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6 of the Best Sampler Plugins for Music Production

Uncover six of the most powerful and capable sampler plugins available today   Sampling is arguably one of the most important and widely used music production processes in contemporary music. Since its initial conception around 60 years ago, sampling has had and continues to have one of the most profound influences on a wide range of musical styles. While the foundation of sampling is grounded in hardware samplers such as the Mellotron, the software sampler market continues to grow. A

Introducing Beatport Studio – everything you need to make music 

Beatport Studio is a new membership from Beatport. Packed with everything you need to make music, Beatport Studio comes with a DAW, 300,000+ samples, and 10 free plugins a month Beatport have just dropped Beatport Studio, a new membership designed to give you everything you need to make music. Providing a DAW, plugins, and samples to help you in your music production journey, Beatport Studio is a one stop shop for up and coming artists to take their creativity up a level. Not only i

Ultimate Vocal Remover Plugin Guide: Separate Music Like a Pro

Learn about the tricks and tools required to perform pristine vocal separation in music Finished music tends to contain a number of elements, all mixed together and baked into a single stereo file. The individual vocals, drums, bass, instruments and effects are all fused into one cohesive whole. That’s fine as a common music consumer, but for us creatives, sometimes we want to isolate or extract certain elements from a track so that we can use them in new and unique ways. The vocals are of

The Best MPE Instrument Plugins to Expand your Musical Horizons

Discover the go-to tools for MIDI expression in this round-up of the best MPE-capable instrument plugins   The Musical Instrument Digital Interface, or MIDI protocol has been around since the early eighties, but until relatively recently, MIDI has only supported limited expression parameters on a per-channel basis.  In 2017 though, that all changed with the introduction of MIDI Polyphonic Expression, or MPE for short. This essentially gave each note its own MIDI channel and opened up a new

Best Guitar Amp Simulator Plugin Guide

Equip yourself with the tools to add amped-up bass guitar and electric guitar to your productions. Guitar amp simulator plugins have always occupied a unique space in the production community. Reviled in the past for being nowhere near capable of emulating the sounds of the amps they sought to imitate, the quality has steadily grown over the years to the point where they absolutely merit a place in the modern day producer’s plugin library.  These days, aside from being able to output reali

The Best Orchestral VST Plugins on Plugin Boutique (2024)

See the best plugins and instruments for scoring films and games – all available here on Plugin Boutique. When we think of electronic music production, our minds tend to gravitate toward digital synths and robust FX plugins. However, sometimes it’s important to slow down and revisit the roots of music composition. Traditional orchestral instruments still make powerful and emotive additions to many productions, and creating ensembles of orchestral instruments can add texture and humanity to yo

Best Mastering Plugins for 2025

Discover new tools for more mastering music at all levels, from do-it-all processors to precision engineering tools, with this guide. Mastering is a strange part of the music-making process. It’s a technical activity at heart, but it’s also abstract enough to be thought of as an art. While mixing is a stage that leaves room for creative choice, mastering is about ensuring those choices come through and fit on all playback systems and formats – as well as making music sound more balanced and

The Best Vocoder Plugins Out There in 2025

Discover the best options for vocoder plugins, including both analogue-style tone-generating synths and digital filter banks to connect any two sources Do the robot! The vocoder sound is a classic music production technique, and the tool used to get it is a classic in its own right. Modern software vocoders go further than their old-school analogue counterparts thanks to the benefits and flexibility of digital technology. But that doesn’t mean you have to sound newfangled – today’s vocoder

11 Underrated VSTs

Here are the synths and effects we think the world has been missing out on since their release. Get ready to discover some hidden gems in this list.   There are a lot of plugins released these days. Some are hyped, some are overhyped; some are instant hits, some creep up on the world after a while; some never get noticed, and others are used for a few weeks and then ignored forever more.  It’s very easy to miss some hidden gems that didn’t get enough of a first impression. In this art

Vocal Generating Plugins

If vocals aren’t your forte, or you don’t have access to a professional singer, these five vocal-generating plugin instruments are here to help.   Vocals are a key part of many styles of contemporary music. Whether they’re being used to provide the key focal point and lyrical content of a track, to add harmony or rhythm, or as an effect or background texture, vocals are a highly versatile and effective music production tool for a variety of applications. In the past, we’ve covered the

How to Build a Bedroom Music Studio

Upgrade your space into a more fit-for-purpose studio with our quick guide to the essential knowledge   There’s a reason professionals who work with audio and sound always opt to work in a dedicated studio if one’s available: professional studio spaces are optimised for working with sound! But with the right know-how and some careful consideration, you can get somewhat close to this yourself. You’ll never turn your bedroom into a professional live room, but in this article we’ll give

How Should I Complete My Beatport Studio Plugins Collection?

Looking for inspiration to make your membership’s plugin count up to 10? Here are some bright ideas for VSTs you may not have considered   Beatport Studio is a great membership for practical, real-world producers, giving you access to ten plugins of your choice that can be swapped worry-free thanks to ‘frozen-state’ technology.  There’s plenty of plugins to choose from for Beatport Studio members, but with so much quality on display, we wouldn’t blame you for feeling spoiled for choice.

The Best Saturation VST Plugins on Plugin Boutique

What are the top plugins for adding analogue warmth, character and drive to a signal in your DAW?   For many years, distortion was the enemy of mix engineers in search of the cleanest possible mix. Imperfect analogue circuitry and limited hardware often led to loss of signal fidelity and waveforms being chopped off abruptly, resulting in harsh, warped sounds. With the advent of digital music production tools, a lot of that character and noise was lost. Today, those “harsh, warped sounds” a

10 Easy-to-Use Plugins for Beginner Producers

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the amount of plugins available to you as a beginner producer, here’s a quick list to help get you started    Starting out in the world of music production can be daunting. You’re venturing into the unknown for the first time, perhaps with no prior knowledge whatsoever, with a bombardment of new information for your brain to soak up. It can be challenging and, if not approached in a fun and engaging way, it can be easy to lose the motivation to keep learnin

What Makes a Good First Plugin Purchase?

If you’re looking to buy your first plugin, you want to make sure it’s a good one. Here’s our advice for what to look for – whatever your reason for taking the plunge   Producers buy plugins. As the internet’s top destination for music software from a range of manufacturers, we can verify that it’s definitely true! Your DAW comes stocked with instruments and effects of its own, and these are usually great, but when it comes time to go beyond the software that every other DAW user has, a

Plugins Hall of Fame

Discover some of the plugins that shaped the history of music software – and get nostalgic without installing any wrappers or bridges   They grew out of a standard that was one of several, but history’s VST plugins have set the standard for an entire industry with its own conventions, conferences and – yes, even boutique websites. It shouldn’t surprise you to learn that, here at Plugin Boutique, we love plugins! And in this article, we’re going to highlight some of history’s most signifi