Five of the best effects plug-ins for sound design
Check out our top 5 software FX for sound design, where we present some of the best tools for morphing your audio beyond its original form… Unfiltered Audio SpecOps Price $129 www.plugin-alliance.com This offers a massive 36 effects, ranging from subtle enhancers to in- your-face modulation combinations that take you on a wide and exciting […]

Check out our top 5 software FX for sound design, where we present some of the best tools for morphing your audio beyond its original form…
Unfiltered Audio SpecOps
Price $129
www.plugin-alliance.com
This offers a massive 36 effects, ranging from subtle enhancers to in- your-face modulation combinations that take you on a wide and exciting sonic journey. You can split your audio and apply anything to any slice and the results are truly stunning, making this a sound designer’s best kept sonic secret.
Sugar Bytes Turnado
Price €119
https://sugar-bytes.de
With 24 effects to choose from – and eight running simultaneously and controlled in real time via eight rotaries (or in Dictator Mode with just one!) – Turnado really is a sound designer’s dream piece of software. You might not be able to predict the results but you will end up with drama in no time at all. Highly recommended
Output Sounds Movement
Price $149
www.output.com
Output Sounds do loads of great instruments but this is the company’s first effect and as the rest of its titles are so huge sounding, you can easily predict the sonic results that you get from this.
We said: “It is the perfect remedy for those moments when inspiration starts to run dry, or an existing palette of sounds becomes too familiar.”
SpectraLayers Pro 5
Price £299
www.magix.com
This is more of a pro application that displays your audio as frequency spectrum layers so you can get in and edit it precisely. It’s used a lot for film and TV sound design and noise reduction but there are loads of features within it to get more creative, including Spectral Morphing which applies the character of one sound type to another.
Eventide Physion
Price $179
www.eventideaudio.com
You may know this plug-in by its former name Fission but it’s become a bit of a MusicTech favourite in the way it processes audio. It splits it into its transient, impactful part and tonal part for separate editing and more and then recombines them which can be an incredibly creative process.