Steinberg is celebrating 30 years of its VST standard by telling us that "the '90s are back" and releasing the Classics Collection. This is a new free bundle that features five fondly-remembered plugins from the ‘90s and early ‘00s, one of which was the first VST instrument ever released.
This was (and is) a simple two-oscillator synth known as Neon. We’re old enough to remember when this arrived (in 1999 as part of the Cubase VST 3.7 DAW update) and it did a fine job of proving that the ‘software instrument’ concept – which many still doubted – was credible.
Indeed, it set the tone for what was to come, both sonically and with its vintage-style ‘wooden’ end panels, which became ubiquitous as emulations of hardware synths flooded the market
The VB-1, meanwhile, was one of the original virtual bass instruments, and made it clear that the VST market wasn’t only going to be about synthetic sounds.
Fast forward to the early 2000s and Steinberg released the CS-40 polysynth, and that’s resurrected here, too. The sample-based LM7 drum machine also gets another airing, and the bundle is capped off by Karlette, a classic ‘90s tape delay plugin.
As you’d expect, these plugins aren’t as powerful or refined as many of their contemporary counterparts, but trying them again, they hold up surprisingly well, and it could be a fun creative exercise to go back and try and make a track with the same kind of software sounds that producers had access to 25 years ago.
It’s also worth saying that, while some of the plugins have been re-released before, these versions are compatible with the latest Mac and Windows operating and are VST 3 compatible, though there are no AU versions.
You can download the Steinberg Classics Collection now from the Steinberg website.
