PLUGIN WEEK 2025: To mark Plugin Week 2025, our resident mixing guru Jon Musgrave has kindly dished up his favourite quirky - and just plain weird - plugins.
This selection will infuse your tracks with ultra-odd, unexpected qualities. So, without further ado, here’s Jon’s list…
1. Aberrant DSP - Lair
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Using reverb to create weird effects is nothing new, but Lair takes this concept and fashions it into a task-specific plugin. Built around 3 distinctive reverb modes, Lair delivers washy sounds, metallic shimmers and complex echoes to create a rich array of textural effects.
Further options include distortion, modulation, tonal adjustment, stereo width and dynamic ducking, plus a further collection of weirdly named parameters.
Over 70 presets provide a taste of its potential. If you’re looking for a reverb space that’s out of the norm and gloriously coloured then this is the plugin for you.
2. Waves - Brauer Motion
Creating panning movement in a stereo mix is a great way to add interest. However, we typically stick to quite simple options such as autopan, or simply use automation to control the pan setting.
Brauer Motion is a truly fascinating plugin that combines 2 modulation controlled panners. Classic panning is joined by 3 more interesting pathways, including Circle and Circle Phase which creates the impression the sound is rotating around your head.
Various other options allow you fine tune the pathway behaviour including depth, width and tempo sync. Meanwhile the real time spherical graphic helps you visual what’s happening.
3. Freakshow Industries - Backmask
Even the simplest reverse processors create a sense of chaos, but this plugin ramps up the chaos on purpose. Backmask has triggering modes - free time, tempo synced and level based - down the left, and 3 reverse modes - all, alternate and random - down the right. The reverse sample length is set at the bottom and you also have a sample freeze option - Hold.
As you would expect it’s great at adding bonkers delay effects. But the most oddball aspect is the interface, which is labelled completely backwards, and is also accompanied by a barrage of chopped up moving images that change with the effect selection and parameter settings.
4. Mixing Night Audio - GreenHAAS
GreenHAAS is a premium saturation and width enhancement plugin heavily disguised by a gamified greenhouse-themed skin, and is undoubtedly one of the weirder looking plugins you’ll encounter.
Nevertheless, it delivers sonically and is an incredibly useful processor. Key options include 3 saturation types with high and low cut filters, meanwhile for the Haas delay processor you have individual left and right controls each with 6 delay settings, an overall feedback level and a choice of 6 modulation types.
Effects range from width enhancement to more slappy delay sounds, meanwhile the sunny graphics should brighten up your production. If you like this you should also check out the company’s tone-shaping channel strip LOLComp/ALLComp
5 Krotos - Dehumaniser Simple Monsters
There are many plugins that help us manipulate vocals, but most are designed to fix tuning or add harmonies. There are a handful with more creative ambitions such as iZotope’s VocalSynth 2, and this example from Krotos, which uses a powerful ‘Dehumaniser’ engine.
Simple Monsters is designed to change voices into monsters and features a transform engine on the right and convolution engine on the left.
You can get all sorts of outcomes, from high pitched pixie effects to deep dark giants. Meanwhile additional parameters introduce pitch variation and noise.
6. Sonic Charge - Permut8
Delay lines are used to create all manner of effects, but Permut8 from Sonic Charge really pushes the envelope. The underlying process uses a 12-bit digital delay with variable sample rate (0 to 352kHz).
The delay is then modulated by various operators. In essence the delay memory is changed by two operators in series - instruction 1 then instruction 2.
The type of instruction (AND, RND, OSC and so on) is set on the left and its value (operands) by using the rows of 16 switches. The whole effect is bookended by saturation, limiting and filtering, and there is also an output feedback option for further madness. It all looks quite mathematical, and the outcomes are weird and often extreme.
7. Sugar Bytes - Graindad
Graindad is a granular processor that can transform your audio into something completely different.
The core grain engine includes various capture options, meanwhile playback effects include stuttering, looping, time stretching, pitch shifting, reversing and harmonizing. Modulation options are envelope, LFO and step sequencer as well as various randomizers.
Meanwhile the effects section with filter, reverb and delay adds finesse. The icing on the cake comes from the Harvester processor, which allows you to collectively control and automate the 12 key knob parameters and includes an excellent visualizer.
8. Freakshow Industries - Dumpster Fire
Freakshow Industries deservedly gets a second entry in our top 10 with Dumpster Fire.
This leftfield pitch shifter is everything you want in an oddball plugin. 5 animated parameter controls, a rotating background graphic and ghoulish monochrome artwork reveal very little about the options available (vague details are revealed by the eye icon).
But once you move the big dial clockwise or counterclockwise the fun can begin.
Each dial adds further pitch craziness, and if you want to turn sweet sounds into ear splitting discordance, this is the plugin. If you get lost along the way simply double click any of the parameter controls to zero it.
9. Dawesome Music - Hate
Sometimes regular distortion doesn’t suffice and you need something a bit more spicy. That’s where Dawesome Audio’s suitably titled Hate comes in.
Built around a core wavetable distortion engine, you can select frames (Slice), adjust intensity (Edge) and control which aspects of the signal are processed (Freq Tilt, Punch and Image). This is then enhanced by the module section at bottom, which provides 6 slots and a choice of 29 sound shaping effects.
These include everything from brutal saturation (Raspurator) to smooth flanging (Mellow). All effects include a simple wet/dry blend so you can tailor the results.
10. Zynaptiq - Morph 3
Morph 3 is a serious plugin with a serious price tag, but its approach to audio blending is certainly leftfield and achieves highly original outcomes.
The input audio can be blended with either the side chain source or the onboard Modeler to create a new sound. The Modeler includes a number of preset audio sources, and you can import your own audio as well. Morphing is controlled using the central pad and there are a number of morphing algorithms - Interweave, Classic, Enharmonic and so on.
These options have a serious impact on how the morphing works and are the plugin’s special sauce.
