Every day I receive numerous press releases about some new plugin that’s just come out. I read them all, but I have to admit that lately my eyes are starting to glaze over. That’s because, when you get right down to it, audio plugins are generally just more of the same, and it’s hard to get excited over “the same.”
The fact is that all audio plugins fall into one of the following categories:
- Dynamics (compression, limiting, gating, expanders, etc.)
- Effects (reverb, delay, modulation)
- Utilities (noise reduction, pitch correction, metering, etc.)
It’s true that you have some combo of different categories like channel strips and mastering, or aimed at a specific mix element like vocals, but it’s still the same old processors wrapped in a different package.
What’s A Developer To Do?
I appreciate that software developers have to keep on releasing new products to stay in business, and that many are moving away from tired old analog emulations to new digital approaches, and others are using AI to speed setup for better results, but there’s still that limitation to the 5 categories mentioned above.
Back in the early days of the DAW, third party processing plugins were superior to the on-board plugins that the DAWs came with, enough to justify spending the extra cash that was required. Today the plugins that come with just about any DAW generally work and sound good enough for daily use, and except for the more specialized plugs, you’re mostly buying a third party plugin for the interface, presets, or a sound that only you might notice.
I’m not trying to dissuade you from buying third-party plugins – far from it. I have a ton of them myself, and I know how hard developers work to keep them up-to-date and offer new features.
But I have to say that it’s getting more and more difficult to get excited about a new EQ or compressor plug when you have 20 or 30 different ones to choose from already installed in your DAW.
With the NAMM show coming up soon, my biggest hope is that a developer will come up with something brand new that breaks the current plugin mold and gets us all excited again. I’m not expecting it to happen though.
