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The Plugin Boutique Awards 2025 – Winners, Highly Commended and Lifetime Achievement
Each year, music producers are given more ways to shape sound, experiment, and push boundaries. The Plugin Boutique Awards celebrate those tools that not only deliver great sound, but inspire creativity and innovation across the studio. In this article, we shine a spotlight on the plugins that captured attention in 2025, helping define the music of the past year.
In this fourth edition, we again asked you to vote for the winners – the standout releases, instruments, and production tools that made the biggest impression on you. From bold new ideas, to refinements of familiar favourites, the field has been more competitive than ever, reflecting the fast-paced evolution of music technology.
With winners and highly commended plugins ready to be revealed across fifteen categories, it's time to explore the tools that made the year remarkable. Whether you’re hunting for inspiration, or just curious, the 2025 Plugin Boutique Awards are your guide to the best of the year.
Lifetime Achievement Award - u-he Diva
Before we dig into the winners of each category, this year we’re honouring a synth that has been topping the charts for over a decade. From its introduction in 2012, Diva has built a deserved reputation as the top analogue software synthesizer. Praised from the start for its rich, analogue-style sound quality, and only ever really criticized for its CPU requirements, which in the intervening years have become basically a non-issue. You could say that Diva has been playing the long game, and it’s fully paid off.
Diva stands as a champion of analogue synth emulation, capturing the ever-so-unstable warmth and harmonic richness of hardware synths through immaculate circuit modelling. Its "Divine" mode offers jaw-dropping authenticity that producers trust for vintage character without the maintenance. It’s a timeless instrument that has defined the sound of a generation and remains essential in every studio. That’s why we’ve granted it the first Plugin Boutique Lifetime Achievement award.
Reverb
Best Reverb - Winner - Soundtoys SpaceBlender
Soundtoys keep on giving, with an extended track record of bringing staple effects to the table. This year, SpaceBlender dropped, and made a thoroughly unique and resounding sound in doing so. This otherworldly ‘imaginative’ reverb plugin has tons of processing compacted into a retro-style, minimalistic interface. The most unique point of interest here is that none of its reverb sounds are supposed to mimic real-world environments. Using layered tape loops, delays and more unusual processes, these reverbs are innovative and multidimensional.
Best Reverb - Highly Commended - SSL PlateVerb
SSL have been working hard to release some more high-end digital reverbs. PlateVerb was the first to come to light, delivering a beautifully blended plate engine that feels both nostalgic and freshly engineered. It excels at adding subtle harmonic richness, widening power, and a studio-ready sheen to vocals and instruments. PlateVerb is here to stand the test of time with the SSL-certified stamp of manufacture.
Best Reverb - Highly Commended - Eventide Temperance Pro
Temperance Pro shows Eventide returning to their atmospheric roots, crafting a reverb that folds shimmering tails and crystalline reflections into one elegant, modern package. The distinction – and the magic – lies in its ability to tune the reverb harmonically, to the notes of the musical scale, giving a tonal bloom that reacts musically to any signal. Whether you’re sculpting ethereal pads or enhancing intimate vocals, Temperance Pro delivers a tasteful, expressive ambience.
Saturation
Best Saturation - Winner - Drawmer 1976 Three Band Saturator
This outstanding saturator brings classic studio colour into the modern workflow, offering a tri-band architecture that behaves like a painter’s palette for harmonic richness. Each band can be independently shaped, allowing anything from velvet-soft warmth to gritty, transistor-style aggression. The result is a versatile powerhouse that adds personality, cohesion, and edge without sacrificing clarity. A brilliant blend of heritage and innovation.
Best Saturation - Highly Commended - Forever89 Topos
An imaginative saturation tool, Topos channels analogue vibes through a distinctly futuristic engine. Its morphing drive circuits give producers a lot of wiggle room on the canvas, moving effortlessly between gentle tube-like rounding and angular digital bite. The interface leans toward intuitive experimentation, encouraging users to sculpt textures that feel organic and deeply musical. For these reasons, it deserves a look from everyone.
Best Saturation - Highly Commended - Aberrant DSP Cataclysm
A plugin that lives up to its name, unleashing a wildly characterful saturation engine brimming with unpredictable flavours. Aberrant DSP have packed this unit with glitchy transients, fractured harmonics, and beautifully chaotic tonal bloom. Yet, despite its unruly personality, Cataclysm responds gracefully, lathering warm movement and texture to audio in magnificent fashion. Those wanting truly distinctive colouration will find this plugin an inspiring and boundary-pushing tool.
Vocal
Best Vocal Plugin - Winner - Antares AutoTune 2026
Antares executed AutoTune 2026 with a prestigious finesse that reflects their dominance of the pitch-correction pyramid (if that’s a thing). The refreshed engine with elevated precision tuning feels smoother, quicker, and more transparent than ever. New creative modes expand the musical capabilities, offering everything from polished pop sheen to expressive, stylised artefacts. As of 2026, vocalists and engineers can achieve radio-ready results with even greater ease.
Best Vocal Plugin - Highly Commended - Wavesfactory Re-Esser
Re-Esser brings a fresh and intuitive approach to taming vocal harshness, with a lot more going on under the hood than typical competitors. Wavesfactory’s engine intelligently detects troublesome sibilants while preserving tonal characteristics, like air, attitude, and dynamic nuance. With its slick interface and adaptive controls, it turns a traditionally tedious task into a simple, trustworthy process with more surgical control and higher potential than ordinarily available.
Best Vocal Plugin - Highly Commended - Minimal Audio Evoke
Evoke brings vocal processing into a fresh creative space, blending subtle enhancement tools with modern tone-shaping capabilities. Minimal Audio’s design emphasises feel and musicality, giving users a fast, intuitive workflow that lifts a vocal without overshadowing it. Whether you’re adding presence, smoothing dynamics, or injecting personality, Evoke offers a beautifully balanced toolkit with impressive clarity and charm.
Delay
Best Delay - Winner - Softube Echoes
Softube have gained huge momentum over recent years, so we take great pride in singing their praises further here. Echoes conveys the soul of vintage units while freshening the capabilities to modern horizons. Its multi-model architecture gives access to tape warmth, bucket-brigade wobble, and shimmering digital repeats, all wrapped in a thoughtfully laid-out interface. Producers gain everything from lush ambience to rhythmic punctuation, making Echoes an inspiring and flexible delay powerhouse.
Best Delay - Highly Commended - UVI Dual Delay X
This nimble delay unit combines two fully independent engines capable of being sculpted in parallel or in sequence for vivid spatial movement. UVI have crafted a delay that feels simultaneously clean, characterful, and endlessly tweakable. With advanced modulation, tone filtering, and sync features, it lends itself beautifully to experimental sound design as well as classic mix duties.
Best Delay - Highly Commended - Excite Audio Motion: Fractal
Motion: Fractal, driven by two granular engines working in unison, brings new flair to strategic delay usage, shining when it comes to reactive, rhythmic, stuttering sounds. Excite Audio have built a playground of movement, baked into an easy-to-use interface. Fractal is an optimal delay candidate for producers wanting energetic delay textures without sacrificing precision or control.
Multi-Effect
Best Multi-Effect - Winner - Universal Audio Ocean Way Studios Deluxe
Universal Audio’s Ocean Way Studios Deluxe is technically a reverb plugin, but it takes the cake as the top multi-effect. Why? Because this phenomenal unit includes highly sought-after EQs and compressors from vintage consoles and outboard gear from one of the most significant recording studios in musical history. With this single plugin, you can replicate numerous entire legendary studio kits.
Best Multi-Effect - Highly Commended - Lunacy BEAM 2.0
Since its release, BEAM 2.0 has risen to prominence and popularity across the music production landscape. If its high review scores aren’t enough to convince you of its prestige, let us enlighten you. Version 2.0 builds upon the framework of its predecessor, introducing the capability to use all modules in isolation, an improved interface, and an expanded repertoire of effect modules.
Best Multi-Effect - Highly Commended - Beatsurfing CHEat Code
CHEat code is a truly remarkable multi-effect processing unit, boasting 16 total modules, each built with intensely high-level craftsmanship to breathe fresh life into your sound transformation process. Baked into a sophisticated GUI, everything you need is easily accessible and straightforward with no nonsensical bells and whistles. That’s to say, every feature of CHEat code adds practicality, and it surely deserves a mention here.
Virtual Instruments
Best Virtual Instrument - Winner - Excite Audio Bloom KSHMR
Blending Indian and South Asian musical heritage with modern production sensibilities, Bloom KSHMR blossoms into a strikingly versatile instrument. Its delicate library is curated with KSHMR’s signature attention to detail, offering vibrant textures, expressive articulations, and performance-ready presets. Bloom stands as a well-crafted instrument that inspires creativity across genres; another timeless contribution to KSHMR’s legacy across the digital music-making sphere. There’s even a Lite version available.
Best Virtual Instrument - Highly Commended - Heavyocity Dystropia
Dystropia delivers Heavyocity’s trademark intensity, presenting a hybrid instrument steeped in brooding ambience, industrial grit, and futuristic sound design. Its Performance Engine enables nuanced expression, while its sample content feels meticulously sculpted for cinematic impact. Whether scoring trailers or building complex electronic arrangements, Dystropia offers a rich, immersive palette that rewards deep exploration. Dystropia is a Kontakt-powered titan.
Best Virtual Instrument - Highly Commended - Rhodes Wurli
Rhodes is a household name amongst pianists and musicians in general. They’ve reminded us why in 2025 with Wurli. This instrument captures the soulful quirks of the classic electric piano, blending vintage charm with modern flexibility. Its sample set glows with organic imperfections, from gentle bark to warm, expressive resonance. Stocked with built-in effects and tone shaping, it can slip into jazz, soul, indie, or lo-fi mixes with effortless authenticity.
Dynamic Effect
Best Dynamic Effect - Winner - sonible smart:comp 3
Sonible were among the first music tech giants to integrate AI into regular mixing and mastering processors. Years later, smart:comp 3 is the latest iteration of their AI-fuelled compressor, making it probably the most advanced AI-based compressor out there. Offering a helping hand with settings and now with different compression styles as well, smart:comp will help you up your game when it comes to the dynamics of any source.
Best Dynamic Effect - Highly Commended - Waves L4 Ultramaximizer
Years after they practically invented the brickwall limiter, L4 brings Waves’ legacy of mastering-grade limiting into the present with enhanced transparency, improved precision, and modern standards and measurement. It tightens low end, polishes transients, and elevates loudness while preserving essential depth. The upgraded interface helps users dial in competitive levels without harshness. A reliable, polished tool that modern producers can continue to turn to for consistent, professional-grade results.
Best Dynamic Effect - Highly Commended - Safari Pedals Noam’s Mastering Console
This all-in-one mastering suite goes above and beyond, delivering a faithful rendition of Safari’s exclusive mastering desk. The classic analogue behaviour with forward-thinking digital refinement gives mixes a stable, cohesive energy. Its controls encourage gentle shaping rather than brute force, allowing engineers to enhance glue and dimension, making it optimal for mastering. A unique, understated mastering companion with a refined sonic footprint.
Synth
Best Synth - Winner - Native Instruments Absynth 6
If just hearing (or reading) the phrase “Absynth 6” doesn’t release positive endorphins in your nervous system, let us lightly explain why it should. Absynth is a revered synth from the NI universe that went through five versions and was eventually discontinued. However, in 2025, the 6th edition resurrected the hype, storming the synth line to the forefront of virtual instrument stardom once more, jam-packed with more features than your heart could possibly yearn for.
Best Synth - Highly Commended - Korg multi/poly
Korg’s multi/poly feels like the moment analogue modelling finally grew up. It captures everything people romanticise about vintage Korg oscillators and filters, then threads it through a modern engine that’s absurdly deep yet still musical. You get a four-oscillator architecture, lush voice-card drift, analogue-curved envelopes, and per-voice quirks that make patches breathe like hardware. Motion Sequencing 2.0, Kaoss Physics, and multi-layer Performances come together to result in alive, evolving textures.
Best Synth - Highly Commended - Dawesome Kontrast
Kontrast is a bold, adventurous synthesiser that thrives on unusual timbres and evolving motion. Dawesome’s engine blends granular elements with morphing oscillators, creating sounds that feel alive and constantly shifting. The interface is geared toward visual exploration, making intricate sound design accessible and inspiring. Kontrast is perfect for producers wanting textures that push beyond traditional synthesis boundaries.
Utility Plugin
Best Utility Plugin - Winner - Cableguys PitchShaper
Cableguys’ boldest step yet, PitchShaper turns pitch manipulation into a fully drawable, hyper-creative funfield. Its four tailored algorithms breathe new life into vocals, drums, and instruments, letting you sketch melodies, formants, bends, and glitch-edged rhythms with total precision. Whether used alone or stacked inside the renowned ShaperBox, PitchShaper delivers endlessly musical motion and futuristic sound-design possibilities that no other pitch tool matches.
Best Utility Plugin - Highly Commended - MeldaProduction MTrackAlign
Instant timing correction powered by seamless ARA integration is MTrackAlign’s speciality. Whether you’re lining up doubled vocals, tightening stacked guitars, or syncing ADR to picture, it transforms hours of editing into a single click. Its smart, unobtrusive workflow keeps everything phase-coherent, polished, and locked in place, making it a quiet but essential hero in modern production; truly a diamond 2025 contribution from MeldaProduction.
Best Utility Plugin - Highly Commended - Acon Digital Extract:Dialogue 2
Extract:Dialogue 2 elevates Acon Digital’s trusted dialogue cleaner into a flagship post-production essential, pairing next-gen AI with deep, engineer-focused control. It delivers instant, broadcast-ready clarity while letting pros fine-tune voice, noise, and reverb with remarkable precision. With true-stereo processing, per-channel EQ, and intuitive visual feedback, it adapts effortlessly to real-world workflows and sets a new benchmark for dialogue refinement.
Drum Machine
Best Drum Machine - Winner - Baby Audio Tekno
Baby Audio delivered another adorable baby; this time, Tekno! This drum machine with a next-gen engine builds entire kits from pure synthesis—no samples required. Its 18 analogue-modelled voices hit with serious punch, while smart randomisation and a flexible polyrhythmic sequencer spark ideas instantly. Designed with circuit-modelling expert Jatin Chowdhury, Tekno delivers deep tweakability, fast inspiration, and the hardest-hitting synthesised drums in a modern plugin.
Best Drum Machine - Highly Commended - UJAM Beatmaker 3
Beatmaker 3 builds on UJAM’s accessible design language, offering genre-focused kits paired with expressive performance controls. It excels at fast sketching and polished production, giving users an instant foundation for tracks across pop, hip-hop, EDM, and more. The refined groove engine and preset variety make Beatmaker 3 a dependable, creativity-boosting drum solution. If you want an all-encompassing drum machine overhaul, seriously consider Beatmaker 3.
Best Drum Machine - Highly Commended - Audiomodern Playbeat 4
Playbeat 4 fuses advanced AI groove algorithms with genre-aware pattern generation to deliver endlessly fresh, musical drum ideas. With eight independent sequencers, real-time pitch shaping, density control, and the beloved Infinity mode, it builds evolving rhythms that never repeat. A powerful sample system, deep remixing tools, and exportable custom packs make Playbeat 4 a creative suite for producers of any style.
Music Theory
Best Music Theory - Winner - Scaler Music Scaler 3
In 2025, Scaler 3 was catapulted onto the scene, with many notable improvements from the preceding version, including new chord and progression exploration mechanics, and the ability to run as standalone software. The new Scaler 3 design is concise and easily accessible to musicians of any skill level. Regardless of your music theory knowledge, Scaler 3 can save you both time and mental pressure, depending what you need.
Best Music Theory - Highly Commended - Future Audio Workshop Notes
Notes transforms any MIDI keyboard into a fully expressive chord instrument, pairing beautifully voiced progressions with rich, layered sound engines. Its Chord Sampler, voicing styles, and transformer keys unlock effortless harmonic creativity, while factory packs span analogue warmth, Lo-Fi haze, and cinematic textures. With multi-sampled instruments, deep FX, and a sleek macro workflow, Notes delivers inspiring, performance-ready chords in seconds.
Best Music Theory - Highly Commended - 510k Pollylop
POLYLLOP builds on the DNA of SEQUND and blasts it into deeper polyphonic and polymetric territory. With four fully independent voices, each with its own rhythm, pitch, duration and velocity lanes, it turns complex patterns into an effortless playground. Polymeters, scale quantisation, real-time MIDI transpose and a powerful pattern system make POLYLLOP a flexible brain for both hardware and software setups.
Innovation
Best Innovation - Winner - FabFilter Pro Q-4
Pro-Q 4 comes with more than just a new name, bringing smart psychoacoustic processing, automatic problem-spotting, enhanced dynamic bands and a modernised interface that reacts more intelligently to your moves. New analysis modes reveal hidden masking, while upgraded dynamic behaviour delivers cleaner, more transparent correction.
Best Innovation - Highly Commended - Tim Exile Finalist
This plugin reinvents mixing with a fully local, real-time engine that analyses over 300 data points and restructures your audio using multiband dynamics, transient shaping, mid/side control and advanced non-linear processing. Try mix directions in seconds, generate perfectly summing stems, or push its multi-node limiters for huge loudness. With deep preset variation and a “Create Template” system, Finalist turns fast mix exploration into an artform.
Best Innovation - Highly Commended - Bitwig Studio 5
The best free DAW is back, this time, doubling down on modularity with new MSEGs that reshape modulation into a visual, multi-stage playground. The upgraded browser, expanded performance tools and deeper Grid integration blur the lines between DAW and sound-design environment. With unified modulators, expressive control over any parameter and forward-thinking device updates, Bitwig remains the DAW that pushes everyone else forward.
Bundle
Best Bundle - Winner - Arturia V Collection 11 Pro
Arturia’s V Collection has already cemented itself as one of the most mammoth bundles on the marketplace, both in terms of value and the creative leverage it provides. Well… this bundle also received a makeover in 2025, with Arturia V Collection 11 Pro becoming the new and improved iteration of Arturia’s flagship bundle. Get hands-on now with only the best of the best!
Best Bundle - Highly Commended - Excite Audio Bloom Bundle
The Bloom Bundle reimagines the modern production toolkit with sample-based Evolve instruments, phrase-driven Bloom players, motion-powered distortion and reverb engines, and top-tier utilities like VISION 4X and KSHMR Chain. From elastic synthesis to granular FX, from lush multi-instrument suites to mix-finishing tools, this collection upgrades every stage of your workflow. It’s an entire creative ecosystem in one bundle, the complete, evocative Bloom series.
Best Bundle - Highly Commended - IK Multimedia Total Studio 5 MAX
IK Multimedia are nothing to sneeze at, and Total Studio 5 MAX proves over 170 instruments, processors and mix tools covering every corner of music creation. From the realism of SampleTank and MODO engines to the depth of T-RackS mastering modules and AmpliTube’s amp universe, this bundle gives producers a complete studio, packed with sound design, mixing, mastering and guitar rig, all in one colossal package.
Mixing Tool
Best Mixing Tool - Winner - Baby Audio Smooth Operator Pro
Smooth Operator Pro takes spectral balancing deeper than ever, letting you reshape tone at a “DNA level”. Override individual nodes, create custom dynamic profiles, or target only the mids, sides or specific frequency bands for forensic control. Two new correction algorithms, sidechain-aware balancing, drag-anywhere nodes, and 184 pro-crafted presets make this a surgical clarity tool, and a powerful tone-shaping workstation.
Best Mixing Tool - Highly Commended - Mastering the Mix Faster Master
Mastering The Mix have been a notable indie development company for years, and Faster Master proves why. It delivers AI-assisted loudness, tonal shaping, width and punch adjustments in a streamlined interface that reacts intelligently to your track. With genre-aware targets, instant A/B options and deep tweakability, it takes the guesswork out of mastering, making it perfect for quick demos or dialling in a polished final.
Best Mixing Tool - Highly Commended - Time Off Audio Dime[ms]
Dime[ms] lets you load your own plugins into a mid/side encoder, giving you the freedom to turn any plugin already in your folder into a mid/side processor. Sculpt presence in the centre without touching the sides, add creative delays only to the stereo field, or clean up low-end phase issues with forensic accuracy. Zero-latency processing and seamless mid-side recombination make it a powerful enhancer for width, clarity and spatial creativity.
Free Plugin
Best Free Plugin - Winner - Native Instruments Massive X Player
Native Instruments democratise sound design with the Massive X Player, offering the formidable engine of their proclaimed and famed synth in a streamlined package. Loaded with 60 presets and an expressive X/Y pad, it balances instant accessibility with deep tweakability. It is the perfect entry point for producers seeking powerful, modern textures without the complexity.
Best Free Plugin - Highly Commended - Dawesome Zyklop
The "free-spirited little sister" of Dawesome's Myth synth, Zyklop has a single 'Iris Oscillator' for creating "mesmerizing, organic sounds for efficient and intuitive sound design". It's eight-voice polyphonic, has the requisite filters and effects, and is a great all-round place to start in synthesis. For a sidearm synth for layering and subs, it would be a bargain at 12 times the price… right?
Best Free Plugin - Highly Commended - Minimal Audio Squash
Minimal Audio have reimagined dynamic control with Squash, a compressor tailored for modern electronic production. Its four-band dual architecture delivers everything from subtle glue to aggressive spectral shaping. With intuitive tone control and precise loudness management, Squash offers a fresh, powerful take on multiband compression that excels at taming harshness and adding punch. This compressor is a surefire candidate for the best free dynamic unit.
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