What (effect) plug-ins have really impressed you lately?

[Lusamars]

Got Vybz recently for ten bucks, super nice textures.
Shadow Hills Class A always delivers my kind of sound.

[kPere]

It's an old one, but Unfiltered Audio Dent 2 became my go to distortion plugin. Amazing control and alghoritms, auto gain control works great and so does tonal shaping. Ivr had it on shelf for so long chasing something fancy that I didn't even notice what it can do. It's tape saturation is a beast, exactly what I needed so many times. Slept on plug!

Gonna have to try it again but doesn't Dent 2 have the "weird" style of output gain where it controls the entire signal after dry/wet mix rather than the processed signal alone? Maybe that was just Decapitator...

Didn't notice it actually, would have to check it.

[DJErmac]

Been trying the demo of The God Particle from Cradle. It's meant for the 2 bus and recommended to mix into as opposed to an after solution. I've tried it with replacing my Newfangled Audio Elevate bundle on already mixed material and in a few cases I prefer The God Particle. There's not much to do with tweaking parameters and I love to tinker but if it works, I can't argue. I'm gonna grab it when the 5 day demo expires.

Hey, thumbs up for the suggestion man ! This was on my to-do list since I read your post. Just tried it and purchased it right away.
It’s a CPU killer but I absolutely love its sound.
It sounds very close from that FM-sound I was looking for.

[simon.a.billington]

Arturia REV Intensity.

Arturia is really pushing the right buttons lately. The effects I tried from them are all very nice.

You're right actually. Eternity is an extremely flexible delay as well. Then there is Fragments and now ColdFire. Modern tools for a modern era.

Those four, along with Tape-Mello-Fi, are the only five Arturias i own - no use for any emulations here, but the re-thinking, forward-thinking and, to quote someone completely out of context; "shitload of weapons" they provide... fascinating stuff possible out of "typical effect area" and clearly top notch quality. sometimes it's too complex for fast use and i'll go a bit back to simpler stuff (valhalla in most cases), but if you have time (and cpu ressources)...

ColdFire is not quite a direct competitor for Trash, but I anticipate alot of Trash users moving towards it... iZotope just announced they are discontinuing Trash, along with Iris and Breaktweaker.

Man there is going to be a lot of upset users ranting on these forums!! With any luck, though, they'll be taking the the best bets of these products and designing something new with them, kinda like how Alloy and Neutrino effectively became Neutron.

[vurt]

so no change from the norm then

[simon.a.billington]

so no change from the norm then

Haha!!

[Samuel583]

I've been trialing Acustica Purple. Honestly have never used an AA plugin that I particularly liked except Gainstation but I may just need to pick this one up, sounds incredible on the mix bus.

[8Len8]

Omni Channel- more intuitive that other channel strips (to me at least)

Smart Comp - easy to get a starting point

Crave EQ - easy to use interface

[simon.a.billington]

In terms of hardware come software, the Lisa mastering eq has an interesting new take. It has dynamic capabilities, it doesn’t work like a regular dynamic eq.

[BKSchatzki]

It's interesting wording, because sometimes the most impressive plugins aren't the most useful, haha.

There are lots of reverbs that come to mind for impressive. Crystalline is becoming my workhorse algoverb, but the reverb plugin that I always always like using, especially for the big sounds, is Comet. That being said, the free one from Zynaptiq with just four options and a mix control is a winner; something about that reverb just sounds sweet. Maybe they have their pitch-shifting reverb algo under the hood.

[3lu5iv3]

i've been using SZECHUAN SATURATOR a lot on my drum buss. it sounds good. download it here.
https://codalabs.io/szechuan/

[Aiynzahev]

In terms of hardware come software, the Lisa mastering eq has an interesting new take. It has dynamic capabilities, it doesn’t work like a regular dynamic eq.

I picked this one up as it got my attention too. Really interesting processor but I am not used to using it yet.

[martiu]

Tritik Moodal

[El°HYM]

Polyverse Supermodal

[foosnark]

Picked up Objeq Delay for cheap from Humble Bundle and it's pretty great.

But I've been blown away all over again by Valhalla Delay after digging into it some yesterday.

Also I feel like Ruina is one of those things that keeps getting better the more I use it.