Relive the past decade of twists and turns in the world of music software with this trip down memory lane
It’s hard to imagine a life where we couldn’t reach for our favourite synth, EQ, compressor, or barometric visual spline compander without a simple click and drag of a mouse, but there truly was a time when plugins didn’t exist.
At the time that Plugin Boutique was founded, though, plugins had become an accepted part of most producers’ lives. Soft synths like Massive had been so influential as to inspire entire genres.
Ten years ago, plugins were starting to be recognised as serious music-making tools – ones that could replace and even improve upon the hardware solutions of the time. So what did 2012’s plugin landscape look like? And how far have we come since then?
2012: Starter of Traditions
Ten years ago, the world got its ears around a few new releases that would stay in people’s plugin folders for years to come. u-he’s Diva had just been released, and 2012 would see the first versions of iZotope’s visual synth Iris and FabFilter’s warm and growly multiband track-warmer Saturn.
Also in 2012, two perennial Roland tributes were released in plugin form. TAL-U-NO-LX and D16 Group’s LuSH-101 gave us the sounds of the Juno-60 and SH-101 synths. One interesting Kickstarter campaign this year was for a synth whose purpose was to teach you how to use synths: Syntorial was a popular plugin, but these days it doesn’t have the following it once did.
It was this year, too, that the release of a little free plugin brought the sound of a particular preset from Ableton Live’s Multiband Dynamics to users of other DAWs. In the past ten years, Xfer Records’ OTT has become a mainstay in many producers’ plugin folders.
2013: Vintage as they Come
Two significant plugins released in 2013 have kept their places near the top for nearly ten years. ValhallaDSP’s VintageVerb has been going for nine years now, which technically makes it a piece of vintage gear in its own right. DMG Audio’s EQuilibrium took a new look at EQ by allowing multiple filter types – mostly from classic hardware – to be used in the same curve.
2014: Waiting for a Cure
As the long-awaited Bitwig Studio showed it was still possible to launch a new major DAW and plugin host, we at Plugin Boutique were planning a launch of our own. Together with Oli Larkin, we released VirtualCZ, a phase distortion synth emulation.
This was also the year that Xfer Records’ Serum hit the virtual shelves. It feels like only yesterday that we started making our first Serum patches, but the 350 million YouTube tutorials for the synth prove that it’s been around for longer than you might think.
2015: Hello, Goodbye
The year started with a couple of bangs, with the first being the maiden showing of Spectrasonics’ Omnisphere 2 at NAMM 2015. Omnisphere 2 is still around, which is more than can be said for CamelAudio, whose legendary product line was bought by Apple. At the beginning of 2015, the company started removing access to some of the producers’ favourite tools, including CamelPhat, CamelCrusher, and the also-hugely-popular Alchemy instrument. The much-loved algorithms would start getting re-implemented as part of Logic Pro, with Alchemy introduced later in the year.
Other releases this year would see themselves widely used for years to come. There was IK Multimedia’s AmpliTube 4, Slate Digital’s Virtual Mix Rack, and perhaps most influential, Soundtoys’ Little AlterBoy. To get Soundtoys’ pitch shifting plugin for free back in 2015, would-be users had to sniff out a redeem code online. It’s now roughly £80 unless it just so happens to be on sale.
2016: Time for Something New
This year found the world of plugins moving forward in many ways. The release of iZotope's Neutron brought the talents of artificial intelligence and machine learning to the world of mixing plugins. Even if you forget the AI track assistant in Neutron, you still have a hugely capable suite of mixing tools to lean on.
oeksound’s Soothe was also released in 2016. Now at version 2, Soothe identifies areas of harshness in the frequency spectrum and smoothes them out. Even vintage effects were dragged kicking and screaming into the future in 2016, as XLN’s RC-20 Retro Color brought a great-sounding lo-fi sound palette into a single, easy-to-use virtual channel strip.
2017: They Said It’d Never Happen
Our own plugin, Scaler, was first released this year. Now in its second incarnation, Scaler 2 has grown to be one of the bestselling plugins on Plugin Boutique – and all for something that doesn’t generate much sound!
After years of holding out, Propellerhead Software (now Reason Studios) suddenly announced that the next version of its DAW, Reason, would support VST plugins. This opened up the famously-closed-off software to a huge range of possibilities, and two years later in 2019, the Reason rack would become available as a plugin of its own, to use in other DAWs.
This year also saw the release of Loopcloud, from our sister company Loopmasters. This marked the first time a huge sample library could be linked with your DAW through a plugin, allowing you to audition sounds alongside your project before using or even buying them.
2018: New Ranges, New Starts
This year saw one particular company go all-in on Roland emulations, and that company was… Roland. With 2018’s launch of Roland Cloud, users could subscribe to a range of official emulations of the company’s synths in software form.
Arturia’s Pigments synth also hit the virtual shelves in 2018. Today, Pigments has been updated multiple times, introducing new forms of synthesis to the instrument as time has gone by.
Another big beginning this year came from Spitfire Audio, whose LABS range of free orchestral instruments has continued to grow and grow. Elsewhere, FabFilter’s Pro-R and WavesFactory’s TrackSpacer would go on to grace many a project from 2018 onwards.
2019: Synth Duel
Two synth releases dominated 2019, with the release of both kiloHearts’ Phase Plant and Native Instruments’ Massive X. kiloHearts had been making hay from its range of snap-in hosting, lego-style, build-it-yourself plugins including Multipass and SnapHeap for a few years, but bringing the idea into a synth made Phase Plant one of the most influential plugins for a while.
While Massive X had been awaited for a long time, thanks to a large string of teasers from the NI Juggernaut, Phase Plant came up with a more subtle release. While time will yet tell which of these plugins will be most remembered, these two super synths are still going at it today.
2020: New Synth, New Business Model
A new synth made itself known in 2020: Vital is a highly capable instrument that gives you multiple ways to pay, including a free option. At that price, the uptake of Vital has been quick and deadly.
Baby Audio’s plugin line developed in 2020 too, with the company’s Spaced Out and Comeback Kid making an impression on producers all over the world.
2021: Time Will Tell
2021 might be too fresh in the memory to bestow legendary status on any of the plugins released that year, but there have definitely been some intriguing releases. Newcomers Minimal Audio gave us Rift, a cutting-edge hybrid distortion that has been billed as “the world’s first bipolar distortion plugin”, while Devious Machines’ Infiltrator came to the fore as a monstrous sound layering tool for glitching and mangling.
2022: Uncharted Territory
As we stride boldly into 2022, ready to receive a whole new set of music software armaments, it’s hard to predict what lies ahead. One thing we do know for certain though is that Plugin Boutique will always be on hand to supply you with whatever the next awesome plugin on the market is. We’ve got all the effects, instruments and studio tools you’ll ever need, whether it’s a hot new synth causing double-takes, or a selection of plugins neatly packaged into an exclusive money-saving bundle.
