VST/AU plugins: 10 of the Best Plugins

Think of a scenario where you’ll approach a music-recording session with a head full of ideas and a drive to finish them. Sadly, the reality is that there are times when even that won’t be enough to get your ideas off the ground, even with the right tools and VST/AU plugins.

Speaking of which, even with a variety of options, this list of VST/AU plugins will help get your creative spark going. So the next time you feel creatively drained, maybe one of these can help.

1. Kirnu Cream – A more modern take on sequencing that places a wildly flexible real-time, keyboard-triggered pattern sequencer inside your DAW.

2. Michael Ourednik Argotlunar – Granular processing that breaks down a signal into constituent “grains”. These grains can then be manipulated in a variety of ways.

3. Audio Damage Automaton – This sequencer can control the Stutter, Modulate, Replicate and Bitcrush effects of a sound. The end results can range from subtle effects like humanising and fills to wild rearrangements.

4. Sonic Charge Synplant – The Synplant is different from the standard synthesizer designs, but still works in a way that genetic algorithms are in play.

5. Plogue chipspeech – This text-to-speech plugin works by simply typing in the text you want the chipspeech to speak/sing and play the results from your MIDI keyboard or sequencer.

6. Sugar Bytes Turnado – This multi-effects plugin houses controls from the Phaser and the Flanger, to the Reactor and Spectralizer.

7. Inear Display Eurydice CM – While the full version is no longer available for purchase, the CM version has more than enough to make up for. Its Buffer, Filter, Crusher and Delay effects, four LFOs and flexible routing can make ordinary sounds into truly new and unique sounds.

8. iZotope Stutter Edit – This plugin chops, filters, gates, slices, stutters and reconfigures any incoming signal. This makes this plugin the perfect tool mixers who want to experiment with sounds.

9. Celemony Melodyne – Melodyne can detect the pitch of mono and polyphonic signals and adjust them accordingly. The possibilities are endless, from taking apart tracks to rewriting vocal parts, drums and guitar chords in just a few minutes.

10. Photosounder – While technically not a plugin, Photosounder is a sound design tool that not only converts images to sound and vice versa, but also to edit and draw sound using art tools.