Your favorite Effects companies (preferably adsrsounds site)

[thecontrolcentre]

Audio Damage, Ohm Force, Suzuki Kentaro, Klevgrand, Cable Guys, Audio Thing, Output, Inear Display, Glitchmachines, Valhalla, Klanghelm, Devious Machines, Imaginando, K-Devices, Surreal Machines, Sugar Bytes, Unfiltered Audio, Dawesome, Anemond ... etc

[Razzia]

Minimal, Devious Machines, Kilohearts, Cableguys for creative/sound design focused stuff

UAD, Fabfilter, Boz Digital for more utilitarian stuff, with some overlap (u-he, Newfangled, etc)

[ChanceB]

Creative stuff for the most part.

For creative effects I like Cableguys,Sugar Bytes,Minimal Audio ,Glitch Machines, Kilohearts, DS Audio,Devious Machines, Polyverse, Arturia

[morphex]

There’s already some great suggestions. Here’s my suggestions for creative effects:

Boom Library - Enrage
Devious Machines - Infiltrator 2, Texture, and Pitch Monster
SoundToys - Effect Rack
Kilohearts - Snap Heap and Multipass, including their entire effects lineup
Output - Portal and Thermal
Minimal Audio - Rift 2, Cluster Delay, Morph EQ, Swarm Reverb, Hybrid Filter, and Ripple Phaser
Cableguys - ShaperBox 3.5 and FilterShaper XL
U-he - Filterscape Bundle
Audio Damage - Other Desert Cities, Replicant 3, Discord 4, and several from their free Legacy Collection
Anemond - Sloom, Factorsynth 3 FX Version, and Factoid 2
Polyverse Music - Everything Bundle
GS DSP - Everything Bundle
Baby Audio - Transit 2, Crystalline, Spaced Out, and Humanoid
Unfiltered Audio - Triad, Tails, Sandman Pro, LO-FI-AF, Silo, and SpecOps
Glitchmachines - All of their effects

[twal]

There’s already some great suggestions. Here’s my suggestions for creative effects:

Boom Library - Enrage
Devious Machines - Infiltrator 2, Texture, and Pitch Monster
SoundToys - Effect Rack
Kilohearts - Snap Heap and Multipass, including their entire effects lineup
Output - Portal and Thermal
Minimal Audio - Rift 2, Cluster Delay, Morph EQ, Swarm Reverb, Hybrid Filter, and Ripple Phaser
Cableguys - ShaperBox 3.5 and FilterShaper XL
U-he - Filterscape Bundle
Audio Damage - Other Desert Cities, Replicant 3, Discord 4, and several from their free Legacy Collection
Anemond - Sloom, Factorsynth 3 FX Version, and Factoid 2
Polyverse Music - Everything Bundle
GS DSP - Everything Bundle
Baby Audio - Transit 2, Crystalline, Spaced Out, and Humanoid
Unfiltered Audio - Triad, Tails, Sandman Pro, LO-FI-AF, Silo, and SpecOps
Glitchmachines - All of their effects

Yeah filtershaper x looks fantastic and a great deal rn; and will take a look at Baby Audio...

[JerGoertz]

Is it that time again???

[Razzia]

Honorable mention to Tokyo Dawn Labs by the way. PIB, audiodeluxe, etc are variously running sales with different TDR plugins for $10 or so, and I decided to try them out since it would be painless to buy them if I liked them.
It's too soon for me to call them a favorite, but Kotelnikov and especially Limiter No. 6 are really impressing me. Molot seems really good too, but that one is a little more idiosyncratic and complicated, and I haven't spent enough time with it to suss out what it's best at. I guess the fairly vanilla UI and very reasonable price tag made me overlook them (rookie mistake), but I see why they are frequently named as a functionally & sonically comparable alternative to Fabfilter.

[CrystalWizard]

ElectroHarmonix, oh wait, virtual?

PSP- still my favorite *
U-he
Valhalla *
Guitar Rig (which i will never upgrade) great mangler *
Izotope (which i will never upgrade)
GlitchMachines *
Sugar Bytes
and of course Reaktor the king of mangle ***
some that i don't have but i've either demoed or seen in action with friends (or were recommended):
Melda *
Voxengo
AudioThing
Unfiltered Audio *
Eventide *
2C Audio (gone)
GRM tools *
and on and on, we are so spoiled, when i was a little kid we had to save up, then walk uphill both ways, with no shoes, in the snow, to get a Small Stone Phase Shifter and we'd spend days playing around with it, in awe.

These days the built in FX on Reaper, Ableton Live, and even the built ins
on some VSTs like Omnisphere are fit for purpose many times. imo

it really depends on what my goal is to use an effect- sound betterer or soundmangler

EDIT: Reread the thread, i put stars next to the FSU, creative manglers, most of them have options for both.

[DNAudio]

Airwindows - Makes some of the best sounding plugins & all for free. An underrated aspect of Chris's work is his ability to make the plugins intuitive despite having no GUI. Doing a lot with few controls is a key element of his plugins.

Jon V - Fircomp & Fircomp 2. The cleanest sounding compressors out there without any oversampling, just well implemented pre-filtering & FIR lookahead. I pray that he makes a gate or true peak limiter out of this tech.

TDR Labs - Every plugin they make is 10/10 in functionality & quality. I use both of their EQs in every song I mix, I use Molot GE on almost every master, Kotelnikov for transparent gain reduction of highly dynamic material, Nova GE for dynamic EQ, ect. Their new filter series is also now on every song of mine. Ultrasonic is an inexpensive yet very steep lowpass filter that makes running at higher sample rates less of a headache. Infrasonic is a great way to micro-adjust the low end as well as remove DC offset. This is the brand I get the most use out of.

apulSoft - Versatile tools with compact, intuitive UIs with exceptionally good sound quality & anti-aliasing. Calling apShaper the best mastering clipper out there would be downplaying its capabilities.

Polyverse - There's a lot of DSP devs that specialize in "creative" FX, but I think Polyverse does it best.

FabFilter - Every plugin they make is so damn solid. Hard not to find at least one plugin that becomes your favorite in its respective use case.

DMGAudio - Some of the most configurable plugins around, for better or worse. Often times you can get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of versatility & configuration options in these plugins, but then again, sometimes you need that! I recommend their "Track" series the most as they streamline the UI but still sound great. A lot of overlap between FabFilter's plugins, so if FabFilter doesn't do it for you, DMGAudio *will*

Cytomic - THE best analog modelling I've heard. Now, I actually have trouble finding a use for these plugins in a mix since they're so CPU hungry, and to be frank, I think original, digital plugins can offer better results, but I think the novelty alone is worth mentioning them.

[Jac459]

To me in terms of effects and by use cases:

Tools: kilohearts free suite is impossible to beat.
Bus/master FX: difficult to make better than fabfilter here. A bit expensive but the usability and sound quality are awesome. Izotope is also a super player, as well as TDR labs. For reverb ValhallaDSP is also a classic.
Creative FX: I personally love output series with in particular Portal which is a classic and Thermal, superb sounding distortion. Minimal audio is also a strong player in that area (as well as arturia by the way). Finally, kilohearts advanced tool on that matter offers a level of power and flexibility which is unmatched..

[e@rs]

Sonic Charge.

[Funky40]

not mentioned so far i think ?

VCV RAck ! Great to patch your own FX setups. And has some Great FX !

Tonsturm

Sound Particles

Puremagnetik



this thread won´t carry the OP very far. The market is too big.
You´re better of just searching for: "Best + [name your specific FX]"@ YT, search engine.

[mxbf]

DMG - TrackComp, Limitless, Multiplicity
Limitless on every master track. I may never need another limiter. Multiplicity amazing on mastering to push things just further, even just using presets. TrackComp go-to compressor on every track, basically. I've wanted Equilibrium for a while, but it's too expensive.

Unfiltered Audio - BYOM, TRIAD, SpecOps, Dent (Needle, Lo-Fi AF, etc)
I should use them more. I use SpecOps the most, it does something no other plug in does that I know of. The MP3 filter is versatile for many creative applications.

Zynaptiq - Pitchmap, Adaptiverb, Orange Vocoder, Morph
All very good.

SugarBytes- Turnado
I would list Effectrix but it has been completely replaced by Infiltrator. I will never use it again. But Turnado remains amazing, and I am only just touching the surface of what it can do with the presets. Put it on a group bus and automate the Dictator for all kinds of possibilities.

UAD - everything in the subscription.
Distressor, 1176 models, LA2, Manley vari Mu, Tape Machines, Capital Reverb Chambers, Rotary speaker, Chorus D, Neve pre-amp. All amazing mixing tools, very high CPU cost though.

Audiothing - Speakers, Springs, HAINBACH stuff (Lines, Wires, Gong)
I don't own the Hainbach stuff but I want to. No other company does what Audiothing and Hainbach are doing, with these creative effects that actually impart a very unique vintage chaotic noise aspect where you actually are doing something new with the sound.

IK Multimedia - Amplitube MAX / Tonex MAX
If there is a better collection of creative guitar pedals and amps than these two together, I don't know about it. Guitar Rig doesn't ever get touched anymore for me. Maybe that's a mistake, but Amplitube's creative possibilities just blow it sky high out of the water as far as I can tell. Especially with Tonex MAX. So many pedals, so much fun.

Acustica - Nebula (N4), El Rey, Diamond, Gold, Navy, Magenta, Sand
Analog hardware sound in the box. Use on all my masters, but when I use them across 4-5 busses (drum, guitar, synth, bass, vocal) and smatter around the mix, it always stands out.

Plugin Alliance / Brainworx:
I still use Black Box, VSM/VSC, and DSM V3. DSM is amazing on masters. I forget what it's called.

Soundtoys - Decapitator
Only thing I really still like from Soundtoys. But it's amazing. Though lately I reach for Ohmicide a lot more.

Arturia - Filter FX, Reverbs, Delays, Compressors, MultiFX
A solid set of vintage sounding FX that have a lot of character. The Filters are quite great. I reach for these delays over the UAD delays for some reason. I feel like they're almost like a lower CPU, maybe less impressive but still good version of the UAD suite.

[DCrown]

WAVES.
I still use a lot of their plugins in general,
their bundles contain everything including effects.
All the Renaissance plugins are old,
but still couldn't be replaced.
And best customer service imo.
Only Plugin Alliance plugins didn't get
any use at all, luckily I could resell most
of them and it's the same with Acustica Audio.
And I like Yamaha plugins, their Helix plugin made all other guitar plugins useless for me except ToneX sometimes I use.
I sometimes use it as effect plugin only.
Also I like a very old Yamaha synth plugin a lot, forgot the name, though.
Would like to have their Montage plugin, too, but would have to buy the hardware synth to get it.
Last but not least all Sonnox plugins are gems.
But I could produce with WAVES Horizon plugins only, all the rest are more or less extra luxury.

After many years using a daw, I refret one purchase only. Must have been drunken that day, I almost never drink, though.

[FTsounds]

Lot's of good lists here.
Hard to make one. It all depends on what i need to do, lots of companies comes with some gems hard to pass