Are We in the Golden Age of Plug-ins?

Softsynths, reverbs, newly imagined processors… plug-ins are no longer inexpensive stand-ins for hardware

For years the conventional wisdom was that – with a few notable exceptions – you used plug-ins only when racks full of hardware weren’t available. That applied to both instrument and processing plug-ins.

But that was when no one was interested in, say, a reverb that took over an entire computer, so plug-in developers had to scale things back (and lower the quality).

What changed?

The obvious answer is that computers are now far more powerful, capable of running as many reverbs and many other kinds of processors as you want with power left over.

Factor in a quarter of a good quarter of a century of very clever developers coming up with brilliant ideas no one could have imagined, and you get that the answer to the question posed in this headline is…

…a resounding yes.

That’s unusual, because the answers to questions in headlines is always no.

To paint the picture, we’re going to look at just a few examples of current plug-ins in different categories. The entries are a cross between mini-reviews and “this is one that we found cool” entries.

Please check back over the next few days as we add them in.

Cherry Audio Rackmode series          

Dear Reality Exoverb

Delta Sound Labs Stream

Eventide Physion

Polyverse Comet

Sound Theory Gulfoss

Zynaptic Adaptiverb

…and more