The Best Plugins of 2025: Innovative Audio Processing
Some of this year's most exciting plug-in releases.
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The Best Plugins of 2025: Innovative Audio Processing · Source: FabFilter / Minimal Audio / Time Exile
We look back at some of the best plugins designed for music production, mixing, and mastering released over the course of this year.
The Best Plugins of 2025:
As new plugins are released almost every other day, how do we decide what makes one great? Well, for the most part, there are very few that are offering something completely new. In fact, it’s more about offering a unique combination of processes that not only get you great-sounding results, but also improve your workflow.
The Best Plugins of 2025
Because vocals are the most commonly recorded musical instrument in any modern style of music, many of today’s plugin designs are focussed on the processing of vocal signals.
Naturally, when assessing a new plug-in, we always compare it with the average stock plug-in you find in your DAW these days, which is, in fact, very good. This will give us an indication as to how any new plug-in might fit into our workflow, and what makes it worthwhile overall.
The Best Plugins of 2025: FabFilter Pro-Q 4
The FabFilter Pro-Q plugin has been a market leader for some time, but it goes even further with a unique range of features in version 4. When using Pro-Q 4, each of its 24 bands can operate as dynamic or spectral bands. This allows you to do enhancement and corrective work on any sound within the same workflow.
What’s more, with the global list view, you can quickly navigate to any instance of Pro-Q 4 you have running in your DAW session. This allows you to make mixing decisions quickly and hone in directly on any part of your mix from a tonal point of view. Within Pro-Q 4, the EQ curves are as customizable as ever, as you have the ability to draw in curves and use the continuous slope feature.
What’s more, besides the cutting-edge modern functions, there are analogue modeling features such as Natural Phase processing mode, a colourful Warm character mode, and the option of using Gain-Q Interaction with bell filters to get that classic console-style EQ feel. Overall, Pro-Q 4 is one of the most comprehensive mixing tools available. Get it at Thomann.*
The Best Plugins of 2025: Minimal Audio Evoke
Minimal Audio Evoke is a powerful vocal production tool that combines resynthesis with harmonization, allowing you to build complex, textured sounds from a single vocal track. What really stands out is the diverse range of sound manipulation tools that are packed into this plugin without ever coming across as overwhelming in any way.
To set the sonic character of the effect, there are 15 different modes ranging from natural to vintage vocoder-style sounds and cutting-edge modern effects for pop music production and sound design applications. The pitch and harmony sections are easy to use, with a range of scales and modes to choose from, and 4-part harmonization capabilities.
In addition, Evoke is also equipped with an extensive modulation engine, with envelope followers, LFOs, and curve sequencers to animate almost any parameter. What’s more, there is a range of excellent effects to add spatial character or stereo width to your sounds. Get it at Plugin Boutique.*
The Best Plugins of 2025: Tim Exile Finalist
Finalist is an innovative mixing solution created by Tim Exile to simplify the process of mixing down and finalizing tracks. This is particularly useful for music production and video content creators, as it can save you hours spent mixing material that isn’t necessarily going to be played on the radio.
The plugin workflow starts by importing your stems and categorizing them as either drums, bass, lead, or backing so that Finalist can apply the appropriate processing to each element in your mix. On each channel, you can mute and solo the sound to hear what the processing is doing, and you can adjust the gain and processing amount.
The style of processing is selected with a range of different presets that allow you to match the genre and feel of your track. With so much detail built into the backend, such as clipping and saturation, Finalist is a wonderful tool that can produce a wide scope of impressive results quickly. Get it at Plugin Boutique.*
The Best Plugins of 2025: Soundtoys SpaceBlender
There are so many incredible reverb plugins available today that make it very difficult for developers to create something new and innovative. However, Soundtoys is renowned for combining vintage and modern processing with compelling interfaces that allow you to make those creative mistakes just like the famous hardware units on which these plugins are often based.
Rather than using strictly algorithmic or convolution principles, SpaceBlender makes use of swarm synthesis to create dense, textured spaces that can be easily melded and shaped to fit almost any application imaginable. The interface is centered around a visualizer section with a single node that lets you shape the ambience independently of the other controls.
The decay time value goes from 100 ms to a whopping minute-long time frame, and there is a tempo sync mode for musical grid increments, as well as a warp mode for evolving effects. Overall, SpaceBlender lets you dive into abstract ambient sound design in an exciting new way without getting overly technical.
The Best Plugins of 2025: Zynaptiq INTENSITY 2
INTENSITY is a one-knob loudness processor that uses technology borrowed from the realm of facial recognition software. When it processes audio, INTENSITY doesn’t work like a compressor or another typical gain amplifier, and instead, it analyzes and divides the signal into the body and detailed components to increase the perceived loudness and clarity.
Besides its standard SMOOTH processing algorithm, version 2 includes new CRYSTAL and BRONZE modes, each of which has a distinctive sonic character and way of dealing with transient material, as well as high-resolution 64-bit processing. Meanwhile, the BIAS control allows you to adjust a frequency-dependent EQ curve with 22 different presets to change the character of the processing.
Also, INTENSITY now offers mid-side processing, which is useful in mastering workflows, and it has multichannel functionality for immersive mixing. Overall, INTENSITY is a unique enhancement processor that can be used in a variety of ways on individual elements in the mix or the main mix bus. Get it at Thomann.*
More about the Best Plugins:
- Thomann’s Guide To Plug-ins
- All about Audio Software
*Note: This article about the best plugins contains advertising links that help us finance our site. Don’t worry: the price for you always stays the same! If you purchase something through these links, we receive a small commission. Thank you for your support!
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One response to “The Best Plugins of 2025: Innovative Audio Processing”
The best plugins for hobbyists.