Nine of The Most Unusual Plugins on Plugin Boutique

Find out what strange creations lurk in the depths of the Plugin Boutique archives

Plugins come in all shapes and sizes, and all of the main types you can think of are available in the Plugin Boutique library; EQs, Compressors, Reverbs, Delays, Synths, Drum Machines, - you name it, we have it! These categories are the bread and butter, the meat and potatoes of the music software realm, and within them, you’ll find both entry-level and high-end tools for all your mixing and mastering, sound design and music creation needs.

With over 6000 plugins from nearly 200 developers in our catalogue though, we’re pretty confident that there are some in there that do things that you can’t think of. Ever used an image editor to create synth sounds, or programmed a beat using a drum machine made of pizzas? Didn’t think so! There’s no shortage of the weird and wonderful when you know where to find them, which is why we’ve put together a list of the most unusual plugins on Plugin Boutique. 

Lunacy Audio CUBE - £169.00

Most unique approach to sound design plugins

By providing a three-dimensional space for morphing between samples, Lunacy Audio introduced an innovative and exciting new way to approach sound design. Critically acclaimed when it was launched in 2021, CUBE is a powerful sample player and effects engine where sounds and processing are carried out within, you guessed it, a cube. That means up to eight samples at once, with two layers per sample.  

Lunacy Audio deep-sampled over 100 instruments including guitars, vocals, pianos, strings, woodwinds, percussion and analog synths, which can be easily loaded into any corner of the CUBE, and the idea is that you create a blend by dragging a floating sphere around the space. Preset paths for the sphere, or “Orbits”, can be applied to get instant dynamism and movement.

The plugin’s three core knobs Ether, Macro and Filter allow you to transform the sound in broad strokes, whereas you can really roll your sleeves up and get stuck into some audio mangling in the Effects and Modulation tabs.

 

Modalics Beat Scholar - £99.00

 

A truly novel approach to drum programming and beat production

Don’t be fooled by the slightly stuffy name, Beat Scholar is a quirky and fun drum machine plugin with an intriguing take on beat programming that definitely warrants its place on our list. Whereas most drum sequencing plugins lean on a traditional step sequencer or grid format, Beat Scholar gives you the ability to divide up grooves per beat, pretty much however you like. 

Innovative? Yes, but so far, so normal. Well, things get a little odder when you learn that Beat Scholar contains ‘beat pizzas’ and a slicing feature that can create endless rhythmic subdivisions. From an aesthetic standpoint alone, this is unlike any other drum machine plugin on the market, with densely packed beat sequences resembling something akin to a bizarre game of pizza Tetris. Functionally though, it's an entirely new way to compose rhythm that is guaranteed to help you to create more idiosyncratic beats than usual.

 

Loopcloud PLAY - £79.00

 

Best for quickly converting ideas to audio

Drawing from the Loopmasters library as its source (the largest and most diverse collection of sounds available), Loopcloud PLAY lets you choose from over 4 million genre-defining loops and samples to create instantly playable and inspirational instruments. No other software instrument can pull from such a spectrum of samples, which makes PLAY somewhat of an oddity, especially when you take into account it gives you free rein to customize any sound you load up.

On the Main panel, there are four performance controls and a filter that you can use to transform samples. Behind that is an Advanced section, where you can exploit the plugin’s intelligent synth engine and wield deeper sonic control. To adjust a sample, twiddle Time Stretch, Lo-fi and Tilt parameters to your heart’s content, or plunge into 12 filter types for extra character and movement. If all of that isn’t enough, there are plenty of delays, reverbs, chorus and multiple distortions too.

 

Photosounder - £85.00

 

Most unique plugin on this list

Text-to-image software is all the rage at the moment, but image-to-audio has been around for a great deal longer. Unusual when it was first released in 2009, and still unusual all these years later, Photosounder is the first audio editor/synthesizer to have an entirely image-based approach to sound creation and editing. 

Built by a French coder named Michel Rouzic, the standalone software (there’s no VST plugin version available, unfortunately) stores sounds as spectrogram images and uses its synthesis engine to turn those images into sounds again. You can load images into the program and get all kinds of eccentric sounds from Photosounder, as well as use image-editing tools to generate unique results.

In 2020, Photosounder announced the biggest update of the software to date, which spruced up the functionality of the interface and added some useful new features. Photosounder 1.10 now accommodates multiple image layers, infrasounds and ultrasounds (useful for those among us who are using the software to examine ultrasonic bat calls, for example).

 

Sampleson Things - £37.78

 

Simplest plugin to learn for beginners

For many, synth plugins can be intimidating instruments, with interfaces resembling something you might see in a NASA control room. If you aren’t familiar with standard synth parameters, the names of the knobs can seem esoteric and confusing - but this is definitely not the case with Sampleson Things.  

Things is an intuitive synth sound creator that foregoes the accepted synthesizer nomenclature in favour of a more accessible control set. There are seven playfully named sound engines, or “Descriptors” – Arcade, Crystal, Clouds, Alien Talk, Air, Horror – laid out in a beautifully simple and intuitive interface. Each descriptor makes the sound you would expect it to make, including glassy tones, modulated noise and menacing 8-bit, and can be further tweaked with a host of easily understood real-time and automatable parameters.

There’s also a 32-step arpeggiator to play with, which poses only a slightly steeper learning curve. All in all, it makes for a strange yet thoroughly enjoyable experience and one that you won’t find anywhere else.

 

MNTRA Instruments Huracan - £83.95

 

Best plugin for characterful world sounds

Award-winning composer and multi-instrumentalist Brian D’Oliveira set up MNTRA Instruments as the audio tools development division of his studio La Hacienda creative, where he recorded soundtracks for Tomb Raider, Resident Evil and League of Legends video game titles. 

Huracan is described by MNTRA as “a gateway into a new world of winds and percussion inspired by Mesoamerican and Andean cultures.” Huracan is a K’ice’ Maya god of wind, storm and fire, and the concept for the plugin is that you, a lone traveller, have stumbled upon this ancient deity and accidentally awoken it from its slumber. A portal opens into an alternate universe where pre-hispanic cultures continued to thrive unaffected by colonisation, and over time they developed their own version of synths and other electronic instruments. 

It’s a very theatrical idea for a plugin that shows a deep reverence for the cultural background of the sounds within, which are extremely detailed and unique. You get 11 rare wind instruments accompanied by five textural percussion sounds, which can all be shaped into entirely new forms using a 3-axis control system.

 

Capsule Audio Capsule - £24.95 per library

Most expansive sound library

This vibrantly-designed plugin isn’t a single instrument, but instead a cloud-based collection of byte-sized sound libraries. Each of these libraries is playable via the Capsule plugin, which sports an innovative synthesis engine fronted by a simple interface with eight easy-to-use macro controls. 

The specially curated sound libraries are called Capsules themselves, which goes a long way toward explaining the thinking behind this novel idea. The Capsules are downloadable via a single click in the desktop app, with no website or installer needed, and immediately slot into your collection. Each Capsule has a very specific sound theme, which could be a genre like Trap, a particular era like the 80s or 90s, or a specific type of sound like an experimental thumb piano.

 

Excite Audio Vision 4X - £89.00

Best plugin for mixing and mastering purposes

Honourable Mentions…

Spare a thought for some of the plugins that didn’t quite make our list, but are equally unusual and creative:

 

Soundiron Elvish Choir

If you’re looking for sustains, short staccatos and semi-marcatos recorded in multiple dynamics by a rowdy elven choir (Soundiron performer’s fuelled by seasonal ale and helium) then Elvish Choir is the Kontakt library for you. There’s an adaptable LFO system, a host of filters, a customizable arpeggiator and 18 different DSP effect modules to play around with. 

 

Robotic Bean Hand Clap Studio

Sometimes nothing else will do the job but a plugin full of organic handclaps and finger claps that have been recorded using an all-star collection of vintage mics in a classic studio with legendary acoustics. Select how many clappers you want, how they clap, where they are in the stereo field and how tight their timing is, and blend it all into your mix with custom-designed EQ and compression.