Turning melodious tunes into cacophonous chaos? Check out this featured plugin for a unique twist to your sound design collection, as part of Plugin Week.
The event Plugin Week 2025 is currently underway, and resident mixing guru Jon Musgrave has shared a list of quirky and weird plugins that are worth a look. Here are some of the standout options:
GreenHAAS: A Gamified Greenhouse for Sonic Enhancement
GreenHAAS, a plugin by Mixing Night Audio, is a saturation and width enhancement tool disguised by a gamified greenhouse-themed skin. It delivers sonically and is particularly useful for width enhancement and slappy delay sounds.
Graindad: Transforming Audio into Something Different
Graindad, a granular processor by Sugar Bytes, allows for the transformation of audio into something different. It offers various capture options and playback effects, making it a versatile tool for sound designers and producers.
Lair: Creating Unconventional Reverb Spaces
Lair, a plugin by Aberrant DSP, is a task-specific reverb plugin that creates washy sounds, metallic shimmers, and complex echoes. It also offers options for distortion, modulation, tonal adjustment, stereo width, and dynamic ducking, as well as a collection of weirdly named parameters. With over 70 presets, it's ideal for creating a reverb space that is out of the norm and gloriously coloured.
Morph 3: Achieving Highly Original Outcomes
Morph 3 by Zynaptiq is a serious plugin with a serious price tag, using audio blending to achieve highly original outcomes. It allows for blending of the input audio with either the side chain source or the onboard Modeler, and it has a number of morphing algorithms and preset audio sources.
Dumpster Fire: Pitch Craziness at Your Fingertips
Dumpster Fire, developed by the plugin developer known as Yasd, is a leftfield pitch shifter with 5 animated parameter controls, a rotating background graphic, and ghoulish monochrome artwork. Its big dial adds further pitch craziness, and if you want to zero any of the parameter controls, simply double click them.
The Harvester: Collective Control and Automation
The Harvester processor in Graindad allows collective control and automation of 12 key knob parameters and includes an excellent visualizer.
Permut8: A Delay Plugin with a Twist
Permut8 from Sonic Charge is a delay plugin that uses a 12-bit digital delay with variable sample rate (0 to 352kHz) and is modulated by various operators. It offers options for saturation, limiting, filtering, and output feedback.
Hate: A Distortion Plugin with a Wavetable Engine
Dawesome Audio's Hate is a distortion plugin with a wavetable distortion engine, slice selection, intensity adjustment, and control over which aspects of the signal are processed.
Backmask and Brauer Motion: Unconventional Processors
Backmask, a plugin by Freakshow Industries, is a reverse processor that has triggering modes, reverse modes, and a sample freeze option. It is known for creating bonkers delay effects and has a backwards-labeled interface accompanied by moving images. Brauer Motion, a plugin by Waves, combines 2 modulation controlled panners and offers classic panning, as well as Circle and Circle Phase options that create the impression of sound rotating around the head.
Krotos' Dehumaniser Simple Monsters: Changing Voices into Monsters
Krotos' Dehumaniser Simple Monsters is a plugin designed to change voices into monsters. It has a transform engine on the right and a convolution engine on the left, and allows for a variety of outcomes from high pitched pixie effects to deep dark giants. It also has parameters for pitch variation and noise.
These plugins offer a wide range of unique and interesting sound design possibilities, making Plugin Week 2025 an exciting time for audio enthusiasts.
