2021’S MUSTHAVE PLUGINS

“2021 COULD BE SEEN AS A YEAR OF NEW RANGES”

Synths-wise, highlights of 2021 include OB-E, another stunning (albeit so far Mac-only) emulation from GForce, this time based around the Oberheim 8-voice. Not an emulation, and certainly benefitting from doing whatever it wants because of it, is the latest v3 incarnation of Pigments, Arturia’s first ever non-emulation synth and *whisper* one of their best.

On the subject of instruments, one of the biggest names in software,

Spitfire Audio, upped the ante, pumping out more libraries than ever before, the highlights of which were Hammers, delivering a bespoke set of percussion tools collated by Saw composer Charlie Clouser, and Albion

Solstice, covering both orchestral and more extreme instrumentation.

Orchestral Tools also started moving away from their core focus with the brilliant Modus, produced by Star Trek composer Jeff Russo, and Scandi-noirinspired Tallinn, although they also delivered a huge dose of big-named percussion with ex Junkie XL’s Tom Holkenborg Percussion.

Elsewhere in Hollywood scoring land, titles don’t get bigger or more comprehensive than East West’s Hollywood Opus which can deliver just about every orchestral instrument ever.

As well as Baby Audio, there have been plenty of other notable releases by newer companies. Pulsar Audio are just one of the companies helping to turn Grenoble into France’s equivalent of Berlin in terms of the city’s contribution to audio software. So far they’re treading an emulation path but their

is a magnificent recreation of Urei’s 1178 compressor. Minimal

Audio, too, are newbies but following less emulation-led paths and their Rift is quite simply one of the best distortion plugins we’ve used.

2021 could also be seen as the year of new ranges. Focusrite’s FAST plugins now number four titles and all offer AI assisted processing to take the strain out of mixing. SSL, too, launched a range of plugins based around their legendary hardware. Fusion Vintage Drive and Stereo Image join a vast range of native SSL plugins, but bring the saturation and image processing from the hardware Fusion rack to a DAW near you and will soon be joined by three more Fusion titles.

Talking of ranges, Arturia’s FX Collection 2 delivers all of the bundles of plugins ‘you will actually use’ to make one ultra bundle of 22 effects. Think V Collection… for effects. And of course, said V Collection saw an update, with an additional four instruments, although IK Multimedia’s

Syntronik platform and Korg’s

Collection series of synths are both offering increasing competition in the vintage synth emulation stakes.