Never has there been a better time to be an in-the-box producer than 2026. Modern processors are lightning-fast, DAWs are more powerful than they’ve ever been, and the sheer breadth and variety of audio effects and virtual instruments on the market is something to behold.
Barely an hour passes without a new plugin popping up in our inbox, and with the recent explosion in AI-based vibe coding tools making development more accessible than ever, the floodgates have well and truly opened.
Faced with this deluge of digital audio tools, it’s not easy to figure out which plugins have the potential to shake up your music-making, and which simply aren’t worth your time.
That’s where we come in. Each month, we comb through the latest releases to pick out the plugins that you need to know about, picking out the instruments and effects that deserve a place in your plugin folder.
1. Native Instruments Vertikal
Formats: Kontakt | Platforms: macOS, Windows | Price: $149/€149/£129 | Find out more
Have you ever played a piano that’s 14 feet tall? Me neither. Thanks to Native Instruments, now you can. The Vertikal sample library captures the sound of one of the tallest pianos ever built, a vertical concert grand found in the Berlin-based Funkhaus studio belonging to contemporary piano maestro Nils Frahm.
The super-sized piano in question has been meticulously multi-sampled by piano library experts Galaxy Instruments, and is presented in two versions: Pure is a clear and expressive tone with wide dynamic range and defined attack, and Felt is a muted and soft alternative that’s reminiscent of the hushed, intimate sound heard on Frahm’s album of the same name.
Vertikal is a beautiful instrument in its own right, but those seeking something more sonically adventurous will find much to explore in the Particles 2.0 engine, which complements the core library with a four-slot effects rack, flexible modulation system and generative note-clouds that algorithmically follow your playing.
2. XLN Audio RC-20 Retro Color V2
Formats: VST3, AU, AAX | Platforms: macOS, Windows | Price: $99/£84 | Find out more
XLN Audio’s RC-20 is a modern classic in the plugin world, a creative multi-effects processor that’s a kind of Swiss Army knife for sonic character. Offering up an abundance of ways to imbue your audio with imperfection, it delivers the vintage vibes, lo-fi texture and faux analogue warmth that’s become increasingly sought after in the era of all-too-clean in-the-box production.
On the verge of its tenth birthday, XLN Audio has unveiled the next version of RC-20, an update that the company says isn’t intended to “reinvent the wheel”, but instead build on the retro stylings of the original plugin with fresh effects and more flexible processing.
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The six effects modules found in V1 are all present and correct, but they’ve all received an upgrade and can now be reordered in the signal path. V2 brings new types of noise, distortion and reverb to the plugin, along with a new Codec mode that recreates the glitchy, fragmented sonics of lossy digital audio, making your track sound a bit like you downloaded it from Limewire in 2002. V2 also adds an Echo module, a feedback delay with ping-pong and granular modes that sounds gloriously degraded after its repeats have cycled through the plugin’s other sound-shaping modules.
Since launching in 2016, RC-20 has become an essential tool for thousands of producers seeking an antidote to digital sterility – V2 is a worthy successor.
3. KNOCK AUDIO KNOCK 2
Formats: VST3, AU, AAX | Platforms: macOS, Windows | Price: €199/$199/£179 | Find out more
DECAP is the producer behind Drums That Knock, a ubiquitous sample library that’s popped up in tracks by everyone from Charli XCX to Kendrick Lamar. Last year, he shifted his focus from sample packs to software, developing a drum mixing plugin under the banner of Knock Audio that’s designed to deliver the same hard-hitting sonics you’ll hear in his productions: KNOCK.
A year on, and DECAP has released a successor. The original plugin had five drum processing modules: a transient shaper, a saturator, a sub generator, a top-end enhancer and a clipper. KNOCK 2 gains a sixth, a multiband compressor based on classic hardware designs with five character modes. This is joined by Purr, a subtle flutter effect that adds character to your top-end. Modules can now be reordered in the signal path, and automatic gain-staging has been added to ensure your levels stay in check.
4. Native Instruments Massive XL
Formats: VST3, AU, AAX | Platforms: macOS, Windows | Price: €199/$199/£179 | Find out more
A supersized upgrade to Native Instruments’ long-running wavetable synthesizer, Massive XL builds on the core synth engine of its predecessor with expanded sonic capabilities and an enhanced workflow, introducing custom wavetable creation, polyphonic aftertouch support and Synplant-style audio-to-patch preset generation, while borrowing preset mutation from Absynth, another recently revived NI classic.
There's a lot that's new in Massive XL, but it’s the Generate function that’s going to steal the headlines. This is an AI model that analyses any imported audio file and recreates it as a fully editable patch. Generate creates four different patches by default, and you’re able to adjust how much variation there is between presets and how closely they match the timbre of the original audio file. Each preset variant is automatically assigned six macro controls that let you make quick edits to the character of the sound.
Placing the kind of audio-to-patch technology pioneered by Sonic Charge’s Synplant plugin in a more sophisticated synth architecture while giving you more control over the results, Generate is a massive step forward for this long-established soft synth.
5. iZotope Photon
Formats: ARA2, Standalone | Platforms: macOS, Windows | Price: €199/$199/£179 | Find out more
Photon is iZotope's first software release since the company was acquired by Boris FX in July, following the sale of iZotope’s former parent company Native Instruments to inMusic.
A stem separation tool that’s available as both a standalone app and an ARA plugin, Photon is equipped with 12 custom-trained machine learning models for stem splitting and audio repair that run locally on your computer’s GPU. Models onboard include a music separation model that splits mixed tracks into stems for Voice, Bass, Drums and Other, and a drum separation model that can separate mixed drum recordings into Kick, Snare, Hi-hat, Toms and Cymbals. You also get a variety of models geared towards post-production.
Proton’s GPU-powered stem separation is both fast and high-quality, as you’d expect from a veteran audio brand like iZotope, and the app’s simple and intuitive workflow is a breeze to use. It doesn’t come cheap, though – at $259, it’s probably the most expensive stem splitter we’ve come across, and considering that many of the leading DAWs now have stem separation built in, it might prove a difficult purchase to justify.
