums cm 157 » 8/10 » $99
Jack Joseph Puig (U2, The Black Crows, No Doubt) is a Grammy-winning studio boffin. Here, Waves have recreated his favoured drumprocessing chain within one plugin, making it a snap to dial in punch, attitude and control.
Beatskillz That Thing cm 226 » 6/10 » $59
Offering an analogue-style chorus, vintagesounding filters, various soundscape generators and a bitcrusher for emulating classic drum machines, this multipurpose tool is unashamedly fast to use.
iZotope Nectar 2 cm 200 » 9/10 » £149
Aimed at vocal production, Nectar 2 provides pitch correction and editing, breath removal, plate reverb, harmonic saturation, dynamics, equalization, gate, de-esser and more. It can even detect pitch and create harmonies.
Soundness Soundsoap 5 N/A » N/A » £119
Soundsoap combines several corrective utilities into a single, unified plugin. Broadband noise can be automatically detected and removed from any signal. Add click, crackle and hum removal and you’ve got cleaner mixes!
Waves Scheps Parallel Particles N/A » N/A » $59
Another Waves plugin that combines and condenses processes into a mere four controls, offering Bite, Air, Sub and Thick parameters. Ozone 7 cm 227 » 10/10 » £185-£369 This ever-popular, all-in-one mastering suite provides maximizer, exciter, stereo imager, EQ and dynamics functions. The Advanced version also adds Vintage Compressor, Vintage Tape and Vintage EQ modules. A must-have! Excalibur cm 219 » 9/10 » $199 Created by one of the original minds behind Lexicon, this rockin’ multieffect features four ‘Voices’ that can each house one of thirteen effects, including chorus, flanger, phaser, ring mod, shifter, reverb, filter, distortion and more. Tantra N/A » N/A » $69 Need interesting and exciting rhythmic effects? Distortion, tremolo, filter, delay, lofi, flanger, glitch and reverb are all on tap here, with modulation provided by the high customisable built-in 32-stepsequencer and multi-step envelope generator. Alloy 2 cm 184 » 9/10 » £148 Designed as an all-in-one mixing strip that can subtly enhance or totally tweak any and all tracks in your mix, you get an equaliser, transient shaper, exciter, dynamics (with upward and downward compression), de-esser, and limiter.