What do you consider best plugins of 2021?

[MogwaiBoy]

Just gonna give a shout out to all the Variety of Sound stuff coming back as 64-bit this year. Loving it and may it continue <3

[DrGonzo]

Atlas 2 was by far my fav and most-used plugin released in 2021.

I hate when this happens. Atlas have been on my radar for about a year and I've totally forgotten about it. Now I recognise I missed 50% off during BF sale and they only have 1-2 sales per year

Anyway - it's probably worth the full price though. I've heard nothing but excellent things about it.

/C

[fese]

Reverb Foundry Tai Chi is quite lovely.
Fuse Audio Labs VCS-1 is a really good channel strip, flexible and low CPU.
Most other stuff i bought this year is probably not from 2021… I was all set to mention IK Sunset Reverb, but then I looked it up and it was released early 2020!! F*** me, I’m getting old…

[ApexSoundMusic]

For me the discovery of the year was Algonaut Atlas (and the follow-up Atlas 2 of course), but I'm also using Sonible's Smart EQ3 a lot

Furthermore I think Cherry Audio's Memorymode & Polymode are great, I'm happily using Fabfilter Volcano3 and have found lots of use for Caelum Audio's Smoove, Schlap & Flux Mini on both Desktop & IOS.

Unpopular opinion: I really like Krotos Concept 2 for some reason...

Other purchases I bought and found fun to use:
- Rob Papen's Delsane
- UVI Super 7
- Baby Audio Smooth operator
- WA Satyrus
- (Not really software from 2021, but 'discovered/tried-out' in 2021: Cubasis 3 on IOS, Sugar Bytes Factory, Unfiltered Audio LION & PA's Knifonium! Have used Knifonium in almost every production since purchase )

[El°HYM]

+1 for Bootsy (64).

[legendCNCD]

Kush Blyss.

[W23]

Unpopular opinion: I really like Krotos Concept 2 for some reason...

There’s only one more day of 50% off of Concept 2, and there’s not much love for this synth. I can get Newfangled’s Generate for about $15 less. I’m kind of stuck between the two. Both seem to sound pretty great. Generate may be a little more challenging to get useful sounds from, but encourages experimentation. Concept 2 seems to leave the experimentation to a dice roll.

I haven’t picked up on anything particularly new this year. I spent a few bucks upgrading Pigments and got the sound set earlier this year. Did Native Instruments upgrade Guitar Rig Pro this year, or was that in 2020? I stumbled across the Traktor effects on drum loops by accident a couple of weeks ago (seriously, try the Slicer on a breakbeat). I instantly updated to the latest version of Komplete, and got Super 8 in the deal. I also upgraded to Playbeat 3 which is fun, but I wouldn’t pretend to call it the best of 2021 (still pretty awesome though).

[ApexSoundMusic]

Unpopular opinion: I really like Krotos Concept 2 for some reason...

...I’m kind of stuck between the two...

Cannot vouch for Generate, haven't tried it. Read a lot of good stuff about it but to me the UI seems quite experimental.. Pretty daunting actually

As for Concept 2. Most criticism I've read from other people is aimed at the filter and the big central modulation section.
The filter definately sounds digital, but that doesn't mean 'bad' to my ear. So I guess that's each to it's own on that... I can also understand that some people find the central section to take up quite a lot of space, but I also don't mind that. I actually think it invites using modulations and also think it does a good job at making all modulation accessable and clear in one place. This, together with the fact that it has a one-page layout, makes it a really inviting synth for me. The switching between the 'normal' and the granular-style oscillators is also neat.

It also comes with a bunch of good presets. The preset browser itself is lacking a bit though... (And it isn't the lightest of synth in terms of CPU usage)

[ApexSoundMusic]

Unpopular opinion: I really like Krotos Concept 2 for some reason...

...Concept 2 seems to leave the experimentation to a dice roll. ..

Oh and another thing on this: It's actually quite user friendly experimantion. Pretty clever feature as you can choose which parameters will be randomized yourself.
So let's say that, for instance, you have a plucky sound which is mostly defined by it's amp envelope and filter modulation. You could opt for keeping those parameters on the same settings but at the same time connect parameters like the waveform, pitch, effects, detune, drive, etc to the randomization dice. This way you can keep the plucky sound but randomize/experiment with a lot of other timbres for that specific pluck as only those chosen parameters will be randomized.

[SHall1000]

The plug-ins that sprang to mind, Generate, Shades, Scaler 2….were all released in 2020. Time flies!

[FapFilter]

Indeed, otherwise Vital would surely have been on top of my list here

[plexuss]

Oh man. I was done my BF digital audio software shopping but now you are inspiring me to look at Generate... I have an upgrade price of $60. tempting... will have to demo. If I buy it I will send you the resulting GoFund Me since you were the ones driving me to spend more money and so should compensate me back.

[Vsthound]

Pigments 3.5
Electra2
Omnisphere 2.5 (yes, still)
Kontakt

[simon.a.billington]

SWAM Solo Strings 3
Waves SSL EV2

Oh yeah EV2 is a nice improvement indeed. Retro-Fi would be another Waves contender, but then there is Unfiltered Audio Lo-Fi-AF and IK Syntronik 2, which is much improved over the original

[Mikro93]

I can definitely vouch for Generate, one of my go-to synths for the past year.

I got Zebra2 recently, and I'm grinding it every single day. Love it!

As for effects, I got Denise Audio God Mode and I love it! Same for Dragon Fire. Perfect Plate has too much latency to be usable while composing, which is a shame.

I'm wary of the recency effect, but I think Zebra takes the cake. Even reading the manual was enjoyable