Plugins & instruments
The plugin and instrument makers whose tools every other segment teaches, bundles and resells. A market of perpetual licenses giving way to subscriptions, with a few houses (and one famously sales-free holdout) setting taste at the high end.
- Arturia — Vintage synth sounds without vintage hardware prices.
- Auto-Tune — Anyone recording vocals, corrective or creative.
- Baby Audio — Modern creative effects with fresh interfaces.
- Cableguys — Electronic producers who want precise sidechain curves, rhythmic movement and creative modulation without complicated routing.
- EastWest — Composers who want a broad professional instrument collection without purchasing every library separately.
- Eventide Audio — Producers, engineers and performers who want distinctive spatial, pitch and experimental effects with a long professional history.
- FabFilter — Best-in-class EQ and limiting you keep forever.
- iZotope — Mastering assistance, mixing helpers and audio repair.
- Kilohearts — Sound designers and electronic producers who want a flexible modular system that remains visually approachable.
- Melodyne — Vocal producers, engineers and musicians who need transparent, detailed pitch and timing control.
- Orchestral Tools — Composers who need detailed orchestral colors, specialist articulations and professional cinematic libraries.
- Plugin Alliance — Producers and engineers who want a broad commercial plugin catalog and are willing to wait for discounts.
- Slate Digital — Analog-flavored mixing tools on a rental budget.
- Softube — Producers and engineers who prioritize polished analog modeling and hands-on mixing integration.
- Sonible — Self-mixing artists who want faster, better defaults.
- Soundtoys — Producers and mixers who want fast, musical effects with strong analog character and creative possibilities.
- Spectrasonics — Producers and composers who want a versatile flagship instrument with an extensive professional preset library.
- Tokyo Dawn Labs — Engineers who want precise, transparent processors without expensive bundles or subscriptions.
- Toontrack — Songwriters and producers who need realistic rhythm sections and fast arrangement tools without recording live musicians.
- u-he — Producers and sound designers who value detailed synthesis, strong analog modeling and long-term product support.
- Universal Audio — Recording artists and engineers who want low-latency monitoring, high-quality interfaces and established analog emulations.
- Valhalla DSP — Producers and engineers who want excellent spatial effects without subscriptions, bundles or unpredictable sale pricing.
- Vital — Electronic producers and beginner sound designers who want a powerful modern synth without an upfront investment.
- Waves — Industry-standard mixing plugins at sale prices.
- Xfer Records — Electronic producers who want a widely supported synthesizer with extensive tutorials, presets and sound-design flexibility.
- XLN Audio — Songwriters and producers who want polished acoustic instruments and fast, creative sample workflows.