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12 Of The Best Bass Synth VST Plugins [Free and Paid]

In this guide, we’re rounding up the best bass instrument plugins on Plugin Boutique. From analogue synths of the 60s with a vintage tone, to modern sub bass generators and more besides, we’ll fill you in on what’s best for your bass frequencies.  It’s a rule that holds true in music from drill to orchestral: at the foundation of everything is bass. It keeps us grounded, providing a solid root that chords and melodies appear to stem from, whether it’s coming from an instrument, a virtual inst

The Best Reverb VST Plugins (2024) | Plugin Boutique

Reverb has shaped music throughout its history – and we don’t just mean recorded music, either. Earlier musical forms like plainchant are a great example of this – the composition of the music was influenced by the space it was performed, and in turn, the spaces began to be considered with music in mind. But singing monks rarely feature in plugins – you can hear the same principles at work since the history of recording, as spring reverbs, plate reverbs and chambers gave way to digital reverb

8 Things We Love About The Rhodes V8

From artist piano presets to audio-rate vari-panning, here are some of the greatest things about Rhodes’ first plugin. It may have come as a surprise to some when Rhodes announced a software version of its MK8 electric piano. Historically, the Rhodes trademark and brand have been strictly protected from the gaze of analogue-modelling developers, and so many have become used to seeing words only hinting at the identity of the vintage piano plugin they’re eyeing. The Rhodes brand is now

The Best Analogue EQs And Why You Would Use Them

  Learn what really makes up the difference between analogue style EQ units and their plugin emulations Unlike characterful reverbs and dynamic compressors, when it comes to EQ plugins, it’s often hard to tell the difference between them. This is especially true with digital EQs, whose default curves, cuts and boosts are often, mathematically, exactly the same between two plugins.  To differentiate themselves, digital EQs need to offer a better and faster user experience, often dyna

5 Essential Instruments in Beatport Studio

In this video, Conor delves into the heart of the tools available with the Beatport Studio membership using 5 essential instruments, all within the included digital audio workstation - Cubase LE.   What is Beatport Studio?  Beatport Studio is our flagship production membership that combines a diverse selection of creative instruments and effects found on Plugin Boutique, the vast sample libraries of Loopmasters, and the intuitive workflow of Loopcloud.  What's Included? 

4 Genres Analysed with VISION 4X

Whatever style of music you make, visualising your sound will help you to craft more professional mixes. Excite Audio’s VISION 4X is an all-in-one visual analyser that helps you see your sound from all angles, featuring a spectrogram, bar graph, waveform and phase correlation meter. You can deploy VISION 4X to glean valuable information about the sounds in your track, and use that to make informed mixing decisions. Let’s take a look at how the plugin works by putting it through its pac

The 15 Best Tape Emulation Plugins For A Retro Sound

Get the characterful sound of analogue tape in your DAW with these throwback plugins Before the world went digital, records were captured on magnetic tape, which has a particular frequency response and a certain amount of artefacts due to imperfect equipment mechanics and degradation. These sonic characteristics are the result of the physical properties and limitations of the medium, but they also give it a unique quality that has fuelled a resurgence of interest in analogue-style recording i

FM Synthesis Cookbook - Five Classic FM Sounds and How They Work

Gather your ingredients and get ready for a session in the FM synthesis kitchen. There are Synths Available at Every Budget, and Synths Available of All Different Types. Frequency modulation (FM) synthesis has a reputation for being intimidating and is certainly a more complex process than other sound design methods like subtractive synthesis, say. However, at its heart, the concept of frequency modulation is very simple, and when used correctly it has a huge amount of sound design potent

What is the 808 and why is it so great?

  What is the 808 and why is it so great? We take a deep dive on the most well known and widely utilized drum machine in modern music Whether you’re a professional producer or a casual music listener, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past 40 years, you have undoubtedly heard the sound of the Roland TR-808 drum machine. Since its launch in 1980, this unassuming piece of music equipment has become a steadfast pillar of contemporary music. This classic rhythm composer has

How to Build The Best Vocal Chain

Get a professional-sounding vocal by using the right plugins in the right place. Ask any recording engineer and they’ll tell you; vocals are perhaps the most difficult thing to record and the most important to get right. Because we’re so used to hearing the human voice, our ears are especially sensitive to it when we listen to music. This means we focus on it above everything else in the track and pick up all the nuance and detail – good and bad – in the way it sounds. Getting a good vocal

Best Drum VST Plugins

Whether you’re a classic hardware fan, a modern innovator or a sample-tweaker – there’s a drum machine for you. The drum machine is one of the most important and influential instruments in modern music. Classic hardware drum machines like the LinnDrum and Roland 808 would come to define genres and eras in the latter half of the 20th century, making a permanent mark on the popular and underground music landscape. These vintage bits of gear now cost thousands of pounds and are largely 

Essential Production Techniques for Lo-Fi Hip Hop

  Give your tracks some nostalgic warp and warble with these essential lo-fi hip hop techniques When it comes to lo-fi hip hop, aesthetic is everything. Be it visual or sonic, the general vibe of the music is almost more important than the melodic elements – although strong chords and melodies are, of course, essential. In this article, we’ll take you through a few techniques that you can use in your lo-fi hip hop productions to elevate your music to the next level. All of these met

5 Pro Tips for Mixing Reverb

Essential Reverb Tips and Techniques Learn how to use reverb like a professional mixing engineer with these useful tips When it comes to music production, we tend to situate the elements of a track in their own space to add depth and dimension to the mix. Treating a sound with reverb is an excellent way of giving it space, but it requires a careful balancing act that should take into account the character of the source sound, and how it relates to both the other elements in the track a

iZotope Neutron 4: Everything You Need To Know

iZotope’s mixing package keeps getting bigger and better. While version 3 brought us the Mix Assistant, Visual Mixer and Balance Assistant (which was three years ago), there’s been plenty of time for the Massachusetts AI-fanciers to develop a stunning follow-up. Neutron 4 contains a few new additions, some quality-of-life tweaks, and even a couple of complete overhauls. The Mix Assistant is transformed into Assistant View, a whole eco screen that helps you define and reach a spectral target,

The Best MIDI & Music Theory Plugins

Our Guide To The Best MIDI & Music Theory VST Plugins We’ve compiled the best MIDI and music theory VST plugins for producers available on Plugin Boutique. The world’s most famous plugins are usually instruments and effects, helping with Mixing Skills and providing Easy Methods for Synthesis. From the likes of super synths like Pigments 5 and Diva, through FabFilter and Soundtoys effects, there’s a lot of love for audio plugins. But there’s a third category of plugin that can be infini

Sampleson on Stage54

Sampleson on Stage54, and How We Made our New Collaborative Plugin Together Model citizens Augusto Filamino and Lucia Tkach use spectral modelling to summon rare instruments to life  Thanks to continuous innovation in the field of virtual instrument development, music producers today can arm their tracks with authentic sounds they could only have ever dreamed of owning previously. Fancy a string section? Check. What about a church organ? Check. Sampleson, the developers behind our new e