The newly-formed United Plugins starts with a bang — three new plugins

Developers Soundevice Digital, FireSonic, JMG Sound, and MeldaProduction have teamed up to form the plugin federation United Plugins. According to the federation, near perfection is now possible with digital signal processing. As a strong proponent of both analog and digital mix techniques, it certainly looks promising.

The founding members of United Plugins, all but MeldaProduction, have each released a new plugin too. This new, inaugural collection consists of a reverb, a vari-mu tube compressor, and an intelligent mix enhancer. These plugins each feature a simple GUI and dry/wet functions. Not only that, but based on audio samples they really do sound great.

JMG’s Hyperspace reverb plugin brings extreme personalization to the spatial elements of your mix. With six engines ranging from vintage to cosmic, a multitude of presets, and a user manipulatable algorithm, the sonic possibilities with this reverb are endless. Other notable features include modulation, built-in dynamics processing, a filter, and tilt eq.

The intelligent mix enhancer, FireCobra, is developed by FireSonic. The FireCobra analyses incoming signal and sharpens transients while balancing frequencies to clean up and improve the sound of a track. This is controlled by the intensity knob. The plugin will also add emulated solid state distortion with the ‘smack’ knob tube distortion with the ‘analogize’ knob. There isn’t much more to the FireCobra, but audio samples of tracks treated with the enhancer prove that FireSonic has packed a lot of power into a simple processor.

Soundevice Digital’s contribution to the inaugural release is the Royal Compressor, an emulation of true tube (vari mu) compression. Tube compression is rich, warm, and slow. Soundevice Digital has not only stayed true to these characteristics, but has also included three different modes, each modeling a different vintage tube compressor. As a lover of vari mu compressors, I can confidently say that this plugin will make bass tracks and vocals shine while also providing a great tool to glue together a mix in the mastering process.

The inaugural United Plugins release has brought three useful, powerful, and varied plugins to the table at an incredibly affordable price. Each can be purchased for €129 ($145) and all three are currently on an early access sale for €77 ($86). Get yours now at unitedplugins.com.